BOXSTER REBELLION

Porsche’s ‘junior 911’ gets a trio of new (sort of) numbers in its nameplate, a turbocharger in its engine bay and loses a couple of cylinders.

Several months before Porsche officially launched the facelifted thirdgeneration Boxster at this year’s Beijing Motor Show, it put out news it would be renaming the 718 Boxster, numbers that were last seen on a Porsche race car from the 1950s.

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footnote, Zuffenhausen also announced the Boxster would, for the first time in the model’s history, be priced above the Cayman, a move that’s been a very long time in coming.

As with the 911, the Boxster and Cayman gain turbocharging across the model range, in the interest of decreasing emissions and increasing efficiency.

The new Boxster S also loses a couple of cylinders and nearly a litre of engine displacement.

On paper, this is good news – the Boxster S’s new 2.5-litre flat-four produces 345bhp and completes the 0-100km/hr dash in 4.2 seconds, over the preceding model’s 3.4-litre flat-six which developed 311bhp and had a 0-100km/hr time of