2006 Sport Coupe Shootout: BMW M Coupe vs. Porsche Cayman S
10-09-06, 10:03 PM
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2006 Sport Coupe Shootout: BMW M Coupe vs. Porsche Cayman S
The hardest choice will be deciding which one not to buy
Video clip plus more : CLICK HERE
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By Chris Walton
Date posted: 10-09-2006
Let's face it: The 2006 BMW M Coupe and 2006 Porsche Cayman S are about as close to rear-drive hatchback heaven as it gets. They're exotic enough to capture our collective imagination, and yet they're not so exotic as to be priced out of reach of enthusiasts. They're the kind of cars their manufacturers use to promote themselves. In a larger sense, coupes like the Z4-based M Coupe and Boxster-based Cayman S project an attitude that their drivers care about driving. Even people who wouldn't consider themselves car lovers will look at these cars with admiration. Also, your neighbors will immediately recognize you as the "car guy" on the block when they spot one in your garage. Frankly, this is the kind of comparison test Inside Line loves to produce. There is no better way to spend a week or two than to oblige our test equipment, photographers and readers in the name of automotive journalism.
Orthogonal meets organic
If those black-turtleneck-clad folks at the Bauhaus were to have designed a car, the BMW M Coupe would be it. There is no doubt that a man had a lofty idea about this car's intended effect. The mark of the designer is all over it, and to some, that's a good thing. Watching the orange sunset dance and melt over the M Coupe's planar surfaces, creases and arcs had us thinking that this wasn't the first time the car had been exposed to a cascade of waning light.
Originally, I abhorred the Z4's self-reverent and obviously (over-)designed bodywork. But looking at the M Coupe in the last few hours of a day, with its gracefully integrated roofline and M-spec skirting, I began to appreciate it — and value how precisely the body panels are attached. If the hood, for instance, were 3mm misaligned, the two lines that create an intersection of four surfaces would be disrupted and the whole design effort would be lost. It's this subtle but exhaustive "designery" that grows on us. The more we look at the M Coupe, the more that is revealed. It's not graceful, but it is an intriguing piece of manmade industrial design.
In stark contrast to the BMW's cerebral design is the Porsche's corporeal inspiration. Perhaps it's because the Porsche "bathtub" shape has been around for decades, and thus it's so familiar. Or maybe it's because the Cayman's curves are so gentle, organic and sensuous that it simply looks so right, so appealing. You don't need a design degree to appreciate it. The Cayman is immediately attractive and effortlessly so. It invites you to run your hand over it the way you would a white-marble Michelangelo figure, and feel every nuance of headlamp, roof and hips. We're certain as much midnight oil was burned in the design studios in Stuttgart as in Munich, but the final result is unforced and equally effective, if not more so.
Powerful competition
On with the business at hand: The reason you're reading this is to see which one we'd recommend to a person shopping in this segment. For the moment, we'll pretend that the $8,700 base-price gap doesn't matter. Later we'll also address the larger $16,260 as-tested chasm.
The basics are these: The M Coupe brings 330 silken-straight-6 horsepower to bear on a 3292-pound two-door BMW hatchback. That rounds out to 10 pounds of car to propel with each pony. Do the same math for the Cayman S hatch, and you'll discover a 10.5 pound/hp ratio for the lighter (3106 pounds) Porsche, with its snarling 295-hp horizontally opposed, or "flat" six.
Both engines are far more powerful and tractable than their respective 3.2- and 3.4-liter displacements would suggest. No turbos or superchargers are used, and there's no V8 variant offered either. Both feature slick six-speed manual gearboxes and impressive brakes plus robust, sporting tires to make it all worth a damn. These are light and agile sports cars in the purest sense. A drag race comes down to who gets the launch right. A canyon dash will be a test of either driver mettle or stability control systems.
At the outset, this looked like it would be a close one. When we looked at the scorecard, however, even the price discrepancy couldn't protect the BMW from the Porsche's coup de grâce. Simply put, the Cayman S is a more capable, adaptable and livable sport coupe.
The manufacturers provided Edmunds these vehicles for the purposes of evaluation.
