ILLUSTRATION: PAUL RYDING
If the life of the motor car was an Eighties disco, Careless Whisper is currently soaking the village hall and two couples are drunkenly grappling on the dance floor. The party is nearly over. The place is mildly out of control and canoodling couples lurk in corners to take advantage of those last few minutes. The imminent approach of the end is making people do rash things – to make use of those final few minutes. The atmosphere is electric. In a village disco, that probably means a speculative lunge at the local bobby’s daughter. In Stuttgart it means the GT4 RS.
Porsche has just done what it said it would never do and fitted the GT3 engine to the Cayman. For years we were told that the Porsche hierarchy was sacred, that the Cayman would always be the understudy. They were the rules. But the rules don’t matter any more. Why maintain a hierarchy when, erm, the disco is about to end?
It’s hugely reassuring that even the oasis of calm and reason, fortress Zuffenhausen, is having a ‘sod it’ moment. Sod the hierarchy, sod what we established as our own rules, none of it matters.