Porsche Cayman

The Porsche Cayman is a rear mid-engined, rear wheel drive 2-seat luxury sports car produced by Porsche AG of Germany. First launched in the 2006 model year, the Cayman is a coupé derived from Porsche's second and third generation Boxster roadster. Like the Boxster, most Caymans were assembled in Finland for Porsche by Valmet Automotive (the rest are assembled in Zuffenhausen, Stuttgart, Germany). Porsche's Deputy Chairman, Holger P. Haerter stated that their contract with Valmet Automotive will end in 2012, and the Cayman's production will be outsourced to Magna Steyr Fahrzeugtechnik of Graz, Austria. (Panorama, 2008). More recently, as Volkswagen assumed ultimate control of Porsche AG, that agreement fell through, and the production of both Caymans and Boxsters after 2012 will be in the former Karmann plant in Osnabrück, Germany, now owned by Volkswagen and used for production of the new 2012 Golf Cabriolet. Cayman is an alternate spelling of caiman, a reptile in the same family as the alligator. The car is not named after the Cayman Islands; rather the islands also derive their name from the caiman. On the same day that the first Caymans arrived at dealerships for sale, Porsche adopted four caimans at Stuttgart's Wilhelma Zoo.  Porsche has been protective of their Cayman trademark and in 2009 the sports car maker brought an infringement lawsuit against Crocs, the maker of the popular rubber shoes. At issue was the footwear company's clog name also called Cayman. An injunction was granted against Crocs Europe, a division of the Longmont, Colorado based shoe company preventing their use in Germany of the Cayman name. After two years of development, the first model of the coupé to be released was the Cayman S (type 987120). Photographs and technical details were released in May 2005, but the public unveiling did not take place until the September Frankfurt Motor Show. The S suffix (for Sport or Special) indicated that this was a higher performance version of a then unreleased normal model. That model, the Cayman (987110), went on sale in July 2006. A motorsport-tuned model, the Cayman RS, is rumored to have been tested at the Nürburgring that same year. The Cayman coupé (project 987c) and the second generation Boxster roadster (project 987) shared the same mid-engined platform and many components, including the front fenders and trunk lid, side doors, headlights, taillights and forward portion of the interior. The design of the Cayman's body incorporates styling cues from classic Porsches; 356/1, the 550 Coupé and the 904 Coupé. Unlike the Boxster, the Cayman has a large hatchback for access to luggage areas on top of and in the back of the engine cover. Curiously, the entire aft portion of the Cayman is manufactured from stainless steel which provides the resistance to cracking needed to manufacture the many curves. The suspension design is fundamentally the same as that of the Boxster, but features revised settings appropriate to the increase in chassis stiffness resulting from the Cayman's fixed roof. The 3.4 litre flat-6 boxer engine (M97.21) in the first generation Cayman S was derived from the 3.2 litre powerplant (M96.26) that was used in the Boxster S, but featured cylinder heads from the Porsche 997 S's 3.8 litre motor (M97.01) which have the VarioCam Plusinlet valve timing and lift system. A less powerful but more fuel efficient version, the 2.7 litre M97.20, powered the base model. The use of these new powerplants exclusively in Caymans ended in MY 2007 when Porsche upgraded the Boxster (987310) and Boxster S (987320). A 5-speed manual transaxle is standard on the normal Cayman (G87.01), while a 6-speed manual (Getrag 466) is the default for the S (G87.21) and an option on the normal (A87.20). An electronically controlled 5-speed automatic transaxle (Tiptronic) was also available on the S (A87.21) and the non-S version (A87.02) (The 2009 models replaced this option with a seven-speed "PDK", Porsche's dual-clutch robotic manual transmission). Other options include active shock absorbers (ThyssenKrupp Bilstein GmbH's DampTronic, rebadged asPASM by Porsche), ceramic disc brakes (PCCB), xenon headlights (Hella's Bi-Xenon) and an electronically controlled sport mode (Sport Chrono Package). The first generation Cayman ceased production in November 2011.

 

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