Key considerations
- Available for £56,000
- 3.8-litre boxer six nat-asp petrol, rear-wheel drive
- A fabulous all-round driving machine
- Most ‘flaws’ are more about a search for perfection
- A rawer experience than the 718 successor
- Values remain very firm ten years on
The 981 Porsche Cayman GT4 was announced in February 2015 in response to basically ten years’ worth of shouting for a high-performance, track-capable Cayman. It was this model’s first exposure to the wizardry of Andreas Preuninger’s Motorsport works in Weissach, and the first mid-engined Porsche to go down that route.
The GT2 and GT3 were more extreme than the GT4, but the Cayman’s spec – light weight, good aero, sticky tyres and souped-up suspension – made it more than capable of holding its own with more or less anything else on most trackdays.
The performance side of the GT4 proposition came from a ‘991’ 911 Carrera S 3.8 engine detuned to 385hp. You could only have the GT4 with a six-speed manual gearbox. If you absolutely had to have a PDK dual-clutch auto, you needed to get your hands on one of the rollcaged, circuit-only GT4 Clubsports that made their debut at the New York show in late 2015. Even with the heavier PDK box the Clubsport was about 40kg lighter than the regular GT4. A ‘track day spec’ Clubsport cost £81k in the UK, while a race-ready homologation-prepped car with a 100-litre fuel tank, air jacks and plumbed-in extinguisher was just over £95k. For another £30k or so, depending on options, you could go to the full Clubsport MR (Manthey Racing) spec which chopped an additional 40kg out of the weight courtesy of stuff like polycarbonate for the windows and carbon for many of the body panels. This was all in the days when a 911 GT3 Cup car was £124k plus VAT, plus another £5k for the compulsory spares package.
Around 2,500 981 Cayman GT4s were built. That was for the world, not just for Europe, Asia or the US. The model was available to order before its debut public appearance at the Geneva show in March 2015, for first deliveries in the summer. Unsurprisingly every one of them was sold on the spot, and many were flipped for premiums. It’s thought that 600 or so came to the UK, where the starting price in 2015 of £64.5k included a driving course at the Porsche Experience Centre in Silverstone.
All GT4s on sale in the UK now (April 2025) will have been registered in either 2015 or 2016. None of them will be cheap. At the time of writing you needed £60k to get a used one with 10,000 miles on it. Cars with 40-50,000 miles on them currently start at £56,000. Four years ago the entry price for the leggiest examples (which by then would have done maybe 30-35,000 miles) was £60k, so you could say that prices have gone down very slightly.
These prices might seem high for a ten-year-old Boxster relative, but the GT4 is a lot more than that, and as with anything price is driven by demand. When you drive a good 981 GT4 you are likely to conclude that they’re actually excellent value. Not just relative to other Porsches but also to any other car that could fairly lay a claim to the crown of ‘best driver’s car ever’. Of course, the older a car gets the more issues it is likely to have. Does the GT4 have issues, then? Let’s take a look.
SPECIFICATION | PORSCHE CAYMAN 981 GT4 (2015-16)
Engine: 3,800cc flat-six
Transmission: 6-speed manual, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 385@7,400rpm
Torque (lb ft): 310@4,750-6,000rpm
0-62mph (secs): 4.4
Top speed (mph): 183
Weight (kg): 1,340
MPG (official combined): 27.4
CO2 (g/km): 238
Wheels (in): 8 x 20 (f), 11 x 20 (r)
Tyres: 245/35 (f), 295/30 (r)
On sale: 2015 - 2016
Price new (2015): £64,500
Price now: from £56,000
Note for reference: car weight and power data are hard to pin down with absolute certainty. For consistency, we use the same source for all our guides. We hope the data we use is right more often than it’s wrong. Our advice is to treat it as relative rather than definitive.
ENGINE & GEARBOX
The GT4’s 3.8 DFI (direct fuel injection) 9A1 engine lifted power over the 3.4 Cayman GTS by around 50hp, took about half a second off that car’s 0-62mph time, and made the GT4 good for a Nurburgring Nordschleife lap of 7m 40sec.
