Full Circle: Matt Farah Drives Road Scholars’ 4.2L, 400 HP Cayman GTR

This Cayman is a good reminder of just how long Matt Farah has been reviewing cars on Youtube. Many years ago, when he was still at Garage419, Farah reviewed an earlier build of this same Cayman. Then at Farnbacher Loles, this Cayman was one of the company’s “Cayman GTR” builds. Back then the car was powered by the same basic engine, a 911 Carrera S motor with X51 upgrades. Power was claimed at 395 horsepower. That was 2007. This is 2017. And in recent years the car has only gotten more extreme, as we showed a few months ago. Power is quoted as around 400 horsepower in the video, though the current engine build is not fully broken in yet, and it hasn’t been put on a dyno. Given the car’s prior output, and the displacement bump, it’s certainly possible that it’s making significantly more than that.

Over the intervening years, Matt Farah has lost his sideburns, and the Cayman has grown a whopping 4″ wider at the rear- both changes for the better. The bodywork is all-steel, including tweaks to the doors to make them fit better with the widened bodywork. The basic suspension geometry has not changed, and the wider track was achieved with wide, low offset wheels, vs. custom lengthened control arms. Despite this, Farah says the Porsche drives and handles very well, with none of the harshness and poor behavior that often results from setups like this.

This is one of Road Scholars’ first forays into modifying modern Porsches, and we’re glad to hear that it goes as good as it looks.