The Porsche 911 is an icon, and a formidable performance beast — but if you were to pick one Porsche that embodies all the qualities you’d want from the perfect sports car, it would probably be the cheaper, mid-engined 718 Cayman and Boxster.
Well, a specific version of those cars, to be exact. The one main complaint with the current fourth-generation 718 has been the engine; Porsche switched from the traditional naturally-aspirated flat-six to a turbocharged boxer four-cylinder. The new four-pots perform better, and they’re more efficient, but they don’t quite resonate with drivers the way the six-cylinders did.
Luckily, Porsche listened to the purists. Recently. the carmaker once again began offering offering six-cylinder versions of the 718 — the Cayman GT4, the 718 Spyder and the 718 Boxster/Cayman GTS 4.0 twins. And, non-traditionalists be damned, those models only came with a six-speed manual transmission in the United States. Well, until now, that is.
On Wednesday, Porsche announced their tweaks to the 718 Cayman and Boxster for the 2021 model year. Buried at the bottom of the press release, the company noted that, starting early in 2021, you’ll be able to buy the aforementioned 4.0-liter versions with the seven-speed PDK dual-clutch automatic.
And the latter option, at least technically speaking, will probably be the better performing car. The PDK — one of the finest automatic transmissions available in a passenger car — is known to outperform even the most proficient humans in terms of shift speed and logic. Expect an official 0–60-mph time that’s a few ticks quicker than the current 4.3 seconds.
This move from Porsche is not too surprising. Many Cayman buyers presumably want the quickest, best-performing version possible; besides, not every buyer wants a stick shift, especially if they live in a place where they spend ample time in stop-and-go traffic. Porsche isn’t in the business of turning away money…especially with a way more powerful Toyota Supra arriving any day now
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Tyler Duffy
Tyler Duffy is Gear Patrol’s Motoring Staff Writer. He used to write about sports for The Big Lead and The Athletic. He has a black belt in toddler wrangling. He’s based outside Detroit.
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