Some said that this Carrera S engine was ‘strangled’ by its 7,800rpm limiter (in comparison to the 991 GT3’s 9,000rpm), that it had a flat spot at 5,000rpm, and that it ran out of urge beyond 6,500rpm. Whatever, with nearly 270hp per tonne, or nearly 290 if you went with the 1,340kg weight quoted in some places, it had more than enough poke to make the most of the fine GT4 chassis. Pie Performance in Suffolk has a good reputation for filling out the flat spots. A remap will take the car up to nearly 400hp and smooth out the power delivery, especially if you change the throttle body at the same time.
The trackability of the GT4 means it’s good practice to obtain over-rev reports on any used car you’re thinking of buying, and to make sure that the catalytic converter is in decent shape. Changing the standard sports exhaust was considered to be a worthwhile enhancement, not just because the valve in the factory exhaust could rust up and stick but also because an aftermarket pipe would help to mask the cabin drone that some thought was too prevalent in standard cars at between 2,000 and 2,800rpm. Race headers that worked with the factory exhaust system were well regarded but they weren’t cheap, especially if they came from outfits like Dundon in the US.
As mentioned in the overview, you could only get the GT4 with the Cayman’s Getrag manual gearbox, dynamically mounted with magnetic fluid that could be stiffened or softened to cope with drivetrain movement under load. Those dynamic drivetrain mounts weren’t everlasting. Although the action of the factory gearshift was lovely in conjunction with switchable auto rev-matching (accessed rather oddly via an existing Sport button rather than through a discrete one), shorter-throw shifters from the likes of Numeric were well-liked for this car.
This gearbox gave rise to one of the few criticisms aimed at the GT4, which was that the ratios were on the long side. It would hit the best part of 80mph in second. Porsche addressed that to some degree in the 718 GT4 successor, but as flaws went it was hardly a deal-breaker. Many thought that the 981’s gearing worked okay on the track. All you had to do was a mental reset to keep it one gear lower than you might otherwise do.
Porsche specialists RPM Technik developed a replacement crownwheel and pinion set that lowered the overall gearing by 14 per cent, reducing speed at the top of second from near 80mph to 69mph. Some thought that shortening the gearing simply highlighted the engine’s power dropoff in the last tenth of the rev range, but one handy bonus of running an aftermarket final drive was that it averted the surface degradation that could affect factory crownwheels and pinions on tuned, higher mileage or regularly tracked cars.
Some owners of later (2016) cars, especially those who were tracking their GT4s, experienced the unwelcome sensation of 3rd gear absenting itself entirely from the proceedings, usually when attempting to accelerate out of a corner. It was eventually discovered there was a defective weld on third gear on later cars, leading to a recall and no-questions-asked gearbox replacements. Other owners said they had heard clunking noises in first, second and reverse, but we weren’t able to get to the bottom of those.
Servicing was pretty standard, with Porsche-recommended intervals of 12 months/12,000 miles for the minor services and 24 months/20,000 miles for the intermediates which included a brake system flush. The major services at four years/40,000 miles basically combined the minor and intermediate and added new spark plugs. Porsche said you don’t need to change the coolant, but independents who have seen water pump failures begged to differ and suggested changing it every three years or 30,000 miles. Applying the same belt and braces reasoning, indies will often suggest that engine oil changes should be carried out at 5,000-mile intervals and that the diff fluid should be changed at 40k/four years as opposed to the 120,000 miles/12 years Porsche reckoned was okay.
Although any direct injection engine will by definition suffer from carbon buildup on the intake side, the DFI engines on GT4s didn’t seem particularly prone to it. Some said that was because Porsche designed the GT4 to run with high oil temperatures. Others said it was because the GT4 wasn’t a ‘motorway car’ like (say) a 911 Turbo S. Maybe it was a combination of both. The other advantage of the 9A1 compared to the M96 used in the previous generation Cayman was that it didn’t have an intermediate shaft and therefore no troublesome IMS bearing issues.
Again according to Porsche, serpentine drive belts are supposed to be changed every six years or 48,000 miles. The tensioners for these could fail. The belt side of the engine is the one nearest to the occupants. If you were tackling belt replacement yourself you had to remove the seats and the small access panel to get at it and then set to in a tight area. That was awkward from inside the car. Cam timing was by chain.
