The GT4 RS's exhaust pings as it cools, and we notice the odd pebble and small stone bouncing onto the pavement from the cliff above as gravity feuds with the upthrust of the San Gabriel Mountains. The assembled motorcyclists and sport-compact enthusiasts try to look unimpressed as we climb out. We rocket past, and the closed gate eventually appears. This is where onlookers in the turnout at the top really start to wonder what the hell is screaming up at them. James Lipman | Car and DriverĬloser to the top, the corners open back up into gentler curves. The exposed carbon-fiber hood is part of the Weissach package, which you have to select if you want the 21 pounds of weight savings that comes with the forged magnesium wheels. And then there's the gearing, which is much more closely spaced than the Cayman GT4's PDK, the effect of which is magnified by an ultrashort RS-exclusive 4.17:1 final-drive ratio. Its glorious soundtrack is accentuated by the gulping harmony created by high-mounted air intakes where rear quarter-windows reside in other Caymans, with ducting running right behind your skull to an intake plenum just over your right shoulder. But you can avail yourself of the flat-six's 9000-rpm wail, which is especially potent because the mid-mounted engine is pretty much a passenger in the cabin, sitting where a back seat would be. The first long straight comes into view, although it's not nearly enough road to verify the GT4 RS's 196-mph top-speed claim. Some of the last slowpokes you're likely to encounter will almost certainly peel off at the off-road area and the West Fork trailhead, which is perfectly timed because 39 begins to straighten out north of the Forks. Instead, we'll tear ass back to Highway 39. We won't be getting out of the GT4 RS to do the 10-mile round-trip hike to the Bridge to Nowhere, an unintended monument to a failed 1930s attempt at roadbuilding that raging floodwaters and bounding boulders abruptly terminated. After a 90-degree turn over a box-girder bridge, this optional diversion runs six miles up a side canyon to another dead end. James Lipman | Car and DriverĪ side road called East Fork appears. The front fenders’ trailing edge is cut out to smooth airflow, resulting in improved aero and brake cooling. The road now ends at a locked gate adjacent to a spectacular overlook 6.2 miles shy of the Crest. But that hasn't truly been the case since 1978, when a massive mud and rock slide inundated a section of road at Snow Spring. In the case of California's Highway 39, the result is a spectacular mountain road that goes nowhere, which turns out to be a perfect place to test another engineering marvel, the Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS.īuilt in the late 1950s, the northern reaches of Highway 39 appear to be intact on most maps, apparently connecting the town of Azusa with the famed Angeles Crest Highway at a summit T-junction. This creates major headaches for engineers who would dare attempt to build a road through ever-changing terrain. As the Pacific and North American tectonic plates crush and grind against one another, the mountains that border Los Angeles continue to creep upwards faster than gravity can pull them down. The San Gabriel Mountains are still growing. From the May 2022 issue of Car and Driver.
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