The only time you feel out of control is when you stomp on the brake pedal in the middle of a sharp slide

June has been quite busy: I’ve covered 3,500 kilometres in thirty days. Quite a bit for someone who lives, works and shops within a 4km radius. But the continuous road works that tend to mushroom in the summer months, combined with my memory, which for all effective purposes doesn’t exist, have forced me to reach my destinations by trial and error rather than orientation.

Fortunately, I am now even more acquainted with the car and have had plenty of opportunity to experiment with hard braking and accelerating on loose surfaces with the PSM aid off.

The brakes are unbelievable. Many people had told me how good Porsche’s brakes were, and they’re absolutely right. You simply can’t lose control under braking unless you’re either trying to do so intentionally, or have no concept of how to drive a car. I tried all sorts of hard braking: braking while going straight, turning, going uphill, turning downhill and on sandy roads. The only time you feel slightly ‘out-of-control’ is when you stomp on the brake pedal in the middle of a sharp slide.  And that’s only because the car becomes awkward and does unexpected things to prevent the slide.

As for their durability, it took me about twenty minutes of insane braking on the track to start getting any fade. I grant you I’m not the fastest driver and that others might run out of brakes before me, but I cannot imagine a situation where the brakes will get you in trouble when driving at speed. In day-to-day use they are smooth and precise. None of that on/off jerkiness you get in some sports cars.

On the other hand, the air conditioning is really starting to show its limitations. In all fairness, it might not be the AC unit but the temperature control which doesn’t quite work as it should, because you never get the car to reach the desired 22 degrees while in “auto” mode and thus, your back ends up getting baked no matter what. What makes it worse is that the engine is right behind you and the rear window is considerably flat, so it allows quite a bit of heat in. So now, as negative as I’ve been about them in the past, I’ve started considering window tints.

One more thing worth mentioning is the behaviour of the PDK double-clutch transmission. There are some instances where it seems to hesitate in engaging, and can’t make up its mind what gear it should be in.  This is particularly obvious after speed bumps and at uphill traffic lights.  What happens is that the engine runs free until one of the clutches closes in and it selects a gear. It didn’t use to do this before so I’m not entirely sure whether this is normal or not. I’m going to keep it under surveillance.

The engine has got a new lease of life, though. It’s true that it really does open up after a few kilometres and gain a few extra horses and more flexibility. The car now seems more responsive to my right foot’s input than when I first got it. The greatest thing is that, having covered 7500 kilometres, the Cayman still puts a smile on my face every single day.