Price. It's the one thing the Cayman S has against it. And the Porsche suffered a 30-point hit against the BMW M Coupe on its scorecard as a result — and still won. Sure, it's hard for your brain to justify a gap of $8,700 between the base MSRPs of these two coupes. And how much of the $10,810 in options helped the Porsche win? To find out, we configured a fictitious Cayman S with all the options we felt important to the car's capabilities, and found we could cut away $4,565 in extras and still have a car that would perform as well as this one did.
Even so, one back-to-back driving session is enough to amicably separate a true driving enthusiast from almost $66,000 of his hard-earned cash and place him happily behind the wheel of the Cayman S rather than the M Coupe. Your thrifty brain may say "No," but your gut will tell you otherwise. Here's why.
Info-passion-tainment
At the core of the Cayman S's essence is absolute, seemingly endless self-assurance in all situations. Whether the task is acceleration, braking or cornering — or a mixture of those — the midengine Porsche transmits volumes of unambiguous real-time feedback and confident exhilaration in equal parts. The fact that the car is gorgeous and makes all the right sounds is almost irrelevant. It could look like a Fiat Multipla and sound like a Pontiac Solstice for all we care. Drive one and you'll understand why nothing else drives like a Cayman S. It's as if Porsche focused all of its engineering talent on this one platform.
Raiding Porsche's parts bin
Much of the goodness in the Cayman S comes from decades of 911 Carrera refinement. The Cayman's 3.4-liter engine block is based on that of the 3.2-liter Boxster, but it features the exact cylinder heads and variable valve timing and lift (VarioCam Plus) from the Carrera. The standard brakes are stolen directly from a Carrera. The result is a lofty 295 horsepower at 6250 rpm and a useful 251 lb-ft of torque available at just 4400 rpm. Purists would revolt, but we wouldn't be the first to infer that the rear-engine 911's days are numbered, considering how effortlessly the Cayman S accomplishes all that it does for tens of thousands less. When will Porsche admit that a sports car's engine belongs between the axles, and not over the rear axle? The carmaker just proved it with the Cayman.
NUMB3R5
At the test track, we discovered the Cayman's 35-horsepower deficit to the M Coupe didn't much matter. The 5-second sprint to 60 mph took just a tenth of a second longer in the Porsche, and the quarter-mile was a dead heat at 13.3 seconds, with the M's horsepower carrying it 1.1 mph faster at the finish line. Tie. That's until you engage the brakes on both. The powerful binders on the M Coupe hauled it down from 60 mph in just 117 feet. The Cayman started with a 112-foot stop and continued to improve with each successive stop. By the sixth run, our test driver's quads began burning and the Porsche threw down a world-class 105-foot stop. Wow.
The slalom test is often criticized for its unnatural configuration. What we mean is that nowhere in the real world or even on a racetrack would a car encounter six consecutive lane changes at speeds approaching the legal limits in most states. What it does tell us, however, is how effective the steering is (too-slow ratio/poor turn-in /can't handle rapid requests?); how well a vehicle transitions from extreme side-loading in one direction to the other side repeatedly (understeer or oversteer/tippy/spinner?); and finally, how well a vehicle responds to throttle inputs while at these extreme limits (lift-throttle oversteer/power to unweighted tire/powerslide on the exit?).
Of the Cayman S, our test driver said, "This ain't the first time this car has been flogged on a slalom course. It's as if the Cayman was built for this test. I could do this all day." The numerical result was another world-class performance of 72.1 mph (some 3.6-mph faster than the M Coupe), followed up by an impressive 0.94g lap around the 200-foot skid pad, where the BMW managed a sporty 0.85g. In anybody's book, that's a sound trouncing — and we hadn't even gone for a spirited drive in the hills yet.
Racecars do it
Part of the reason the Cayman S drives the way it does is the midengine placement (and 46-percent front, 54-percent rear weight distribution). Fifty-fifty sounds ideal, but the truth is that's ideal for a car sitting static on a set of scales. It really depends on what the car is doing while in motion. There are any number of how-to books on racecar dynamics out there (here's a nifty one I found in Wikipedia) which go into great detail about center of gravity, transfer of weight and so on, but suffice it to say that the Cayman S is a fundamentally better design for a sports car. The Porsche's steering, braking and handling are all better simply because of where the engine is. Another benefit of putting the engine right behind the seats is that the Cayman has two luggage compartments — 4.9 cubic feet up front and 9.2 cubes beneath the rear hatch.
