Features
Feeling the burn
A BMW Z4 M Coupe, a Porsche Cayman S and endless empty Portugese roads to play about on...
This BMW Z4 M Coupe is eight feet wide. Well, not literally, but for the plucky young chap in the eye-wateringly yellow Porsche Cayman S currently some six inches off the Beemer's back bumper, there might as well be a pair of them lashed together side-by-side.
It's not that the Z4 M Coupe is cumbersome, just that while the Cayman is neatly knit-one, pearl-one between the brief straights and tight unsighted corners here in Portugal, the BMW is bounding around like a Labrador that's just stuck a wet paw into a three-phase generator.
Furtive glances in the rearview mirror confirm suspicions as to why the Cayman is all but mounting the BMW like some amorous block of Anchor Spreadable.
You can see the difference in the tactics at the wheel; while Cayman driver is at quarter-to-three and merely pointing the relevant thumb into the apex at precisely the right moment, Z4 M Coupe driver is palming the wheel into opposite lock with his right hand, trying to hook third with his left and hoping to God that there's nobody coming the other way.
'The BMW is bounding around like a Labrador that's just stuck a wet paw into a three-phase generator'
A surprisingly effective form of staying in front, though not much used in actual racing, the decidedly juvenile tactic of lobbing a car untidily sideways at every possible opportunity, is having a sobering effect on the TG staffer entrusted with returning the Porsche to the UK without bits of BMW sticking out of it.
Restraint being only truly satisfying when demonstrated by others, I'm secretly relieved that I can blame the car for the fact that he's keeping up so readily. But that's not to say that the Cayman driver is having more fun. In fact, quite the opposite.
Six paragraphs in and here we have the crux of the matter. Despite being two cars that make a good case for a championship bout on paper, the Cayman S and Z4 M Coupe are as different as kung fu and Queensbury.
And it's not a style thing, because neither of these two, it has to be said, is pretty. Interesting yes, beautiful, no. Haunches feature heavily on both, with the Cayman retaining shades of the Boxster's push-me-pull-you and the Z4 looking like its legs are drawn up underneath it, pre-lunge.
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