Riding in the new four-cylinder turbo Porsche 718 Boxster

It sounds different – but good different. That’s the biggest relief. The four-cylinder, turbocharged 718 Boxster emits a bassy, moody burble at idle that vibrates the local atmosphere with attitude. You get that sense of reverberating air being sucked helplessly into the engine, bullied, battered and spat out the back.

It's our first exposure to the new Boxster, and TG can already hear several other cars are pounding around the test track near Marseille. They sound good too. The worry was that yet another four-cylinder turbo engine was going to give the 718 all the vocal range of a humdrum hatchback.  It’s not as musical as the 3.4-litre and 3.8-litre naturally aspirated cars, sure. But the four-pots have a real character.

We’re here to have a tech breakdown with the big-brained team behind the facelifted Boxster, except what with its fresh engines, revised gearboxes, steering systems, suspension and driver aids, plus the tweaked styling, it seems pretty harsh to judge this a quick nip-tuck. The engineers collectively wear the expression of a fun-runner at the end of a marathon. Proud of their efforts, but not exactly in the mood to do it all again.

Our first news story can give you all the numbers of the new 718, but suffice to say you’ve got a 2.0-litre turbo’d flat-four in the Boxster, and a 2.5 with a bigger, variable-vane turbo in the S. You choose from 296bhp or 345bhp, (up 30bhp each), and each is connected to a six-speed manual or seven speed PDK paddleshifter, with longer ratios because of the extra turbo torque, which we’ll come back to shortly. CO2 emissions are down 13 per cent, fuel consumption down around by 4-5mpg, and performance is meatier across the board, to the extent that a basic turbo Boxster would leave a last-gen Boxster S PDK for dead in a straight line. Despite the smaller engines, the extra cooling ancillaries plus reinforced axles (using ideas honed on the Cayman GT4) have contributed to a 50kg weight gain over the old car.

In one of the technical slide-shows, we’re shown a Venn diagram of the priorities for the new 718’s engine by one of Porsche’s chief boxer engine techcicians, Dr Moritz Martiny. I make a hasty note that the three categories of efficiency, performance and emotion are identically emphasized on the picture. And sure enough, lots has been done to save fuel in the new car. The stop-start system now cuts the motor at 4mph, as you coast to a stop. Iron-coated cylinders reduce internal friction. But Martiny is just as enthusiastic about his 7500rpm redline and dry-sump lubrication. Yes, the 718 has gone four-pot turbo to save fuel, but Porsche is adamant that a driver hopping in from the old car isn’t going to feel short-changed or guilt-tripped by the new powerplant’s conscience.

With that we’re herded towards a fleet of well-worn pre-production cars all wearing black wraps. I make a beeline for an S model fitted with the sports exhaust, before spotting all the cars present save for one have the louder pipes fitted, which is probably not a coincidence. All the cars have PDK (which, in fairness, outsells the manual convincingly), and my ride has the steel brakes fitted, which are the exact items from the current 911 Carrera S. The non-S wears brakes from the old Boxster S, while ceramics remain an option on both models.

Driver Daniel Lepschi drops into the driver’s seat behind the optional, 360mm ‘GT Sport’ steering wheel. He’s one of Porsche’s in-house set-up drivers, and signed off the 718’s chassis, and its naturally aspirated predecessor.

“This car is my baby”, he says cheerily, twisting the key. The flat-four fires into a stern, purposeful idle that resonates around the cabin – there’s no speaker fakery going on, by the way. Knocking the PDK lever into Manual, he dabs the throttle and we nose out onto the Fontange circuit – and immediately come to a stop.

I’m enjoying the speed too, in that ‘oh thank goodness he’s actually remembered to brake now’ sort of way. Good lord is this car fast. It requires complete brain recalibration when you remember this is the entry-level Porsche. Okay, the 718 Cayman will slot in below the Boxster in price and power when it follows suit into turbo transplant surgery soon, but even so, the 718 is eye-poppingly rapid compared to the old car – even the glorious lightweight, 375bhp Spyder. The new torque delivery just punts the car down the road in a way totally alien to the old Boxster’s urgency.

Feel the weight gain? Forget it. If you’ve popped into a Porsche dealer in your 3.8-litre Boxster on a whim, be prepared to feel very humbled by forced induction.

Of course, the nature of how the performance hits you has changed completely. Maximum torque from 1950rpm, held for a vast swell of the rev-range, until all 345 horses escape at 6500rpm. That’s perhaps the only disappointment – though Daniel is letting the car rev out to 7500rpm, the delivery goes flat after 6500rpm. There doesn’t seem to be any point revving to the death – there’s no extra leap for the redline, nor any noise reward.

We’ll find out if the throttle response is as sharp as the 911 Carrera turbo’s soon, but where this engine differs is in not rewarding chasing those last few rpm.

Playing devil’s advocate, I hang around for a ride in the lonely non-S Boxster. A couple of last-gasp laps in the basic car confirm it’s still mighty fast, but without the sports exhaust, loses some of the edge – the bassy timbre of cylinders firing – from inside the car. The test driver says he prefers the lower-powered car because “it’s a sports car, this is all you need”.

There’s lots more we need to deduce about the new 718. There’s the revised, faster steering from the 911 Turbo, adapted to work without rear-wheel steering for the mid-engined car. We’ve got a new intermediate stability mode to try out, in between the fully on and fully off settings. There are three new damper set-ups: normal, adaptive PASM, and the 20mm lower sports chassis. We’ll try all that out in due course. But don’t write the 718’s chances off just yet. It was the best all-round open-top sports car before it got a turbo, and it sounds like it will remain so now it’s sprouted one.