Opt in
Also, when the Cayman S is equipped, as our tester was, with the optional Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) and the Sports Chrono package, those intrinsic abilities are sharpened further with a lower ride height, a two-mode "smart" suspension that adjusts to the conditions, and a wider field in which to play before the car's standard stability system might interfere. Bolt on the optional (lighter) 19-inch Carrera S wheels, and it just keeps getting better. If track days are part of your personal reward system, there's even a carbon-ceramic brake package that uses the same high-friction, low-weight, long-lasting, heat-dissipating materials used in many racecars — for (gulp) $8,150. On the other side of the purist spectrum, you can even order your Cayman S with an automatic transmission. The M Coupe, while a focused and sporty car, comes in one take-it-or-leave-it configuration.
With all its trick equipment, one might think the Cayman S would be as composed in the real world as Johnny Knoxville at a black-tie soirée. In truth, the Porsche couldn't be better behaved. Even the PASM suspension's Sport mode was more tolerable than the M Coupe's (non-adjustable) settings. We did have a gripe, however, with the Cayman's audio and HVAC operation. Comprising many Chiclet-sized buttons (with no way of manually tuning in a faint radio station) and awkward rocker switches where we'd prefer ***** for fan and temp adjustment, the switchgear could stand a revision. But hey, this car is for driving, isn't it?
You get what you pay for
And that's what a sport coupe comparison should reveal. Which car is the better sports car? What began, on paper at least, as an even match with the odds pointing to the less expensive, more powerful, contemporarily styled BMW M Coupe turned out to be a rather decisive knockout, with the Porsche Cayman S standing alone in the ring. Yes, it's more expensive, but the Cayman's so much more than that, too. Choose it for the styling. Choose it for the midengine layout. Choose it for the available options. Choose it for the gentler ride. Choose it because you've always wanted a Porsche but couldn't stomach the perceived stigma or the small fortune a 911 Carrera commands. Just choose the Cayman S and be done with it. Driving a Cayman S means you value the complete package — not just horsepower. By the way, opt for PASM and Sports Chrono. You'll be happy you did.
Date posted: 10-09-2006
Let's face it: The 2006 BMW M Coupe and 2006 Porsche Cayman S are about as close to rear-drive hatchback heaven as it gets. They're exotic enough to capture our collective imagination, and yet they're not so exotic as to be priced out of reach of enthusiasts. They're the kind of cars their manufacturers use to promote themselves. In a larger sense, coupes like the Z4-based M Coupe and Boxster-based Cayman S project an attitude that their drivers care about driving. Even people who wouldn't consider themselves car lovers will look at these cars with admiration. Also, your neighbors will immediately recognize you as the "car guy" on the block when they spot one in your garage. Frankly, this is the kind of comparison test Inside Line loves to produce. There is no better way to spend a week or two than to oblige our test equipment, photographers and readers in the name of automotive journalism.
Orthogonal meets organic
If those black-turtleneck-clad folks at the Bauhaus were to have designed a car, the BMW M Coupe would be it. There is no doubt that a man had a lofty idea about this car's intended effect. The mark of the designer is all over it, and to some, that's a good thing. Watching the orange sunset dance and melt over the M Coupe's planar surfaces, creases and arcs had us thinking that this wasn't the first time the car had been exposed to a cascade of waning light.
Originally, I abhorred the Z4's self-reverent and obviously (over-)designed bodywork. But looking at the M Coupe in the last few hours of a day, with its gracefully integrated roofline and M-spec skirting, I began to appreciate it — and value how precisely the body panels are attached. If the hood, for instance, were 3mm misaligned, the two lines that create an intersection of four surfaces would be disrupted and the whole design effort would be lost. It's this subtle but exhaustive "designery" that grows on us. The more we look at the M Coupe, the more that is revealed. It's not graceful, but it is an intriguing piece of manmade industrial design.
