Once the Boxster was established, it was only a matter of time before a coupé version appeared. When the Cayman was launched in 2005, it was clearly a hardtop Boxster, but by pricing it slightly higher and endowing it with fractionally more power, Porsche pitched it as an intermediate model between the Boxster and the 911.
Unusually, the 987 Cayman S was revealed first and seeking to differentiate it further from the Boxster, Porsche gave it a new 3.4 flat six, though still from the M96 engine family, while the 986 Boxster S used a 3.2. This distinction disappeared within a short time when the Boxster 987 and 987 S were launched together with a base Cayman which used the same 2.7 engine as the base Boxster.
