KERIAN

KERIAN

KERIAN

It’s rotten what we’re doing, and we admit it. Totally rotten and unfair and, well, maybe just a little bit un-American. We’re taking the most enthralling new sports car in a generation—my God, it’s actually affordable!—and throwing it under the galloping hooves of a semi-exotic thoroughbred that most of us here couldn’t afford even if we never move out of our parents’ basements.

(See, we’re saving you the trouble of writing this stuff in letters.)

By whatever strange forces create unlikely allies, Toyota and Subaru got together and gave our kind a gift: a rear-drive sports coupe with a 2700ish-pound curb weight and the reflexes of a kit fox. It has exactly enough seats and trunk space to make it halfway practical, and they didn’t even louse up the styling. We should be sending love letters and boxes of chocolates to Japan for the $25,092 Scion FR-S (and its sister car, the Subaru BRZ) instead of throwing it against a $76,560 Porsche Cayman S. Yes, we are ungrateful wretches, and we know it.

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But with these asymmetrical comparison tests we hope to determine, semi-scientifically, whether a glass is indeed half-full or half-empty. It is not meant to be a buyers guide, as we assume the buyers of these two cars don’t get invited to the same pool parties. Rather, we want to see how big a factor price is with these two sports cars whose goals are essentially the same: to spread pavement-sucking, boxer-engine joy.

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While Porsche is busy having kittens with Volkswagen—the product pipeline holds the Macan small SUV, the 918, an Audi R8–based bridge car between the 911 and the 918, and possibly a front-engined GT—the Cayman has been the keeper of the old flame. At 3034 pounds and with its engine amidships, the 320-hp S feels like what the ballooning 911 used to be: light, simple, small, intimate, and less about looking rich than being really quick (though the Cayman manages both).

Typical of Porsche, there are myriad options on the Cayman’s price list, but our car had mostly the highlights: the $3640 Bose super stereo/navigation, a $2230 Convenience package, Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) for $2090, the $1550 Carrera S II wheels, a limited-slip differential for $950—which seems oddly cheap when you pay $710 just for the Aqua Blue paint—plus some other stuff.

In contrast, the FR-S came to us as naked as a newborn, augmented by only a $95 trunk mat and $67 wheel locks. Coincidentally, the cheapest option available on a Cayman S is $95: a leather key pouch to match the car’s interior.

In case you’ve been held hostage by Mennonites this past year, the FR-S and the BRZ are both being produced on the same line at Subaru’s Gunma factory in Japan. Scion is shooting for a younger buyer, hence the FR-S has a lower price than the BRZ.

So, unlike the BRZ, there is only one FR-S trim level, and it doesn’t offer some of the BRZ Limited’s niceties—namely navigation, automatic climate control, a keyless engine-start button, and some fancy toggle switches. The 2.0-liter flat-four with its dual port/direct-injection system is common to both cars, as are most of the other specifications, absolutely none of which are bad.

But is the Porsche worth three times the Scion’s price? It’s not our money, so it doesn’t really matter what we say, but like Congress, that’s never stopped us before.

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It’s so unfair. We love this car, but management doesn’t allow ties for first in a two-car comparison [or any comparison—Ed.]. Perhaps you can understand that.

The FR-S is just a bowl of ice cream with a stick shift. No car since the original Mazda Miata has made an empty cloverleaf as enjoyable or an end-run around loafing traffic as fun. You don’t even need to go fast. The 200-hp FR-S is low and small and makes 60 mph feel like Mach 1.7, so it may be just the cure for a spotty driving record.

Reasons to not buy a sports car get eliminated one by one in the FR-S. Everybody seems to fit in the manfully bolstered bucket seats, and the rear seatback folds to extend cargo space. We got 21 mpg even though the days were hot, the driving was hard, and there was plenty of idling for photography. All that interior noise and ride harshness you expect as payment for your fun is absent. The FR-S is quieter than the Cayman and doesn’t slam or crash on the rough stuff.

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Some credit goes to the narrow, fuel-economy-minded Michelin Primacy tires. They serve the FR-S driver admirably around town even if they get slippery at the extremes. Putting power down on a drag strip and holding the line through a hairpin, in other words. Were you able to launch the FR-S closer to its lofty 6400-rpm torque peak without the tires losing traction, the 0-to-60-mph time (6.4 seconds) would undoubtedly be quicker.

