Posts Tagged "Porsche Cayman"

If you were busy looking for brand new concept and production cars here in LA, you’d have probably left half way through the first morning. But just because there haven’t been dozens of new unveils, doesn’t mean we’ve not found some interesting details to pour over on the cars here in LA. So from the top, we offer you:

BMW i3 coupe floating centre screen

The i3 coupe interior is a delight pretty much everywhere you look. But we love how the wrapping leather element of the dash concludes to become the arm from which the (floating) centre screen is suspended.

Jaguar stand colour sculpture

Shown sideways here, just to accentuate its arty-ness, the colour sculpture ring on the Jaguar stands resembles one of those electricity pylon details.

Mazda CX-5 180 Concept lamp/grille detail

There are quite a few of these SEMA/custom-type SUVs at the show. Our favourite was this Mazda and the red pin-stripe grille element, which runs into the lamp and then is crossed by the red dash-dot graphic.

Hyundai Veloster C3 Roll top rear deck

We’ve already blogged about this concept and its fixie bike. But the bit we really like is the recycled bits of skateboard that make up the trunk deck floor lining. Reminds us of Freitag bags and feels very fresh and perhaps more importantly, non-corporate

Acura RLX Anodised starter-button

We’ll be honest, it’s completely out of place in the RLX. But this is the kind of start button that a sports car should have – red, and formed out of anodised aluminium

Range Rover lashing points

Good illustration of the Range Rover’s push-up market are these load lashing points, which are exquisitely detailed and give a real sense of perceived – and actual – quality

Lincoln MK-Z headlining rear reading lamps

It wasn’t perfectly executed (pressing the headlining’s a bit odd, and it felt a bit hollow/cheap) but hovering your finger against a little LED, and the reading lamp then illuminating as if from nowhere, is what you might term a nice ‘surprise and delight’ novelty

VW Beetle Cabrio hood/header intersection

So often, convertible soft tops mess up a car’s lines and just look like plain bad fits. We really like the fact that on the new Beetle Cabriolet’s hood, the A-pillar is visually continued by the soft top, forming an impression of a cant rail.

Porsche Cayman rear cubby hole cover

Porsche is really starting to get its detailing and PQ together – in the new Cayman, there are a pair of really neat, sliding lidded cubbyies either side of the rear load area.

by Joe Simpson

Porsche has now launched a new 911, Boxster and Cayman in the last 15 months. A cynic would say that the evolutionary nature of the design changes means there’s very little for anyone in the design space to get excited about. You turn up knowing exactly what you’re going to see. Having seen the Boxster we were pretty sure we knew how the Cayman was going to look. Our greatest hope was that they might have re-worked the rear light treatment. No such luck.

But there’s a lot more to see than first meets the eye (especially when seen in photographs) with this new generation of Porsches. From 987 to 981 Boxster, there were some major proportional shifts. And so it proves with the new Cayman, too. From the front, it’s as expected, carrying over much of the new Boxster’s sheet metal and meaning it now has a fairly different (for Porsche) face to the 911.

But move round to the rear – and especially when seen from the rear three-quarters – and the Cayman has changed quite significantly. The volumes, forms and proportions are really quite different to the car that went before. Gone are those flying buttresses and the sense of an almost duck-tail. In its place is a much more stubby, fastback coupe-like rear end.

The volume swept by the fall of the roofline to the rear of the car has been increased. It’s pulled further backwards, such that there’s a greater volume of metal above the rear wheel than before. It could have been heavy and clunky, but as with other new members of this new generation of Porsche, it’s exceptionally well managed in terms of volumes and surface resolution. And the Cayman retains its distinct rear fender treatment, which gives it much of its personality and just enough differentiation that you’re not in danger of ‘small 911’ mistaken identity moments.

There are elements of the design that are less well resolved. It’s a shame, given the greater differentiation to the core product than before, that it shares some of its wheel designs with the 911 and the side air intakes seem overly soft in form. But overall it’s very well resolved, and this writer happens to think this is a very fine piece of design – a smart step on for the nameplate. But others we spoke to, including some members of the CDN editorial team, were less sure about it and were just a little bit disappointed, saying they thought it had lost some of the old car’s character. What do you think?

posted by Joe Simpson