In stark contrast to the BMW's cerebral design is the Porsche's corporeal inspiration. Perhaps it's because the Porsche "bathtub" shape has been around for decades, and thus it's so familiar. Or maybe it's because the Cayman's curves are so gentle, organic and sensuous that it simply looks so right, so appealing. You don't need a design degree to appreciate it. The Cayman is immediately attractive and effortlessly so. It invites you to run your hand over it the way you would a white-marble Michelangelo figure, and feel every nuance of headlamp, roof and hips. We're certain as much midnight oil was burned in the design studios in Stuttgart as in Munich, but the final result is unforced and equally effective, if not more so.
Powerful competition
On with the business at hand: The reason you're reading this is to see which one we'd recommend to a person shopping in this segment. For the moment, we'll pretend that the $8,700 base-price gap doesn't matter. Later we'll also address the larger $16,260 as-tested chasm.
The basics are these: The M Coupe brings 330 silken-straight-6 horsepower to bear on a 3292-pound two-door BMW hatchback. That rounds out to 10 pounds of car to propel with each pony. Do the same math for the Cayman S hatch, and you'll discover a 10.5 pound/hp ratio for the lighter (3106 pounds) Porsche, with its snarling 295-hp horizontally opposed, or "flat" six.
Both engines are far more powerful and tractable than their respective 3.2- and 3.4-liter displacements would suggest. No turbos or superchargers are used, and there's no V8 variant offered either. Both feature slick six-speed manual gearboxes and impressive brakes plus robust, sporting tires to make it all worth a damn. These are light and agile sports cars in the purest sense. A drag race comes down to who gets the launch right. A canyon dash will be a test of either driver mettle or stability control systems.
At the outset, this looked like it would be a close one. When we looked at the scorecard, however, even the price discrepancy couldn't protect the BMW from the Porsche's coup de grâce. Simply put, the Cayman S is a more capable, adaptable and livable sport coupe.
The manufacturers provided Edmunds these vehicles for the purposes of evaluation.
Price. It's the one thing the Cayman S has against it. And the Porsche suffered a 30-point hit against the BMW M Coupe on its scorecard as a result — and still won. Sure, it's hard for your brain to justify a gap of $8,700 between the base MSRPs of these two coupes. And how much of the $10,810 in options helped the Porsche win? To find out, we configured a fictitious Cayman S with all the options we felt important to the car's capabilities, and found we could cut away $4,565 in extras and still have a car that would perform as well as this one did.
Even so, one back-to-back driving session is enough to amicably separate a true driving enthusiast from almost $66,000 of his hard-earned cash and place him happily behind the wheel of the Cayman S rather than the M Coupe. Your thrifty brain may say "No," but your gut will tell you otherwise. Here's why.
Info-passion-tainment
At the core of the Cayman S's essence is absolute, seemingly endless self-assurance in all situations. Whether the task is acceleration, braking or cornering — or a mixture of those — the midengine Porsche transmits volumes of unambiguous real-time feedback and confident exhilaration in equal parts. The fact that the car is gorgeous and makes all the right sounds is almost irrelevant. It could look like a Fiat Multipla and sound like a Pontiac Solstice for all we care. Drive one and you'll understand why nothing else drives like a Cayman S. It's as if Porsche focused all of its engineering talent on this one platform.
Raiding Porsche's parts bin
Much of the goodness in the Cayman S comes from decades of 911 Carrera refinement. The Cayman's 3.4-liter engine block is based on that of the 3.2-liter Boxster, but it features the exact cylinder heads and variable valve timing and lift (VarioCam Plus) from the Carrera. The standard brakes are stolen directly from a Carrera. The result is a lofty 295 horsepower at 6250 rpm and a useful 251 lb-ft of torque available at just 4400 rpm. Purists would revolt, but we wouldn't be the first to infer that the rear-engine 911's days are numbered, considering how effortlessly the Cayman S accomplishes all that it does for tens of thousands less. When will Porsche admit that a sports car's engine belongs between the axles, and not over the rear axle? The carmaker just proved it with the Cayman.