Coolant expansion tanks could crack. Fixing those could be expensive, but that’s a Cayman boxer six thing rather than a specific GT4 thing. Batteries, as ever, are critical. Chances are that a 10-year-old car will not be on its original battery, but some lightly used cars might be. Watch out for odd warnings that don’t seem right, e.g. that the power steering isn’t working properly when it seems (to you at least) to be working fine. That could be down to a weak battery. Coils are worth looking at too as they are susceptible to heat buildup. Protective heat shields have been fitted by some owners.
Thanks in part to that high gearing, fuel consumption was reasonable at an official 27mpg with high 30s easily attainable on longer runs. In the UK the car sits in a high VED net that will cost you over £700 a year.
CHASSIS
The GT4’s tracky talents came from its combination of extra chassis stiffness, a 30mm ride height drop over a non-PASM Cayman, and a load of 991 GT3 kit such as brakes, camber-adjustable front wishbones, rear ‘helper’ springs and bigger wheel bearings. Add in the mechanical limited slip diff, PTV (Porsche Torque Vectoring), PASM active suspension, PSM (Porsche Stability Management), superb body control, sharp turn-in, an uncanny ability to soak up bumps and steering that, despite its electrical assistance, was as sweet and natural as you could want and it soon became difficult to think of many other cars that could match the GT4’s overall chassis balance, irrespective of price. Something with more outright brawn like a McLaren 675LT or a 911 GT3 RS would probably beat it over a cross-country route, but you wouldn’t be that far behind in your GT4 and you’d be getting out of it at the end with the glow of satisfaction that comes from having played an active part in a wonderful experience.
Some owners have fitted aftermarket plug-and-play suspension controllers for PASM-equipped cars like the GT4, with apparently good results, but as it stood PASM worked brilliantly on this car. Porsches generally stand up very well to hard use but it would be unreasonable to expect perfection over a GT4’s lifetime. Front suspension strut towers have failed on some cars, allowing the strut to pop up. That’s happened on other firmly suspended Porsches like 991 GT3s. Dampers could eventually start to leak, but of course that could happen with any hard-used (or even normally-used) car. Clunking noises were usually traceable to loose bolts on the three-position adjustable anti-roll bars front and rear. It’s good practice to get the car’s alignment checked at least once a year.
20-inch wheels were standard. Some owners changed from the standard wheels to 19-inch or 18-inch ones to open up a wider and more cost-effective vista of tyres. Michelin Cup 2 tyres suited the car well in the dry but perhaps not quite so well in the wet. Pilot Sport 4S were a popular choice. Regular trackdayers who noted high wear rates in GT4 tyre shoulders were critical of what they saw as the mean amount of geometry adjustability that Porsche had built into the car.
410mm front, 380mm rear Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes were an option at around £5,000 but the consensus seemed to be that the steels were more than adequate. Modules for the electronic parking brakes have occasionally failed. Sometimes you might get a bogus warning that the handbrake servo is on the way out but these warnings would often reset themselves. Again, check the battery.
BODYWORK
The use of aluminium for the doors, bonnet and engine cover helped to bring the GT4’s weight in at 55kg below that of a 991 Carrera S. Weight distribution was 45/55 front/rear.
The substantially vented front bumper delivered improved cooling for the GT4’s extra radiator and the big side scoops were real too, providing more air for the engine. Those elements along with the fixed rear wing also provided downforce on both axles, a Cayman first. Fitting risers for the rear wing was a common mod. We’re not sure if doing that helped the aero but it did help with rear visibility. There was no nose lift option on the GT4 so you needed to be careful about where you took the car and its front splitter.
The front boot had 162 litres of space with another 150 litres above and behind the engine, with small storage compartments at either end of the engine cover. At the windscreen end of the front boot, under a flap with a handy retention strap, were the items you or your mechanic would most commonly like to get to for use, servicing or replacement, such as the battery, cabin air filter, brake fluid reservoir and tyre pump compressor. Filler points for oil and coolant were equally easy to access under the tailgate immediately behind the engine cover.
For some fortunate types a Cayman GT4 was the disposable element in a two-Porsche garage, so when considering a car to buy you should look at the paint and shut lines and the state of the underbody (particularly behind the front bumper) for an indication as to what sort of life it might have led. Bright primary colours like Guards Red or Speed Yellow looked great on GT4s, but then so did black, which was a rare choice at the time.
