Jonathan Gitlin
The 2017 Porsche 718 Boxster looks a lot like the outgoing six-cylinder Boxster but shares very few body panels with that car.
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Porsches have long been a living dichotomy. No sports car manufacturer wears its engineering sobriety so blatantly on its sleeve. Yet, the human result is a clear polar opposite. Porsche fans are nearly as rabid as those that feverishly wave the Ferrari flag. After all, this is the company that made the rear-engine 911 not only live, but thrive through multiple generations despite air cooling and a rearward weight bias with the flawed nature of highly polar momentousness. Overcome fundamental deficiencies, find a way to turn them into advantages, then ring the cash register. For Porsche, this has worked for decades. The latest in that thinking are the two 718 Boxsters going on sale this June, in both a $58,000 standard and $64,800 S configuration.
One central argument of the 718 is that less is more. The Boxster convertible (as well as the Cayman coupes) move away from six-cylinder engines to a paltry four cylinders. And though nobody can drive a specifications table and should therefore not judge equipment based solely on stats, many do. So, Porsche purists are concerned. At the most aural level, six cylinders firing every 720 degrees of crank rotation sound better than four. Or so many people think. But no one should judge a book by its cover.
There is some historical precedent for the engine choice, however. Porsche's first cars had four cylinders. Porsche's first racing engine—the Ernst Fuhrmann-designed four-cam boxer—had four cylinders. The latter also had a complex camshaft drive system with multiple shafts and required frequent rebuilds, but that was then and this is now.
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