The 200 horsepower seems adequate until you take the FR-S on mountain roads. Trying to keep up with the Cayman, we ran for a full 30 minutes across a high ridge with the engine yowling in third gear at 6000 rpm. Well, at least you know it is durable. But it’s not a mezzo-soprano at that speed, more like a mezzo-econo.

There’s really nothing wrong with the FR-S except that it suffers from the curse of affordability. It seems a teeny bit dowdy inside compared with the top-spec BRZ. The rotary knobs are ordinary, and the radio looks ill fitting and out of place, as if it’s just passing through from some other vehicle. Nor is the Pioneer unit very easy to operate.

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To point out flaws in handling seems highly unsportsmanlike, considering the car it was driven against, but there are some. Those skinny tires squeal and squirm when pressed, and it’s the rear that breaks grip first. Think twice, maybe three times, before switching off the stability control, as it’s very easy to get sideways in an FR-S. The damping is also a bit loose—that great ride, remember—allowing the body to pogo a bit as you set up for your hero’s appointment with the apex. One test driver called the FR-S “spastic.”

More kindly, the FR-S is a full-employment opportunity for aftermarket tuners, who will be happy to make it as whistlingly boosted and rock-rigid unbearable as your wallet will allow. In the meantime, you have a fantastic everyday sports car. Glass more than half-full, we’d say.

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So why does the Porsche take first? Because it’s just so—what’s the word? Maybe there isn’t one word, which is why Steve McQueen didn’t talk through that whole movie in which he was driving a powder-blue Porsche.

The Cayman S is McQueen, the pit clock at Le Mans, a grumpy genius in Gmünd, and an entire nation obsessed with closing the gap between reality and perfection baked into one little sports car that would probably engender world peace were it found in every single parking space.

Okay, maybe that’s a stretch, but the Cayman S is a heartthrob, and the world is a happier place for its existence. Sure, it’s exorbitantly priced, and Porsches haven’t always been quite so out there, especially when the mostly Volkswagen 914 was priced nearly the same as the Datsun 240Z. Nowadays, the base price of the Cayman S is more than twice the entry price of the Scion.

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Porsche hasn’t always justified its premiums but does here. One effortless zing to the 7400-rpm redline (same as the ­Scion’s), and you get it. This is a flat engine that sounds anything but flat. Or mass-produced. Or anything but a machine made by maniacs for precision and form. What’s that worth? To us, a lot.

The last hurrah for Porsche hydraulic-assist steering (already the new 911 and Boxster have gone electric) reminds us of how it used to be: a ticker tape of pulsing road data. The 911 is too grown-up for all that racer stuff now, but the Cayman S isn’t. Not yet.

The Cayman is always squat and settled and usually more capable in a corner than its driver. Locating the engine in front of the rear axle probably helps. More-expensive rubber and cross-drilled brakes as well as lighter materials in the super-lubricated suspension preserve its neutrality and ­confidence at higher speeds. A firmer structure—perhaps packed with gold sovereigns—dampens vibrations and hushes door slams to a meatier thunk. In every way, you feel the extra dollars delivering.

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Well, except one or two places. Unless you drop even more coin on a leather-upholstered dash and doors, the plain plastic units look a little too Korean. And the cable-linked shifter feels more like a bungee-linked shifter. The FR-S’s brake pedal is firmer, even if the result of standing on it is less impressive.

The expensive PASM delivers a mellower ride when set to “comfort” than the Cayman’s base suspension does; only push “firm” if you want to ruin it. In “sport,” the S’s body motions become sharply stunted, but that doesn’t make this Porsche feel any more stable in turns. And our particular test car, which was nearly new, suffered a strange clutch-engagement problem that prevented us from extracting the engine’s full performance. Porsche replaced the clutch and all was good, the S delivering on the promise of its price by taking just 4.5 seconds for 60 mph and 13 seconds flat for the quarter-mile.

Alas, we’ve hit upon an old stalemate, like the argument about which is better, a Casio or a Rolex. In this case, we’d be unfaithful to all that car enthusiasts worship if we said that the Porsche doesn’t earn its higher price. And if you can’t pay it, feel lucky to live in a time when there’s such a superb alternative that’s affordable.

KERIAN

KERIAN

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