NUMB3R5
At the test track, we discovered the Cayman's 35-horsepower deficit to the M Coupe didn't much matter. The 5-second sprint to 60 mph took just a tenth of a second longer in the Porsche, and the quarter-mile was a dead heat at 13.3 seconds, with the M's horsepower carrying it 1.1 mph faster at the finish line. Tie. That's until you engage the brakes on both. The powerful binders on the M Coupe hauled it down from 60 mph in just 117 feet. The Cayman started with a 112-foot stop and continued to improve with each successive stop. By the sixth run, our test driver's quads began burning and the Porsche threw down a world-class 105-foot stop. Wow.
The slalom test is often criticized for its unnatural configuration. What we mean is that nowhere in the real world or even on a racetrack would a car encounter six consecutive lane changes at speeds approaching the legal limits in most states. What it does tell us, however, is how effective the steering is (too-slow ratio/poor turn-in /can't handle rapid requests?); how well a vehicle transitions from extreme side-loading in one direction to the other side repeatedly (understeer or oversteer/tippy/spinner?); and finally, how well a vehicle responds to throttle inputs while at these extreme limits (lift-throttle oversteer/power to unweighted tire/powerslide on the exit?).
Of the Cayman S, our test driver said, "This ain't the first time this car has been flogged on a slalom course. It's as if the Cayman was built for this test. I could do this all day." The numerical result was another world-class performance of 72.1 mph (some 3.6-mph faster than the M Coupe), followed up by an impressive 0.94g lap around the 200-foot skid pad, where the BMW managed a sporty 0.85g. In anybody's book, that's a sound trouncing — and we hadn't even gone for a spirited drive in the hills yet.
Racecars do it
Part of the reason the Cayman S drives the way it does is the midengine placement (and 46-percent front, 54-percent rear weight distribution). Fifty-fifty sounds ideal, but the truth is that's ideal for a car sitting static on a set of scales. It really depends on what the car is doing while in motion. There are any number of how-to books on racecar dynamics out there (here's a nifty one I found in Wikipedia) which go into great detail about center of gravity, transfer of weight and so on, but suffice it to say that the Cayman S is a fundamentally better design for a sports car. The Porsche's steering, braking and handling are all better simply because of where the engine is. Another benefit of putting the engine right behind the seats is that the Cayman has two luggage compartments — 4.9 cubic feet up front and 9.2 cubes beneath the rear hatch.
Opt in
Also, when the Cayman S is equipped, as our tester was, with the optional Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) and the Sports Chrono package, those intrinsic abilities are sharpened further with a lower ride height, a two-mode "smart" suspension that adjusts to the conditions, and a wider field in which to play before the car's standard stability system might interfere. Bolt on the optional (lighter) 19-inch Carrera S wheels, and it just keeps getting better. If track days are part of your personal reward system, there's even a carbon-ceramic brake package that uses the same high-friction, low-weight, long-lasting, heat-dissipating materials used in many racecars — for (gulp) $8,150. On the other side of the purist spectrum, you can even order your Cayman S with an automatic transmission. The M Coupe, while a focused and sporty car, comes in one take-it-or-leave-it configuration.
With all its trick equipment, one might think the Cayman S would be as composed in the real world as Johnny Knoxville at a black-tie soirée. In truth, the Porsche couldn't be better behaved. Even the PASM suspension's Sport mode was more tolerable than the M Coupe's (non-adjustable) settings. We did have a gripe, however, with the Cayman's audio and HVAC operation. Comprising many Chiclet-sized buttons (with no way of manually tuning in a faint radio station) and awkward rocker switches where we'd prefer ***** for fan and temp adjustment, the switchgear could stand a revision. But hey, this car is for driving, isn't it?
You get what you pay for
And that's what a sport coupe comparison should reveal. Which car is the better sports car? What began, on paper at least, as an even match with the odds pointing to the less expensive, more powerful, contemporarily styled BMW M Coupe turned out to be a rather decisive knockout, with the Porsche Cayman S standing alone in the ring. Yes, it's more expensive, but the Cayman's so much more than that, too. Choose it for the styling. Choose it for the midengine layout. Choose it for the available options. Choose it for the gentler ride. Choose it because you've always wanted a Porsche but couldn't stomach the perceived stigma or the small fortune a 911 Carrera commands. Just choose the Cayman S and be done with it. Driving a Cayman S means you value the complete package — not just horsepower. By the way, opt for PASM and Sports Chrono. You'll be happy you did.
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