Rejoice! Porsche Might be Putting the Flat-Six in More 718 Boxsters and Caymans

To all of you naysayers of the turbo-four, Porsche seems to be listening.


Good news, everyone who loves Porsche's butter-smooth flat-six engine: it's finally going to show up in what's really Porsche's best driving chassis again, and more often. A "well-placed source" told Automobile that the flat-six is coming back to 718s that aren't the range-topping Cayman GT4 and Boxster Spyder. 

As to which models are getting the flat-six the 718 platform always deserved, that wasn't made clear. Perhaps it could fill a spot between the hardcore, bare-bones GT4 and the more luxe but still track-ready GTS, or it could simply be the engine for the next-generation 718 GTS, Automobile guessed. 

Another possibility is that the flat-six is coming further down the model hierarchy into the regular S-variants, which I'm all for. Porsche 718 sales went slightly down last year in an otherwise booming year for Porsche sales, and I know I'm not the only person out there who feels as if the 718 got a less impressive turbo-flat-four to avoid eating the 911's lunch. Even Automobile's report on this rumor linked back to its review that was a hard meh on the new turbo-four powerplants. 

The 911 has become rather chunky in its old age, and the 718 is now the nimbler, more enjoyable to drive platform for many Porsche fanatics out there. You can't tell me that folks are buying the bigger sports car for its backseat that wasn't designed for full-size humans, either. Offering more 718s with a flat-six again seems like a no-brainer when it comes to reviving 718 sales. 

Which flat-six would be heading back where it belongs wasn't specified by Automobile, either, although they pointed to rumors involving a detuned 4.0-liter from the 991.2-generation 911 GT3, the 992 911 Carrera's twin-turbo 3.0-liter, or the 3.8-liter from the 991.1 911 Carrera S/GTS and 981 Cayman GT4. The latter seems the most likely, given its inclusion in the just-revealed 718 Cayman GT4 Clubsport and 718 buyers' snubbing of the turbos. 

It'd be a screamer, too, given that the new GT4 Clubsport cranks out 420 horsepower—which would likely translate into a sizeable bump over the previous GT4 road car's 385 hp even if it were detuned slightly for road use. 

How do you say "blaze it" in German?