For those who were wondering and debating how the CS would fare against the new V8 M3, read the Jan-08 Top Gear magazine where they tested the M3 against the MB C63 AMG and the Cayman S, and guess what, the M3 is not even close according to Top Gear! Quotes form the article:

"A day spent nailing the pair (M3 & CS) around the Downs, coming up with the same conclusion at every corner. The Cayman is te one that'll take you around it, flat and full of confidence, while the M3, even more than the RS4, is the one that'll roll a bit and probably have warranted a dab of the brakes beforehand anyway"

"In a straight squirt, the Cayman pulls away too, but in those corners, short of a level of heroics this road tester readily admits to lacking, it leaves the M3 at an apparent standstill"

"On Britain's tricky B-Roads, the Cayman leaves the M3 for dead. Just as you'd expect"

"In every imaginable respect, the Porsche is a superior sports car"

"There's a point that needs stressing: 4 seats do not make the M3 exempt form a Porsche-shaped shafting"
END of QUOTE

And there's more. I scanned the article but I'm not sure if I can attach it here. Can I?

I typed up the article in the below thread for anyone else wishing to read it.

I picked up a copy of Top Gear magazine, Nov

Is the RS4 in the article as well then? IMO the RS4 is a very capable car and should out-lap and out-accelerate a CS (and of course the M3 also).

Thanks timCS, I didn't know that you'd already typed it up. It could have saved me all the typing Nice article I thought (obviously).

zal,

Thanks for the post. I find Top Gear's findings even more interesting after they earlier selected of the Z4M over the Cayman. After watching one of Top Gear's TV personalities-cum-race driver muscle and slide the Z4M around their test track, I could never quite understand what they found so fond about the car.

He was referring to a CS-RS4 head-to-head they did 2 years ago when the Cayman first came out. I think most cars will exhibit more body roll than the Cayman; particularly these big V8's. What surprised me in the article is the claim that the CS pulled away form th M3 in the straights. I would have bet on the opposite.

I think the point he is making is that the M3 has become too fat and expensive; yet it can't beat the C63 or the RS4 at their own game. The top gear track times shows the Z4M 0.2 seconds faster; keeping in mind the driver, weather, temp, etc effect on these figures. Nevertheless, I agree that it is strange how they rated the Z4M overall above the Cayman. Its very subjective and tester dependent I guess.

Note they said pulled away on the straights implying that they were on a track where there were corners followed by straights. A car that can really carve a corner will enter the straight with a higher entry speed thus making it very hard for a car slower in the corners to catch or even pull on the corner carver despite having more horsepower because the first several seconds are used at just trying to get up to a matching corner exit speed and then accelerating from there. The new M3 is a heavy car, there is a lot of physics to overcome if the Cayman has carved the corner well before it and it wouldn't surprise me that save for a track with a really long straight the M3 would never catch the Cayman. Certainly this is true in my own track experience when pitted up against M3's, even modified ones.

I don't think they were talking about a standing start 1/4 mile run in which I would expect the new M3 to be faster whereas the Cayman S was slightly faster than the old outgoing M3.

If I remember our Articles section correctly the Cayman S also beat the RS4 as well, again for some of the same reasons.

As far as posting scans of articles, it is a no-no to post the whole thing, if you want to post say the first page or two and a link to the entire article that is usually fine under the fair use clause, otherwise it is a copyright violation. Posting excerpts as you have is typically fine as well.

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K-Man S
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Also note the Motor Trend and Car & Driver head to heads between the Z4M and the Cayman S showed in both cases that the Cayman S was faster. They even had a nifty animation showing that as well and certainly the Cayman S is easier to drive faster for whatever that is worth...

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K-Man S
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Yes, I think the CS came on top overall against the RS4 in that test as well. I'm off to read their F430 Scuderia vs. Nissan GT-R article. This months issue of TG is full of good stuff

Last weekend I was chasing an RS4 at WISR big track. I'm in my stock CS with street tires. The RS4 had been converted to a race car, trailered in. Fully stripped out, R compound tires, suspension upgrades etc. etc. 350 HP at the rear wheels, so probably 75 hp more than my CS. Experienced driver, nice guy, complemented my lines I kept up with him for a while, but eventually he was faster than I was, but only by about 1.5 seconds. Considering the difference in how track prepped our cars were (or not in my case), I'd say the CS did pretty well. He said fully stripped out, the Audi still weighed in at a little over 3000 lbs. Bummer.

CS is a great platform.

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Sport Auto magazine, in their current monthly magazine (already out for a few weeks but pictures just released on the Internet), features the new M3 in their super test, which includes a breakdown of segment times on the famous north loop of the Nürburgring. (The previous month the GT2 was featured doing this circuit in 7:32, basically matching the more expensive GT.)

Sport-Auto Supertest BMW M3: Rotes Meer

They also list the circuit times of other cars that they've tested in the same manner:

Sport-Auto On-Line Alle Rundenzeiten aus den Supertests

Accoding to these data, the M3 does very well, which it should since the sales brochure of this car is full of photos of the Nürburgring. The lap time is identical to that of the 997 Carerra S. Here are some recent comparisons:

8:04 - Audi R8
8:05 - BMW M3 / Ferrari Maranello 575M / Porsche Carrera S
8:06 - Mercedes SL55 AMG
...
8:09 - Audi RS4 / BMW M6 / Honda NSX-R
...
8:25 - Porsche Cayman S

Since the Nürburgring has a significant uphill segment and a long stretch, it tends to reward power more than would be the case on a small, tight track; still it has 73 turns and is considered to be THE standard for overall performance.

If raw power isn't really such a big issue with Cayman drivers, but rather the ease and precision with one can carve through corners, then by all accounts I've read in these forums, the 5-speed Cayman with the smaller 2.7 liter engine ought to be considered superior to the heavier S version, especially if heavy and frequent acceleration (gas guzzling) isn't a part of one's driving habit.

Sex_Zylinder