_Nathan

The cover story for the October issue of Motor Trend is a comparison of 10 high performance cars including cars like the Corvette ZR1, Audi R8, and Shelby GT500.

"The winner will be a car that delivers a balance of useable performance, accessible handling, and driver-friendly design; a vehicle with a multidimensional personality that will delight and reward the enthusiast driver on any road at any time, regardless of weather and traffic conditions."

The winner? The Cayman S!!!

ricster

I concur with this report. I have driven all the cars on that list and the Cayman S is the car that hits all the buttons

pedsurg

Amen brother !!

Jack

FTS

It is certainly a great report for the CS, but I am not quite clear why they pick it over the R8.

Doug&Julie

You can see the article here as well:

http://www.motortrend.com/features/p...car/index.html

pedsurg

I wonder how the crock would have scored with a "proper" transmission ??

Jack

FTS

Everyone that used the PDK is raving about it; I cannot imagine the 'proper trans.' car doing better.

Doug&Julie

Interestingly, if you watch the video of Randy's hot lap (on YouTube), he's using the transmission in fully automatic mode. He says its that good..

pedsurg

Flying:understood.
But the article was not about "better" computer generated lap times or "better" computer precision shifting or "better" computer guided rev'd matched downshifts (sans heel toe) but about the best driver's car; thus the remakable 3rd place showing for the $ 19K miata.

No disrespect to the new auto tranny, all admit it's an amazing piece of technology. No doubt it's faster but its also easier. It's sooo good that most reviewers claim they usually just leave it in the auto mode. All that's fine; indeed I suspect there will be an auto tranny in my future some day when I tire of city traffic or ala Art S. at Sebring in his tippy TT.

But for the time being, isn't this about us driving the car, not the car driving us. Are we not supposed to be attempting (lifelong) to perfect the art of the perfect heel toe downshift heading into the safety pin at Sebring using our brains, hands and feet rather than Porsche's computer ?? Hell, the old tiptronic was probably faster than most of us, but that isn't the point, or is it ??

Jack
(even lusting for the manual GTS)

soltino

The "point" is progress; even until our inventions will do everything better than we can do and then we will be obsolete and that will be progress to.

{-%


tino

pedsurg

Perhaps, but the folk at Mazda didn't get the memo; Lotus also.

Jack

FTS

This is going to turn into another discussion of auto vs. manual and 'driver involvement'. I really like my manual trans car. even in trafic, but if I had the option of a 'better' transimission, I'd pick it and just drive the car. IMO changing gears is not necessarily part of driving the car, it is something I have to do to make the car go.

Doug&Julie

The argument is kinda silly in this case. MT chose a PDK Cayman S best "driver's car". They didn't have a manual. If the manual is a better "driver's car" than the PDK, then the Cayman S still wins.

For the record, in my ideal world I'd have a manual Cayman S as well. Sadly, I don't live in my ideal world...so I'll take whatever I can get.

pedsurg

Obviously both boxes have the merits, my real question is why the auto was selected rather than stick for a review of BEST drivers car; not the neatest, newest, slickest technology.

Jack

Doug&Julie

I'm going to predict that the age of the stick shift is coming to an end, or at least to a significant minority. Consider how many "supercars" have flappy paddle gearboxes, yet nobody complains about their involvement? So maybe, newest, slickest tech aside, this is simply the way of the future and MT chose to sample it on this car.

I also thought I remembered reading somewhere that Porsche said it expects to sell some outrageous number (percentage wise) of PDK cars compared to standard shift cars...something like 75%? Has anyone else read this?