Porsche stopped building these a year ago. This one closes today.

Good morning. Today's issue keeps coming back to torque. The Cayman on the Auction Desk doesn't hit its torque peak until 5,000 rpm. An engine dyno has never actually measured horsepower. It measures torque and RPM, then does the math. And my friend Rich had to replace the clutch in his Golf R because a software tune added more than 100 lb-ft beyond what the factory part was built for.

In today's newsletter, we'll get into:

Let’s roll.

Porsche built its final gas-powered 718 Boxster and Cayman in October 2025. The electric replacement isn't due in full production until 2028, so for now, the only naturally aspirated, mid-engine Porsche you can get is one somebody already owns.

This one is a 2025 Cayman GTS 4.0 on Cars & Bids, black over black, with about 6,500 miles. It's the spec people wanted: the 4.0-liter flat-six, the six-speed manual, and rear-wheel drive. The seller bought it new in December 2024 off a $113,605 window sticker that includes the Premium Package, heated and ventilated Sport seats, the GT Sport steering wheel, and Bose audio.

The flat-six is a detuned version of the GT4's engine, rated at 394 hp and 309 lb-ft. Peak torque arrives at 5,000 rpm, and the engine pulls to a 7,800-rpm redline. Engineer's Corner below explains why that's a feature.

A few things to read before bidding:

The auction closes this afternoon at 3:57 PM EDT, with bidding at $99,000 as of this writing.

My call: I think somewhere between $110,000 and $118,000. Porsche has now confirmed the next Cayman is electric-only, which makes a manual, naturally aspirated GTS 4.0 the end of the line, and dealers are already asking more than sticker for low-mile ones. That should keep values firm. The case against appreciation is volume: Porsche built plenty of these, and “last of” cars only climb when supply is thin. I expect this one to hold close to its original sticker rather than run away from it.

Porsche pulled the cover off the Mission S last night on a pier in Queens, New York, the same pier where it photographed the mid-engine 550 Spyder in 1953. It's a concept, which Porsche calls a "vision model," and it previews the first car to sit above the 911 in Porsche's regular lineup.

That last part is the news. Porsche's previous flagships, the Carrera GT and the 918 Spyder, were built in limited numbers, sold out, and ended. The production car behind the Mission S is meant to stay on sale. CEO Michael Leiters called it "not a one-off hypercar, but a permanent and versatile addition to our customer offering."

Porsche didn't release powertrain details. It has said the car will use a combustion engine mounted in the middle, not batteries, and the concept's tachometer reads to 8,000 rpm. The design pulls from Porsche's racing history: a cooling fan modeled on the 917's, a roofline and rear wing from the 959, a flat nose from the 911 GT1, and wheels based on the 928's phone-dial design. Inside, there's no center touchscreen. A retractable holder takes your phone instead, and five round gauges sit behind the wheel, with a physical needle on the tach.

The car also answers a financial problem. Porsche's operating margin fell to 1.1% last year, from 18% two years earlier, and deliveries are down 16% through September. On October 7, Porsche laid out a plan to fix that: about 9,000 job cuts, 20% fewer model variants, top-model prices up about 20%, and a break-even point below 200,000 cars a year. A permanent model above the 911 raises the average price of every Porsche sold without building more of them.

The same plan confirmed that the 718 returns as an electric-only car, with 2028 as its first full year of production. So Porsche's mid-engine lineup is moving to both ends at once: a combustion supercar at the top, an electric entry car at the bottom, and nothing new with a flat-six in between. In #36, we flagged October 15 as the date to watch. It delivered the design, but not the engine, the price, or a launch date.

Somewhere at every cars-and-coffee, someone is explaining that their truck has torque and your sports car only has horsepower. It's the oldest argument in the hobby, and it treats the two as competitors, when horsepower is just torque multiplied by how fast the engine is turning.

Start with definitions. Torque is twisting force: lean 100 pounds on a wrench one foot long and you're putting 100 lb-ft on the bolt, whether it moves or not. Power is how quickly work gets done. James Watt set one horsepower at 33,000 foot-pounds per minute, and for a spinning shaft the conversion works out to:

Horsepower = Torque × RPM ÷ 5,252

The 5,252 comes from dividing 33,000 by 2π, which converts the radius of the wrench into the distance it travels per revolution. It's also why any dyno chart plotted in hp and lb-ft on the same scale shows the two curves crossing at exactly 5,252 rpm. If they cross anywhere else, check the axes.

One detail rarely makes it into the argument: an engine dyno never measures horsepower. It loads the engine with a brake, measures the torque needed to hold it at a given speed, reads the RPM, and calculates power from those two numbers.

Now the matchup. The 2026 Ram 2500 with the High Output Cummins is rated at 430 hp and 1,075 lb-ft. A 992.2 Porsche 911 GT3 makes 502 hp at 8,400 rpm and 332 lb-ft. The truck has more than three times the torque and less power. So which one pushes harder at 60 mph?

The gearbox decides. A transmission trades RPM for torque, so what reaches the tires depends on both. At any road speed, the most thrust a car can put into the pavement is its power divided by that speed. At 60 mph (88 feet per second), 502 hp works out to about 3,140 pounds of push. The diesel's 430 hp gives about 2,690. That assumes each engine is geared to sit at its power peak and ignores drivetrain losses, but the gap is real, and the GT3 is moving roughly 3,260 lb against the truck's 7,000-plus. The Porsche's engine spins about three times faster at peak power, so its gearing multiplies torque about three times more before it reaches the wheels.

That doesn't make torque irrelevant. It matters in two places.

The first is drivability. Torque at low RPM means power at low RPM, so the Ram can drag a trailer up a grade without dropping two gears and screaming. The GT3 has to rev to do the same work, which is great on a track and tiring with a camper attached.

The second is durability. Torque is what loads the parts. Transmissions, driveshafts, and axles are rated in lb-ft, because twisting force is what shears gear teeth and splines. A heavy-duty diesel needs a far heavier gearbox than a high-revving engine making the same power. Keep that in mind for Rich's clutch below.

My F10 M5 sits between the two. Twin turbos give it a wide torque plateau that starts low in the rev range, and on the street that's what you feel. At Lime Rock, I spent most of my time near the top of the tach, because that's where the power lives.

This month's car belongs to our friend and loyal reader Rich Del Mazzio, and it comes from a closing window. The 2024 model year was the last time Volkswagen sold the Golf R in America with a manual. From 2025 on, it's dual-clutch only, which makes Rich's six-speed car the last of its line, same as the Cayman above.

From the factory, it makes 315 hp, with all-wheel drive and a rear differential that can send all of the rear axle's torque to one wheel, normally the outside wheel in a corner. The previous Golf R could only split it 50:50. VW rates the manual car at 280 lb-ft against 295 for the dual-clutch, which tells you where the gearbox's limits sit.

Rich didn't leave it there. The list:

His verdict is a fun little car with one real flaw. The infotainment freezes all the time. Volkswagen's own CEO admitted mistakes were made with this generation's system, and Rich has learned to live with it. Get past the screen, he says, and it's nearly a perfect car.

One more thing about Rich: he works at Porsche Greenwich. If the Cayman above has you thinking about a Porsche, he's the person I'd send you to. Reach out to Rich Del Mazzio at Porsche Greenwich, and tell him Daily Downshift sent you.

That's a wrap. See you Monday — same inbox, lower gear.

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