Slantnose Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 “Porknosee” Digitally Goes Twin-Turbo with RWB Widebody

In the Porsche realm, the slantnose tradition, which dates back to the company’s 1970s racing efforts, used to be exclusive to the 911. However, like many other Neunelfer traits, this style of design is starting to migrade to Zuffenhausen’s midship sports cars. Enter the flatnose 718 Cayman GT4, a rendering that’s not as far from the real world as one might believe.

The aftermarket seems happy to see the race-bred 911 flatnose migrating to the company’s midship sports cars. And before we get to see how this digital proposal takes the process one step further, let’s take a few moments to discuss why Porsche itself wouldn’t do it.

Developing sportscars is expensive and while their price tags are generous, the limited number of customers for this segment means making such machines profitable is quite the quest. Porsche knows this all too well, since the company was nowhere the financial champion it is today back in the early 1990s.

How Porsche allowed the Boxster/Cayman to come closer and closer to the 911

However, the carmaker managed to avoid a financial disaster later in the decade by developing the 996, the first water-cooled 911, and the Gen I Boxster, its modern-day midship sports car, together. And while the economic benefits were crucial to the company, some of the items shared between the two models split opinions to this day (think: the fried egg headlights).

So, to prevent the successful Boxster open-top model, which received a Cayman coupe sibling starting with the second generation, from canibalizing the 911, Porsche has constantly prevented the mid-engined machines from reaching their full potential.

The gap between the Boxster/Cayman and the 911 has gotten smaller with each new iteration of the former. And now that the Gen IV Boxster/Gen III Cayman that are joined in the 718 series probably spells the end of internal combustion for this model line, it feels like the barrier is no longer there.

So, while Porsche is preparing to introduce EV versions of its midship sportscars, a quick peek at the current 718 range reveals the marvel. Sure, the “civilian” models now sport turbocharged four-cylinder Boxers. But, you can get no less than three flat-six models for the 718 Cayman (make that two for the 718 Boxster) and they’re all naturally aspirated!

The old-school pleasures kick off with the GTS 4.0, and then we enter the GT range. This is where the GT4 keeps things with a road bias, while the more GT4 RS (only for the Cayman) is more of a track animal. A Rennsport-branded mid-engined sports car would’ve been unimaginable until recently!

This 718 Cayman GT4 borrows two 911 features

This pixel proposal might be extreme, but it still seems to keep things at least remotely close to the real world. So, instead of building on the GT4 RS top dog, which starts at $149,000, it uses the less financially burdening GT4 ($103,400 MSRP) as a starting point. However, the resulting machine is one that would probably run circles around the factory Rennsport version.

The slantnose, which probably makes for the most dramatic design change since the 1960s introduction of the Neunelfer, was born back in the 1970s for the racing version of the era’s 930-generation 911 Turbo, which was dubbed 935. And while this eventually made its way back to the Neunelfer road car, the Germans revived it for the 911 GT2 RS-based track-only special that is the modern 935 last decade.

The 718 Cayman GT4 needs no such aero assitance. But pixel-installing these iconic styling cues on the midship machine makes for an impressive move.

A collab between digital artists Arturo Thomas (arthurvisions) and Taehee Tim Lee (timthespy) this adds other elements to the spici mid-engined mix. And while we’re in the aero arena, we’ll mention the RWB widebody kit. In another sign of changing times, Akira Nakai, the master behind Japan’s Rauh Welt Begriff widebody label, used to only install his extreme kits on air-cooled 911s (and Ferraris).

And while Nakai-san has yet to touch a Cayman, we can still mention that he’s included a water-cooled 997 among his projects.

The final major piece of the puzzle comes from the twin-turbo setup complementing the 4.0L boxer—this 992-borrowed engine is loosely based on the architecture of the base Neunelfers’ twin-turbo 3.0L engines, so it looks like things run in a circle for this digital build.

PS: Speaking of slantnose Caymans with a widebody, the Gen I model (987) in the YouTube video at the bottom of the story brings such an unicorn in real life. This sports a 997-gen 911 aftermarket kit made by Japanese developer Old & New.

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