Dream Car Garage
The Best Cars to Actually Drive
The most interesting cars in the world are not necessarily the fastest. In the category between £50,000 and £80,000, where serious performance is accessible to serious enthusiasts without requiring a mortgage revaluation, the engineering conversations are often more honest, more focused, and more revealing than those conducted at ten times the price. The Toyota GR Supra, BMW M2, and Porsche 718 Cayman GTS 4.0 exist in this category, and each of them has been built by engineers who care profoundly about what it means to drive a car well.
The GR Supra is the most politically complex car of the three: a Toyota badge on a platform engineered by BMW, with an engine identical to the M2's S58 straight-six in the 3.0 version. Critics have questioned whether a sports car built on a partnership can have genuine identity. The GR Supra answers through its chassis tuning, Toyota's engineers resampled the suspension rates, retuned the variable rate steering, and adjusted the electronic stability parameters to create a car that, while sharing a platform with the BMW Z4, feels nothing like one. The result is a driver's car with genuine front-to-rear communication, a low cowl that improves visibility, and a power delivery that is now, in the GR Supra 3.0 Pro specification, more than sufficient for the chassis.
The BMW M2 makes its argument through intensity. In G87 specification, it uses the S58 straight-six from the M3 Competition and M4 Competition, a full-fat M engine in a shorter, narrower body than its siblings. The result is a car with more power than any predecessor M2, an all-wheel drive system that can be defeated entirely for those who prefer rear-wheel drive, and a character that occupies the territory between the precision of the M3 and the rawness of the previous generation M2. It is, in some respects, the last traditional M car before electrification forces a fundamental rethink of the M formula. The Porsche 718 Cayman GTS 4.0 is the outlier that renders the argument between the Toyota and the BMW almost academic. Its 4.0-litre naturally aspirated flat-six, a version of the unit used in the GT4 RS, detuned to 395 bhp, produces a sound and a mechanical character that neither turbocharged rival can approximate. At 4,500 rpm the Cayman's flat-six begins to sing; by 7,000 rpm it is doing something that no turbocharged engine can replicate regardless of output. In a category where character matters more than absolute performance, the Cayman's argument is the hardest to dismiss.
By the Numbers
Toyota GR Supra 3.0 Pro: The Reinterpretation
The GR Supra 3.0 Pro produces 382 bhp and 500 Nm from its BMW-sourced B58 straight-six, figures that represent a 7 bhp increase over the standard GR Supra 3.0 alongside additional driving mode customisation. Toyota's chassis engineers worked with the GR programme's development drivers to extract the maximum from the rear-wheel drive platform: the front suspension geometry was revised to reduce understeer, the torque vectoring differential was retuned for smoother power application, and the variable steering was remapped to deliver more consistent feedback across the speed range. At 4.1 seconds to 100 km/h, the Supra is not the quickest of the three; in circuit driving, however, it is the most approachable, rewarding drivers who work progressively through the steering and throttle inputs without demanding the precision of a fully committed racing driver.
BMW M2 (G87): The Last Pure M
The G87 M2 is the most powerful standard M2 in the model's history: 523 bhp from the S58 straight-six, 650 Nm torque, and a chassis tuned to deliver rear-wheel drive involvement with the option of all-wheel drive security. The M2's wheelbase is shorter than the M3's, concentrating the weight over a smaller footprint and producing a car that rotates more eagerly and requires more input from the driver at the limit. In rear-wheel drive mode, with the stability control disabled, the G87 M2 is the most viscerally engaging of the three, the one most likely to produce a sustained power oversteer that requires genuine car control to manage. Its 3.8-second 0-100 km/h time is the fastest of the group; the sense that the car is performing slightly ahead of the driver's confidence curve is its greatest pleasure and its primary risk.
Porsche 718 Cayman GTS 4.0: The Sound Argument
The Cayman GTS 4.0 uses Porsche's 4.0-litre naturally aspirated flat-six in a state of tune that prioritises mechanical honesty over outright power: 395 bhp, 420 Nm, and a 7,800 rpm red line that invites the driver to explore the full rev range on every road. The mid-engine layout delivers 46/54 weight distribution that produces handling balance of exceptional quality: the Cayman is neither inclined to understeer like a front-heavy car nor to oversteer like a rear-heavy one, but to rotate precisely around the driver in a way that communicates every change in grip level through the steering. The passive (non-PDK) manual gearbox option amplifies this involvement further: the GTS 4.0 manual is one of the most satisfying mechanical relationships between driver and car in production anywhere at any price. It covers 0-100 km/h in 4.5 seconds, the slowest of the three, and yet, on a challenging B-road, it will arrive at corners at least as quickly as the BMW and leave them with more information and more composure.
Verdict
The BMW M2 is the most exciting car of the three, the one most likely to produce a memorable experience through a combination of power, aggression, and a chassis that rewards skill with extraordinary pace. It is the choice for drivers who want to be challenged. The Toyota GR Supra is the most accessible route to genuine sports car performance: easier to drive near the limit than the BMW, more refined than either rival, and more forgiving of the imperfect road that constitutes most driving. It is the choice for drivers who want to cover ground quickly every day without incident.
The Porsche 718 Cayman GTS 4.0, however, is the car that the other two are quietly being compared against by the enthusiasts who care most about what driving actually feels like. It is slower to 100 km/h than the BMW by almost a second; it is irrelevant. No turbocharged straight-six produces the sound or the mechanical texture of a naturally aspirated flat-six at 7,600 rpm. In this category, those qualities are the ones that persist longest in memory, and the Cayman delivers them at a price that makes the argument impossible to dismiss.
