Now that Porsche has switched over to turbo-four motors for the 718/Cayman, this left the purists wondering what will become of the next Cayman GT4. According to some clues dropped by Porsche GT development boss, a naturally aspirated flat-six and a three-pedal setup is here to stay.




Car and Driver spoke with Andreas Preuninger, who is head of development for Porsche’s GT series cars, about the future of the brands most hardcore models. Even though Porsche has proliferated of turbocharged motors across the lineup, Preuninger believes that the GT models that are designed for both the road and track should maintain naturally aspirated motors:

Natural aspiration is one of our main selling propositions...We offer a car for people who want to feel something special, who want to have as much emotion as possible, as much throttle response and immediacy from a sports-car engine. And at Motorsport we think that can be achieved a little bit better with a [naturally aspirated] high-revving engine than any kind of turbo.


C/D speculates that the next GT4 could use a detuned version of the 4.0-liter motor from the all new 911 GT3. Of course, Porsche doesn’t like to have the Cayman eclipse the 911 in terms of performance, so the 500 horsepower tune would have to be dialed back quite a bit in order to keep the hierarchy in balance.



Preuninger also casts doubts about turbocharging in the next 911 GT2 and cited that the GT cars

have naturally aspirated engine religion almost, and we don’t think it would be a wise move to shy away from that and turn around at the pinnacle of success of these cars and try something else without any necessity to do it.

This seems especially odd considering the GT2 has always been a unique turbocharged beast with power outputs well beyond the 911 Turbo S. Regardless of how the GT2 shakes out, the one bit of good news is that Preuninger was adamant that manual transmission options on GT cars are here to stay.

We reached out to Porsche for confirmation on this report and was told that they “don’t issue official statements regarding the speculation of future product plans.” So there’s that.