INTERIOR
There weren’t many indicators in the GT4 to suggest you were in anything other than a normal Cayman. The most obvious ones were the fabric straps that were used in lieu of door handles. It was only when you started using the GT4 you realised it was anything but normal. The best compliment you could pay to the control weights and responses was that you quickly forgot about them. They were so beautifully judged you were able to devote all your concentration to getting the most out of the car.
The right-hand section of the ‘three-dial’ Cayman driver’s display was where you picked up all the car’s vital signs like temperatures and tyre pressures plus your audio, phone, sat-nav and cornering G-force data. The Porsche Communication Management system (their name for infotainment) with sat nav, a USB socket and a 40GB internal hard drive was usually chosen by first-time buyers over the standard seven-inch screen with a CD player and four speakers. A nine-speaker system was another option, as was the Sport Chrono package, customised for the GT4 with a Track Precision app that could record lap times to an accuracy of one-hundredth of a second and then store/visualise that data on your smartphone.
If you were tall and or maybe a bit infirm it wasn’t the easiest car to get in and out of, but the upside of the low seating position was a very connected feel. Standard Sports seats in basic or 18-way adjustable spec were upholstered in a mix of leather and Alcantara. They could be replaced by carbon fibre-reinforced plastic lightweight buckets. If you’re interested in a car that has the buckets, it’s definitely a good idea to make sure you get on with them on a trip, as not everybody did. Having said that, if you’re tall (i.e. over six feet) and planning on wearing a crash helmet you might get on better with the buckets as they deliver improved headroom.
Cupholders folded out from behind a trim strip above the glove box. They extended just far enough for you to think that they might not stand up to regular use, and indeed they haven’t all survived. Plenty of USB and charging ports were dotted around the cabin. Extended leather lifted the premium feel. There have been occasional reports of failure in the PCM system and some air conditioner valve failures. Heater fans could seize if they weren’t used much.
PH VERDICT
Some say that owning a GT4 is the next best thing to owning a 911. Others will say that they’re better than owning a 911. Either way, ten years after launch this is still a highly desirable, highly useable, thoroughbred sports car. It’s one of those cars that you can drive to a track day and drive home again having had a whale of a time in between.
The nature of the beast means you shouldn’t expect to see perfection in a GT4’s service history. As you’ll have seen in this guide the likelihood is that some things will have worn out or broken in the course of an owner’s enjoyment of the car. A good way to look at it is to be glad that you’re getting the benefit of new parts.
If, knowing what you know now, you had a chance to buy a new GT4 at the 2025 equivalent of £64,500 in 2016 – which would be around £87,000 – most of us would surely jump at it. But the question would be, which GT4 would you go for? The 2019-on 718 with its 4.0-litre, 420hp, again normally aspirated flat-six, GT3 front axle and better aero was another brilliant GT4, but in a subtly different way. It was more refined than the 981, with lighter control interfaces for easier town use, but refinement and driving ease might not necessarily be what you’d want in your edgy sports car experience.
The 718 was also 80kg heavier than the 981. On the plus side its infotainment was a lot more modern than the 981’s and its top-end hit was stronger, but some thought that the newer car’s steering wasn’t quite as clear as the 981’s. Finally, you’ll need at least £70k for a used 718 GT4, compared to the £56k starting price for a 981.
It’s a fair bet that prices for low-mile 981s won’t be dropping much anytime soon. They haven’t soared to investor levels, but it’s not hard to imagine them staying firm at the very least, so if you’re even vaguely thinking about it and you’ve got the readies now is probably as good a time as any to get into one. Don’t be put off by what might seem like a higher-than-usual number of owners on the registration document. That was normal for these cars, and not because owners were desperately unloading them having found some dire issue.
So, what’s on offer in PH classifieds? Well, just under £58k will get you a choice of two yellow cars from 2015, one being this regular coupe with comfort seats and 26,000 miles at £57,750 and the other a Clubsport also with 26,000 miles at £57,900. In April 2025 there were five more GT4s on PH for under £60k and 17 cars to choose from altogether. The most expensive offering was this 11,000-miler with ceramic brakes and carbon buckets at just under £72k.
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