I have had a few GT4s through my hands now, but the 981 is the one Porsche I genuinely love, and this car, with the buckets, Sports Exhaust and Sport Chrono, is exactly the reason why. I am probably never going to be completely impartial when I write about a 981 GT4. I have had a few of them now, I know what they feel like when they are right, and every time one comes into stock I end up reminding myself why this is the Porsche that gets under my skin more than almost anything else wearing the crest. There are faster Porsches, newer Porsches and considerably more expensive Porsches, but the 981 GT4 sits in a sweet spot that I genuinely do not think Porsche will ever recreate in quite the same way again. A naturally aspirated flat-six behind your shoulders, a manual gearbox in your hand, rear-wheel drive underneath you and a chassis that somehow manages to make an ordinary stretch of road feel important. It is not just a car I respect. It is one I actually love. And then there is this particular one. Finished in black metallic paintwork, now showing 45,689 miles, with more than £12,000 of recorded factory options, a proper Porsche main dealer and specialist maintenance story behind it, and, most importantly for me, the three boxes I would personally want ticked on any 981 GT4 I was buying: Full Bucket Seats, Sports Exhaust and Sport Chrono. Those three options change the character of the car before you have even travelled a mile. You see the full bucket seats the moment you open the door and immediately the cabin feels different. They were a £1,907 option when new, but their value to the experience goes far beyond the original invoice price. You lower yourself into them rather than simply sitting on them. They hold you firmly around the shoulders and hips, put you beautifully low in the car and make the whole driving position feel as if Porsche built everything else around where your body is sitting. In a normal Cayman you climb in and think, this is a lovely sports car. In a GT4 with the buckets, there is that little moment before you even start it where you know you are sitting in something with a completely different purpose. The 3.8-litre naturally aspirated flat-six fires directly behind you with that wonderfully mechanical Porsche sound which is there all the time, even at low revs. Then you notice the clutch. The weight in it. The physical movement of the gear lever. The fact that nothing about the first few metres is trying to remove you from the process. You have to put something into the car before it gives anything back, and that is precisely why I think these have become so special. The Sports Exhaust, a £1,530 factory option on this car, is absolutely the one I would want paired with that engine. Open it and you do not suddenly get some artificial noise designed for attention. What you get is more of the thing that already makes the GT4 special. The engine note hardens, the flat-six becomes more present in the cabin and, as the revs build, it develops that proper metallic urgency that makes you hold a gear slightly longer than necessary simply because you want to hear the next few thousand rpm. You find yourself changing your route home for no good reason other than there is another stretch of road where you can use it properly. Then there is Sport Chrono, another £1,085 option when new, complete with Porsche Track Precision preparation. On a car like this it simply belongs there. It is one of those details that tells me somebody was ordering the car around the driving experience rather than just choosing the GT4 because it sat at the top of the Cayman range. That is what I like so much about the specification here. It makes sense. The big money was spent on the things that matter. Full buckets. Sports Exhaust. Sport Chrono. Then around those three headline options you have the equipment that makes the car easier to actually live with: Porsche Communication Management with extended navigation, Black leather interior with stitching, fully automatic climate control, Bi-Xenon headlights with Porsche Dynamic Light System in black, Sound Package Plus, DAB, cruise control, automatically dimming mirrors with rain sensor, Light Design Package, Alcantara sun visors and Guards Red seat belts. The Guards Red belts are a tiny detail, but I love them. Against the black interior they give you just enough colour, echoing the huge red brake calipers visible through the GT4 wheels without turning the cabin into something loud or theatrical. The same goes for the PDLS headlights in black. The car is dark, serious and purposeful, but there are these little details everywhere reminding you that somebody actually sat with the configurator and thought about how they wanted the finished car to feel. The recorded factory option value comes to £12,262, but honestly, it is not the number that sells this car to me. It is where the money went. A GT4 does not need every comfort option Porsche offered. It needs the right ones. The seats you want to sit in. The exhaust you want to listen to. The Chrono package you want in front of you. Then enough comfort around that to mean you can genuinely use the thing rather than treating it like an ornament. That is exactly what this car has. The black metallic paintwork suits the shape beautifully as well. GT4s are often photographed in the louder colours, and I completely understand why, but a black 981 GT4 has a very different character. At first glance it is almost restrained. Then your eye starts travelling around it and you notice how much is actually happening. The low front splitter. The huge side intakes feeding the engine behind you. The fixed rear wing hanging over the tail. The deep rear diffuser. The centre exhaust outlets. The brakes. The stance. The 981 shape itself has aged magnificently. There is nothing fussy about it. The body is low and clean, the arches have just enough muscle and the GT4 additions look as though they belong there rather than as though somebody has simply bolted motorsport pieces onto a road car. Even that huge rear wing somehow looks right because the rest of the car has the stance to support it. This is where I struggle not to get carried away with a GT4 because the driving experience is the part I genuinely love. The steering has this beautiful sense of connection through the front axle. You turn in and the car responds immediately, but not nervously. There is no wasted movement, no sensation of waiting for the weight to settle and