After the internal tussle of what to do with the Cayman was resolved, plans had to be hatched and decisions made on how the transformation was to be made. First up: Suspension......

So, where were we? Ah, that’s right - no more power, just a chassis setup that would make a GT3 wilt in the twisties and me smile like a crocodile on the lanes around my home. That was the goal.

In a way, power would have been the easy option. Exhaust, headers (with high-flow cats, of course), remap, inlet manifold, air filter, and 340bhp here we come. All been done before, well documented, off-the-shelf parts and so simple to install even an idiot like me could manage it. Maybe even a little bit of assisted breathing. A bit of an iron lung, if you're on the hunt for that 400bhp+ hit of power. No, not for me. Not least because of my fear of all the possible nasty things that can and do happen with these M97 motors. A Metzger GT1 lump this is not…

But trying to improve a suspension set-up that has been often touted as the best ever to make it out of the gates at Zuffenhausen (barring a couple of cars wearing GT or RS badges) is going to be no small feat.

The real problem I have is that I need and want the car to work as both an everyday driver and a track toy. Yes, with the arrival of the corking C63 AMG to the family garage, coupled with my wife spending more time in the big smoke during the week, means that the Cayman is called into duty only 2-3 days per week these days, as opposed to the 5-6 days a week that it’s been used to in the past. So there is some leeway to push the set-up towards the track side, but still, on occasion it will be required to ferry wife or child, and in those situations it needs to behave with the very best of road manners.

So without the luxury of having PASM installed, it became clear that to get anything close to what I needed and wanted from the car I was going to have to find something that had some way to adjust the damping. I needed something that on a trackday can be set up as hard and uncompromising as possible with damping firm enough to shake your liver out, yet during the week can be as supple and compliant as a standard car. But it had to have the ability to be turned back into a planted, compliant, cross-country mile-muncher after the track fun was over. If it happened to handle a little sharper on the road as part of the deal, then that’s a win. But it had to be something that could be switched with little pain and discomfort, few tools, and with little scrabbling around on an oily pitlane garage floor.

And realistically, that only left one option. A very nice, appealing option. But only one option nonetheless: Bilstein PSS9s.

Basically, the choice comes down to KW Variant3s or the Bilsteins. However, the main problem with the KW system is that damping adjustment is in the top of the shock body, meaning that at the rear, a serious amount of interior trim has to be removed in order to adjust the system. Something that in the Cayman is just not practical. Add to that that the adjustment is with a hex key with zero indexing on a tiny grubscrew and it just opens up a world of potential discomfort and guesswork if one were ever to try and switch between a stiff track set-up and a more road-biased softer one on a semi-regular basis. The PSS9s on the other hand, as their name handily suggests, have 9 preset, indexed, notched settings on each damper, with the adjuster being a knurled thumbwheel on the bottom of each strut. Once you learn the position of the knob on each damper it is a simple case of reaching under the car, grab the knob, and dial in the damping level that takes your fancy. It literally does take a matter of minutes to go from a full hard dry track setting to a comfort-spec motorway-cruising limo-esque ride. Pure genius.

So back at the Wood-shed plans were hatched to acquire a set of these top-of-the-range Bilstein coilovers. But who was to fit them, and what other parts were going to be needed to make this substantial investment worthwhile...?

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