echere88

Ready to buy 2009 Cayman S. I drive the car mainly on Los Angeles area highway. Maybe track the car 1~2 times a year. Will PASM make the car a bit comfort to drive? Do I need PASM? Any input is welcome.

Driver8

I have PASM on my 06. The wife likes the ride with it off and I like the ride with it on (especially on the track). If you plan on doing any major suspension work for the track, then it is not worth the extra money.

Jim Michaels

I've never driven a CS without PASM, but one of my track students didn't have PASM on his car, and it's absence didn't seem to slow him down much.

Your question has appeared several rimes on www.planetporsche.net (maybe here as well). My own interpretation of all the threads is that having PASM provides a softer ride, and the difference is more noticeable on 19" wheels. The PASM switch into sport mode is quite noticeably firmer.

It's hard to guess what someone else needs, but you'd probably have a better idea if you drove left-over '08s with and without before making a final decision.

vixapphire

I drove a Cayman S with standard 18" rims and no PASM, and now own a Design Edition which has 19" rims and PASM included. The cars drive identically in "normal" PASM mode. It compensates for the larger rim, basically. In "sport" mode, the car is ludicrous in that its suspension will not forgive any pavement irregularities. For example, I drove to Vegas up 15N in late April; there's a large section of fresh pavement out west a ways from Baker, so I thought I'd try out this PASM thing and see what it was like. I like a stiff suspensioned ride as much as anyone who pays this kind of dough for a true "sports car experience", after all... The result was that every slight wave of the pavement's evenness, which had not been all that apparent to me before, was suddenly approaching see-saw fulcrum silliness, and this at about 90mph! PASM sport on 19"'s is really a "track use only" type of option. You're in L.A. (like me); these streets are nowhere near good enough to enjoy this option, so you're probably better off spending the money on something else (like painted rear center console or some other nifty doll-up work).

As for options, if you like modern recordings and/or techno/trance/prog house type music, you will want the Bose stereo upsell. If you're a classic-rock/80's person, you won't miss it because to get the "big full range sound", you'll be adding in boom that wasn't in the original recordings, which will frustrate you because it won't sound good (and with good reason, obviously).