no need to constantly correct it. The nose simply goes where you asked, and because the engine is sitting behind you but ahead of the rear axle, the whole car seems to rotate from somewhere near the base of your spine. Modern performance cars can generate extraordinary levels of grip and speed, but sometimes you feel like a passenger to their ability. The electronics, gearbox and sheer performance do so much of the work that the experience becomes impressive rather than involving. A 981 GT4 still asks something of you. A good gear change feels good because you did it. A clean downshift feels satisfying because you got it right. One corner can stay with you because the steering, pedals, gearbox and chassis all gave you enough information to understand exactly what happened underneath you. You do not have to be travelling at ridiculous speeds to enjoy one of these. You can enjoy the weight of the steering leaving a village. The sound of the engine as it climbs through third. The mechanical movement of the gear lever. The way the body loads into a bend. The view of that wing in the mirror. It rewards the ordinary bits of driving as much as the extraordinary ones. I could make the sensible argument for plenty of other cars. A 911 gives you more seats. A Turbo gives you staggering performance. Newer GT cars are technically extraordinary. But if you told me I had an empty Sunday, a full tank of fuel and could choose one Porsche from the sort of cars I genuinely enjoy selling, there is every chance I would reach for a 981 GT4 key. With a Porsche GT car, I care about history almost as much as I care about specification. These are cars built to be driven and there is absolutely nothing wrong with a GT4 having covered miles, but I want to know somebody respected the engineering enough to maintain it properly while they were enjoying it. The service book with this car gives exactly the sort of progression I like to see. Its earlier life is supported by Porsche main dealer maintenance, including repeated servicing through Porsche Centre Leeds, followed by Porsche Centre South London and Porsche Centre Mid-Sussex. As the car has matured, that care has then continued through PARR, one of the recognised names in independent Porsche specialist maintenance. And the most recent detailed specialist invoice supplied with the car is a particularly good one, because it is not just an oil change with a stamp thrown in the book. At 36,653 miles, PARR carried out a major service, together with brake-fluid replacement and spark-plug replacement, using the proper service consumables and finishing with a road test. There is something reassuring about a Porsche service book where the names on the stamps make sense as the car gets older. The early entries are Porsche. Then Porsche again. Then Porsche again. After that, specialist care. It is the natural life of a properly maintained enthusiast car. What I do not want to see is a GT4 that was cherished while it sat under warranty and then suddenly disappeared into anonymous servicing once the first owner moved on. The badge on the bonnet does not become any less deserving of proper maintenance because the car gets older. There are cars where the history file says all the right things but the steering wheel, seats, paint and way the car drives tell another story entirely. Major service completed, together with brake-fluid replacement and spark-plug replacement. The accompanying workshop documentation records the associated engine oil, filters, plugs and service consumables, followed by a road test. The supporting PARR invoice was subsequently issued on That is a history I am very comfortable with. Porsche main dealer involvement through the important earlier years, continued care through a recognised specialist, and now our own current-mileage service and inspection bringing the story completely up to date. And I would much rather show a serious buyer the actual service book and invoices than reduce years of maintenance to one meaningless line saying “full service history”. Porsche Communication Management with extended navigation at £2,141, Black leather interior with stitching at £1,344, Metallic Paint at £558, Telephone Module for PCM at £527, Fully Automatic Climate Control at £518, Bi-Xenon Headlights including Porsche Dynamic Light System in black at £477, Sound Package Plus at £396, Automatically Dimming Mirrors with Integrated Rain Sensor at £332, Digital Radio at £324, Alcantara Sun Visors at £279, Cruise Control at £267, Light Design Package at £203, Guards Red Seat Belts at £179, Online Services and Floor Mats still has depth, the body lines remain sharp and the GT4 aero pieces give the car that low, purposeful stance without any need for aftermarket additions. The wheels suit it perfectly and the red brake calipers still provide that little flash of colour through an otherwise wonderfully dark exterior. The rear three-quarter angle is probably my favourite view. The wing almost floats above the tail, the car looks impossibly low around the rear arches and the twin central exhausts sit underneath everything like the full stop at the end of a sentence. They are such a large part of this car's identity and they instantly give the cabin that GT feel. You sit down low, the black leather and Alcantara surround you and the Guards Red belts lift everything without ruining the simplicity. The car has that tightly connected feeling I always look for in a GT4. The steering feels clean, the gearbox has its proper mechanical action, the clutch and throttle feel natural together and the chassis does not have that tired looseness which immediately takes the edge off a performance car. . The black metallic paint. The black PDLS headlights. The Guards Red belts. The leather interior. The Porsche main dealer history. The PARR major service. And now, at There are cars that impress me more on paper. There are cars that would leave this behind in a straight line. There are Porsches with considerably larger reputations and considerably larger price tags. 45,689 miles. Full Bucket Seats. Sports Exhaust. Sport Chrono. £12,262 of factory options. Porsche main dealer history. PARR specialist maintenance. Fresh Vertex service and inspection. Black metallic paintwork. Guards Red details. And the condition to tie all of it together. And if you are reading this because you have been waiting for the right one rather than simply the next one, I suspect you will understand exactly what I mean.