Well I tested the Boxter and it is great. The 911 because the engine is pushed back farther so you have to punch as you come out of a curve otherwise the weight will make you spin out
if you go fast into the curve. The Boxter is more of a mid-engine and does not that have this problem but it is not as stucturally as rigid as the Cayman because it lacks a roof and the Cayman is a hard top. I have sat in the Cayman but have had a chance to push it's limits. If you read all of the articles they have the handling on the Cayman better than the 911 but not better in performance.

The Road and Track had the Boxter even beating the Ferrari Enzo in the slalom. The Boxter is on handling par with the Lotus Elise but the Elise is brutal and very cramped compared to the Boxter.

Read the older article because it also compares to the older Corvette: http://www.roadandtrack.com/article....rticle_id=1949

The Corvette won the overall award because of price since the Porsche car's are more expensive. Note the Viper was #6 in ranking overall.

Keep in mind that the Cayman is superseding the handling of all of those cars and the performance is not bad....look at the bold letters below from Road and Track.

"Start with the Boxster's already beautifully balanced chassis in a closed-top model. Add more body rigidity and more sporting suspension tuning, and wrap it all up with a higher-output flat-6 engine. Conceptually, this newest Porsche sports car shares the same powertrain/chassis configuration with many of today's topline race cars and high-performance exotics — the mighty Carrera GT included. Will the Cayman S overshadow the venerable 911?

To answer this question, we covered nearly 700 miles in Germany to explore the capabilities of the Cayman S. We visited a racetrack for instrumented testing, drove on twisty roads through the Black Forest and rocketed along empty stretches of the Autobahn for on-road handling and high-speed evaluations.

The Cayman S's 3.4-liter flat-6 is based on the Boxster S's 3.2-liter engine with a 2.0-mm increase in bore. The aluminum cylinder heads are lifted directly from the 911 Carrera, but use the more aggressive-profile camshafts from the Carrera S's 3.8-liter engine. Along with this setup comes Porsche's VarioCam Plus system that optimizes efficiency at idle and maximizes power output at part to full throttle. With the increase in horsepower, the crankshaft needed to be made stiffer by increasing the diameter of its main bearing journals by 3.0 mm. And a stronger aluminum crankcase is fitted that is nearly identical to the one found on the 911. The Cayman S's 3.4-liter flat-6 engine puts out 295 bhp at 6250 rpm and generates 251 lb.-ft. of torque between 4400 and 6000 rpm.

Its 6-speed manual transmission is the same unit found in the Boxster S, but with shorter ratios in 1st and 2nd gears for better low-speed thrust. Triple-cone synchromesh is installed in the first two gears, while the rest are equipped with two. The gearbox is precise and offers short throws, helping the Cayman S to accelerate quickly. On the test track, standing-start acceleration runs with the traction control turned off produce significant axle-tramp, but then it settles quickly. Zero to 60 mph is accomplished in 4.8 seconds, and the quarter-mile mark is reached in 13.3 sec. at a speed of 106.2 mph. Compared with the 911 Carrera, which weighs about 120 lb. more but has 325 bhp and 273 lb.-ft. of torque, the Cayman S is 0.3 sec. slower to 60 mph, and 0.4 sec. off the 911's quarter-mile time while traveling about 2.0 mph slower. This puts the car right smack in the middle between the Boxster S and the 911 Carrera, of course by design."