The Cayman, Porsche's Frankenstein!

: a friend has a very nice '64 XKE with a small block Ford V8... He likes it : very much.

: and just as a rhetorical question... why not hot rodding a Porsche? They're : made in sufficient quantity that it's not sacrilege like chopping up a : Cadillac V16 or a Bugatti or Maybach...

Well... I was just being a smartalec with the 67... short wheelbase had trouble with a flat 6 hanging back there... toss a heavy V8 back there and it would probably make a nice wheelie machine, but you might need a set of trailing wheels to keep it from going over front to back...

The Jag would be different since it had a front end designed to take a V12, course every lotus I've looked at has had gauges that don't work and I'm constantly cautioned that it won't be as dependable as my Porsche... funny thing is, most 10 year old Porsches have 100k miles on them, most 10 year old Lotus have 33k, and it seems to be for a reason... (I had a Triumph TR6 once... I soon learned why it only had 56k miles on it...) People selling

199x Elans always tout that it has a dependable Japanese motor in it, not a Lotus motor).

Steven Grauman wrote: : The 295 Horsepower car WILL be the Caymen S. A less powerful version,

However, if they put the same motor in it as the 911, it would probably outhandle the 911 just fine... If your going to field a car, then put out the best car you can... forget this ...We can't compete with our other models... it's only going to cost them to produce so many different model

6's....

Kinda like IBM with their PCjr... in the long run, it only hurt IBM.

They should also come out with a hi performance 4... give them a few more classes to race in again... those 914's and 951's are aging and the new Lotus doesn't look too bad...

those crate engines make a bunch of HP

: : : : They're not built in that high a quantity.

I own one, an 03 Cabrio 996, really nice, but it's mass produced, just in lesser quantities. Look I haven't had so much fun with a motor vehicle since I had a Honda VF750F, but a Porsche 996 is not art work, it's a bloomin' mass produced automobile...

I absolutly remember seeing a custom 70's Porsche 911 with a Chevy engine crammed into the *Motorraum* with two 4 barrel carbs and straight chrome intakes for each barrel... As you say, at the time I thought it looked a bit heavy (maybe they had an aluminum block. It's been thirty years or so).

: The Jag would be different since it had a front end designed to take a V12, : course every lotus I've looked at has had gauges that don't work and I'm : constantly cautioned that it won't be as dependable as my Porsche...

My pal's Jag looks stock and seems to run like a dream. He's happy, so there you go.

:(I had a Triumph TR6 once... I soon learned why it only had 56k miles on it...)

The TR6 was a nice looking ride. Drug dealer I once knew bought one (Red, black interior) when they first came out and drove it down to Miami to pick up a consignment fresh from the docks. It suffered a mechanical failure on I95 somewhere south of Jacksonville on the return trip. I suppose he's out of jail by now.

In fiscal 2003/2004 Porsche built 81,531 vehicles: 41,149 Cayennes, 270 Carrera GTs,

13,462 Boxsters and 26,650 Carreras.

BMW built 1,059,000+ vehicles in 2004 - that's mass produced.

If the horsepower number is all that concerns you, please sell your 996 and find a nice 1969-1970 Chevelle SS 454 with the LS6 variant of the

454 motor. Classic car, 450 horsepower, should suit you nicely.

The Honda Accord and Toyota Camry as mass-produced, the Ford Explorer and Taurus are mass-produced. The 996 is the mostly highly produced semi-exotic in the world. But there aren't all that many of them in reality. In 15-20 years it'll be much harder to find one than it is now. A Porsche is a Porsche, not a Chevrolet or Ford, not a chopped Model-A or a 1964 Impala, not a Honda Civic or Nissan Sentra SE-R. There's no reason to chop one up with some ridiculous massive, domestic V8. You'll ruin it's sound, it's feel, it's handling, everything that makes it what it is - it's sacrilige. A 1994 Corvette ZR-1 has pretty good handling, it has a 5.7 litre, 405 horsepower, DOHC, 32-valve, all-aluminum LT5 V8 too, custom designed from bottom up just for the ZR1. And you can get one for under $30k if you look hard. Buy one, throw an Eibach pro-kit Plus suspension system on it, some minor brake upgrades, sticky tires, an intake/exhuast combo. You'll have a fast, reasoablly well behaved V8 sports car, exactly what you want, without spending a fortune and without canabalizing a Porsche.

I know it's early, but any thoughts out there on how to get more out of the upcoming Cayman S? Turbo maybe?

VF engineering makes a supercharger kit for 3.4 litre powered 996s that boosts power output to over 400Hp. Obviously some amount of re-tooling is going to be neccesary because of the placment differences between the rear engined 911 and mid-engined Caymen, but I have a feeling that kit would fit with minimal alteration. And I'm sure RUF will have an up-tuned version and I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of factory powerkit became avaliable.

You know what the word 'LOTUS' means? 'Loads Of Trouble Usually Serious' !! :)) Not that I have anything against Lotus, they're great fun cars but, they say about Porsche: The only time you'll need to go to the repair shop is to have it serviced or have the key-scratches removed after some onlooker damaged it out of sheer envy! :)) Regards

Mark

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If I didn't need the extra space, I'd buy the first Cayman off the boat!

I suspect the Toyota-based drivetrain is going to resolve any concerns about reliability. Emanuel