[wombat7]

Well... here we have the final answer as quoted from Excellence Magazine

“The ultimate measure of sports cars is Nürburgring lap times,” says Wahl. So how does the Cayman S stack up against the 997 Carrera? We put that question to Wolfgang Dürheimer. His response: “The Cayman S is eight seconds slower than the Carrera.” We’re confused, though, as Röhrl set a fast time of 7:59 in a Carrera S with 355 hp and the non-PASM Euro sport suspension — which would be only four seconds faster than the 8:03 lap time Dürheimer implies for the basic Carrera."

It seems that when put up against a basic 997 Carrera, the Cayman is only 4 seconds slower around the ring, but when put up against one with a Euro sport suspension, it is 8 seconds slower. I find this very interesting... 4 seconds is not a lot of time and for the $10K extra that you would pay for you basic C2, you could definately make the Cayman the superior car. Like I said this paves the way for the guys in Germany to put a 3.8 or 4.0 in an upcoming evolution of the car. Much like the Boxster S paved the way for the jump from 3.4 to 3.6 from 99 to 2000.