RE: Porsche 718 Boxster S: Review

[big_rob_sydney]

Kawasicki said:

So a 1990s Toyota starlet is more premium than a new Aston Martin?

Look at the JD Powers quality surveys for a start. When the Aston leaves you abandoned at the side of a road due to something failing, lets see how premium it feels then. And none of that addresses anything that can fail in the car but allow you to keep driving.

[s m]

leglessAlex said:

s m said:

The things I could think of roughly around the same performance but admittedly different prices and weights were

Exige S V6 - lighter - 56k
Jag V6S - heavier - 66k
Z4 335is - heavier - 48k

That's more or less what I was going to point out, but thought I had better ask first in case I had missed something!

The 718 really does have very few rivals even at £50k. The Jaguar is 220kg heavier or so, much more expensive and only a little bit more powerful. The Lotus is lighter, faster and undoubtably a far, far superior drivers car but many (most?) don't consider them practical enough for every day use, which I think I'd agree with to a certain extent. I don't really know a huge amount about the Z4, but are you sure you have the price right? Most places I looked at listed it at around £43k. Anyway, it doesn't come in a manual, is 120kg heavier and less powerful so again there's a lot to make it discount itself as a rival.

I'm not definite ( and I'm sure there's somewhere that has discounts ) but looking at the list prices it said £44990 for the Z4 35i MSport and £47905 for the more pokey Z4 35iS

[RDB1]

Apologies if this has been brought up previously in this long topic but sold my 987.2 S last year (as a third weekend car) and now missing something, so have been considering a 981. Now that there seems to be some strong feelings on the 4 pot new version I am seriously considering a low mileage 981 manual as a keeper as it may be a reasonable investment longer term. It's not a "S" but having recently driven a Caymen non "S" I was impressed and for everyday use I could live with the power, but a manual may give it more attitude. What do you think? Good or bad idea? may become a classic one day?

Thanks

[ORD]

I think the 2.7 is a bit gutless to be used with the manual box, to be brutally honest. I love the engine, but the gearing kills it for normal road use, at least for me. It is lovely when driving hard on slow roads (i.e. rarely going above 2nd gear), but it is quite weak on mixed roads with less time being spent in 2nd (e.g. driving between 3 and 6 thousand revs in 2nd, 3rd and 4th).

[845ste]

and SOUND??????

[Ozzie Osmond]

You got a laugh. Porsche has been successfully selling sports cars for more than 50 years. Thousands of customers have been buying and driving the 6 speed manual 981 cars since 2012. Throughout that 4years a small number of people have complained that the gearing is "too long", this despite the fact there are 6 gears to choose from. Perhaps not surprisingly, Porsche has chosen to ignore those complaints.

Perhaps, like me, Porsche knows that if 4th is "too long" you simply use 3rd gear instead.

So is first gear too long? Apparently not. The car can easily do a start on a steep hill.

So is second gear too long? There's a fair space from first to second but the car can still be moved off from stationary without abuse of the clutch. It's also brilliant gear in which to exploit the performance of the engine.

So are the cars expensive, underpowered and slow? Well, it's certainly not a "power" car. But for some drivers there's more to life than straight line speed. Boxster and Cayman are brilliant driver's cars for the real world.

If you want an old Porsche, buy an old Porsche.
If you want to win the traffic lights GP, buy a car with a big engine and 4WD. Lots of people do this.
If you want to go very fast indeed in a road rocket, buy an Exige V6. Very few people do this.
If you want to go very fast indeed in a wheelbarrow, buy a Caterham. Some people do this, but not many.
If you want an excellent modern sports car with a brilliant chassis for £50k, buy a Boxster/Cayman. There's nothing out there to touch it.

[ORD]

True of the 981. It remained peerless for a lot of buyers.

The 718 has plenty of real competition, by contrast.

[ORD]

That's why long gears are generally bad in a sports car. There is also a specific issue with the 2.7, namely that it does not have enough torque to 'fill the gears'. Unless you spend all of your A and B road driving in 1st and 2nd gears, which is a but tiresome, it is not terribly fast. To give an example, I found myself almost always using 2nd for overtakes, whereas in a 3.4 or 3.8 Porsche, I would far more often use 3rd or even stay in 4th. I didn't trust the smaller engine to give enough go in anything but 2nd (at modest speeds), which is a bit sad: it makes all the other gears motorway or cruising gears.

I really don't think anyone can actually fail to see the downside of a sports car that has only 1 accelerating gear that is much use on slow roads. It also means you cannot extend the engine unless you are in 1st or 2nd!

As you say, it's much more enjoyable to have a choice of gears and to be moving up and down the box.

[Patrick Bateman]

I'd soon get irritated at having to be in second for most overtakes.

[ORD]

I should say that I think all Porsche NA sports cars have sub-optimally long gears, but it's less of a problem with the more powerful (torquey) engines.