The 718 Might Get A 6 Cylinder Engine Option After All
LOL, if you remove the one thing that made the Spyder the Spyder, even before it had a bigger engine than other Boxsters, you, uhhhh, don't have a Spyder anymore. Precisely. And a whole lot of us are fine with that. It's what we really want. We're willing to pay through the nose for it. Porsche can call it whatever they want. Spyder with Touring Package, Boxster 6, Boxster OK We Give Up You Can Have Your Naturally Aspirated Flat Six Back. 718 Boxster 6 makes sense. I love that name. But I suspect Porsche would rather utilize the Spyder with Touring Package name so they can charge more money. It's Porsche, after all! In my perfect world the Boxster/Cayman T would be the entry level model. It would have a naturally aspirated flat six and be the slowest and least powerful. Then bump up to the S and GTS with different tunes of the turbo 2.5L four cylinder. On top would be the Spyder/GT4 with a naturally aspirated 4.0L flat six. Note I'm not dogging on the current 718s. They will eat my car up. I know this because I've spent time at autocross and the track in a 718 S/GTS. But backroads are my most precious time, and for that the current 718 doesn't entice me enough to upgrade. But a 718 with a naturally aspirated flat six certainly would.
Senior Buyer's Guide editor Rich Ceppos captured the consensus in a more measured voice after a weekend with our Boxster S. "This is one of the best cars Porsche builds," he wrote in the Boxster's logbook. WHAT WE DON'T LIKE: Complaints in the Boxster's logbook are few and far between, but they've coalesced around a few themes. There's the long-running debate about whether it's fair to criticize a mid-engine sports car for a lack of cabin stowage space. The Boxster offers two helpful pockets in each door plus a shallow bin in the center armrest. Several staffers are still hung up on the four-cylinder's exhaust note, a Subaru-like blat that is discordant with the Boxster's seductive looks. You can fix this by hammering everywhere at full throttle in the lowest possible gear, at which point the Porsche blares an angry mechanical growl. Then there's the whiff of turbo lag found in the flat-four's low end. You can drive around it by slipping the clutch slightly from a stop, keeping the revs up, or downshifting earlier than you might in something with more than the Boxster S's 2.5 liters of displacement.
WHAT WENT WRONG: Shortly after its 20,000-mile update, our car developed a series of cooling woes. It started with intermittent overheating and low coolant, along with the saccharine stink of antifreeze. The dealer diagnosed a leak in the hose coming off the coolant reservoir and replaced it under warranty. That addressed the overheating, but we couldn't shake the scent. We mentioned this at the 30,000-mile service, during which the tech discovered seepage from the water pump. 751), the dealer sent us on our way until the replacement part arrived. We returned the following week for what we thought would be a single-day visit. It ended up being 13 days before we drove our Boxster again. Upon replacing the water pump, the service department pressure-tested the cooling system and discovered another leak at the thermostat housing. They attempted to address this by replacing the seal around the housing. When that didn't work, they replaced the housing itself under warranty, requiring another multi-day wait for parts.
That appears to have fixed the problem, and our Boxster is once again happily chortling around Ann Arbor. We've also paid a visit to the local tire shop. 862 when we scrapped the worn original rubber at 30,279 miles. WHERE WE WENT: Summer is Boxster season, and ours has enabled several weekend escapes to destinations north, west, east, and south. Among those, the mid-engine droptop ventured 600 miles to Danville, Virginia, home of Virginia International Raceway and our annual Lightning Lap track bacchanal. But first it made the significantly shorter run to our local Costco, where we packed 120 beverages plus a pile of snacks just into the front trunk. Using the rear trunk for luggage, deputy online editor Dave VanderWerp steered the Boxster southeast toward VIR. It made a fantastic road-trip companion, particularly through the twisty sections of Interstate 77 and the tighter roads of U.S. WHAT WE LIKE: The sun is shining, temperatures are rising, and out on the horizon we can see the days when we'll be able to lower the roof of our 718 Boxster S roadster again.
Meanwhile, we marvel at just how competent this mid-engine Porsche is in snow and cold. 1291 worth of Michelin Pilot Alpin PA4 tires, the 718 Boxster S proves improbably adept in winter weather. It brushes off frost heaves and potholes with remarkably compliant ride quality. And unlike our long-term Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport, which cranks lazily during arctic startups, the Boxster chortles happily on ignition, as if every subzero morning is just another sunny day in Palm Springs. Mostly, though, it's the Boxster's crisp sports-car dynamics that make it so great in winter weather. WHAT WE DON'T LIKE: Of course, driving a Boxster year-round in the Midwest isn't all sunshine and wind in your hair. After a night parked outside in snow or sleet, the Boxster's frameless windows occasionally have to be freed with a splash of warm water before they'll drop and allow the doors to open. And the low ground clearance means the Porsche is sidelined whenever snow falls more than a few inches at a time. But that's about the extent of life's difficulties in a Boxster.