It’s confirmed – Porsche announced last year that both the Boxster and Cayman models will be refreshed, which is the good news. The bad is the flat-six engines we have all come to love will be put into retirement. Before we get to that, the 718 Boxster will be joined by the 718 Cayman at their world debut at Geneva in March.
Apart from the “718” badge, what separates this model and the predecessor is the updated front bumper with larger cooling ducts and a distinctive new accent strip underscored by the Porsche lettering at the back.
Updated aesthetics aside, the new 718 Boxster receives a new set of suspension, brakes and most significantly, new turbocharged flat-four engines. The standard 718 Boxster is propelled by 2.0-litre lump producing 300 hp and 380 Nm of torque. The hotter S variant will receive a 2.5-litre version, producing 350 hp with 420 Nm of torque.
The 2.0-litre variant can reach 100 km/h from nought in 4.5 seconds, a 0.7-second improvement over its predecessor. The 718 Boxster S gets there 0.5 seconds quicker than the standard 718 Boxster.
Turbocharging not only increases performance but according to Porsche, it also improves fuel consumption figures by around 13 percent. Back in Malaysia, road tax will be significantly cheaper at RM380, compared to paying over four figures based on the outgoing model. But this, you don’t really care.
Also good news to enthusiasts is that a six-speed manual gearbox is offered as standard, while the seven-speed PDK dual-clutch gearbox will serve as a cost option. We guess only the PDK version will be sold in Malaysia should both the 718 models arrive here.
Other improvements made by Porsche includes a more direct electrically-assisted steering, configured to be 10 percent more direct. The suspension has also been retuned to suit the new 718 models, and it sits 10mm lower to the ground than it did before. It comes with Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) too, of course.
The new models will go on sale from 30 April. The 718 Boxster starts at £41,739 (est RM255k at press time) while the 718 Boxster S will cost £50,685 (RM309k). A more powerful 718 Boxster GTS is surely in the pipeline, one that could potentially outperform the Cayman GT4.
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