Tire marks on the heart
Photo: Kenan Cohen, Kenan Cohen
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There is a very good reason why all the serious race cars put their engine in the middle, the Porsche 718 Boxster does too. This car will mark you heart on every mile of driving it
Kenan Cohen
14/01/2020The world couldn't have cried a stronger "return home". Aside from a great article I was about to finish, it was starting to rain, not really ideal for a small roadster. But the boxer looked at me like a boxer puppy with an engine of the same name, when she spun her tailpiece and said firmly "Take me to a hot introduction road!" But rain, I tried to explain, and it's a very long drive and what about the story? What do you say we will be driving tomorrow? "Shut-up-your-mouth-and-take-me-to-hot-intro!" So what could I do.
manufacturerLong way to happiness
The drive from the center to the southern slopes of the Golan Heights is not a short drive, in Boxster, it seems even longer. It's not the long-haul car, of all the Porsche cars, it's probably the one with the least long-distance fit. The open autobahn roads were not really the destination for these cars, and I do not have to tell you how far the roads in Israel are from Germany. The 718 lightweight, 1,365kg of aluminum and steel, bouncing and grumbling, the car's floor noise and proximity to the road echo the water beneath it, the 20-inch rims and low-cut tires leave little to no shock, and its fabric roof Does a pretty good job of roofing like that, doesn't add in. As I pass through Paul's water trailer and bus, the little car is completely swallowed up and out of sight.
"Take me to a hot introduction road!" The boxer commanded
Road test: Porsche 718 Boxster (Photo: Keenan Cohen, Keenan Cohen)
The passenger compartment here is not exactly the most spacious place in the world. The seats themselves are great, in Porsche's very long list of options there are 5 more types of seats that can be fitted with the car, including a full back seat. But even the standard ones do a great job. The quality of the materials and the composition here are exactly what you would expect, but beyond that, the accessory in this car is not what you would find in a car that starts at NIS 496,000 or in the case of the test car NIS 676,578. The paddle is not a push of a button, no cruise control, the air conditioner is standard and also the multimedia system, come on, I've seen better than it. In the area of the farthest safety systems you will find front and rear parking sensors, the rest of the driver (there are also movers ...). But are these really the things you want or want in a tiny sports car? And it's not that it's not fully equipped, there are only NIS 180,578 in extras, including 20-inch rims (NIS 36,176), natural espresso leather upholstery (NIS 49,199), aluminum reversing arches (NIS 6,049), or dark taillights (NIS 5,651). But come on, this is Porsche, you can get everything you want and pay for here.
Tight as Skinny, wrapping herself around the driver and passenger
Road test: Porsche 718 Boxster (Photo: Keenan Cohen, Keenan Cohen)
Exchange of fire on the winding road
The boxer as a model has been accompanying Porsche since 1996, she and her closed sister Cayman, who for their third generation are the entry ticket to the sports car world of Stuttgart manufacturer. The nickname 718 added to the current generation derives its name from the model that put Porsche on the world motor sports map back in 1957 when it replaced the 550 Spider. Because with all the aura of the 911, long before it, they already had a miniature runway legend with a central engine, on which the reigns gobbled up left and right trophies in Tragio Florio, the Sebring endurance races and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Boxer’s recipe, 4 cylinder and central engine has not changed. The 718 here at the 1958 European Hill Climbing Championship (Photo: Porsche Archive)
Road test: Porsche 718 Boxster (Photo: Keenan Cohen, Keenan Cohen)
They might be the entry ticket, but it didn't go away for a moment, they have no compromises, they are still completely different animals from any other car on the road. Mainly because of its unique configuration with a central engine. Now, before we get to what it means from the perspective of how it travels, a few words about a central engine. It's not a coincidence that just about every car on its name and every race car deserves its use of putting the heaviest dumbbells in the car - right in the middle.
This location mainly means that these cars move like nothing else moves. Try for a moment to imagine yourself holding a dumbbell with your arms stretched forward, now you start to turn. Do you feel it attracts you? It's a big front engine, like the vast majority of cars now have a bit of a dumbbell to the body, do we get more turned? Beauty. Now attach the barbell to your chest and do it again - much, much easier, right? Well, that's pretty much the idea behind the story of a major car engine. And turn around well - that's exactly what you want your sports car to do.
Central engine, the ultimate configuration for a driving machine (Photo: Porsche)
Road test: Porsche 718 Boxster (Photo: Keenan Cohen, Keenan Cohen)
And the boxer? Oh how she knows how to turn around well. Driving it is exactly what you need to learn how to drive a fun car. Not only is the PDK dual clutch box, probably the best in the industry today, it's also not just the 300-horse impulse from its 2-liter engine, we live in a wonderful world where you can get that number from lots of cars today. And between us, this section of head that clings to the backrest is quite exhaustive, is more like a section of pasting it into the side window. It's a car that turns like nothing else on the road in the price ranges beneath the new Corvette Worlds, the Honda NSX and north to the Ferrari counties - it's something that simply doesn't exist. Suddenly getting what she has in a quarter of a car's price on it makes her look like a real bargain. It may be somewhat reminiscent of the Alpine A110, just one that is well-built, high-quality and without a passenger compartment with the feel of a Renault switchgear.
Road test: Porsche 718 Boxster (Photo: Keenan Cohen, Keenan Cohen)
On the winding road, with its exhausts in their musical state, the Beck-Fire blasts echoing off the mountain walls add a soundtrack soundtrack to this movie I live in now. It's a movie you shouldn't blink at, even for a moment, because the Boxster is a car that will give you the world, but will require a real commitment in return. Because as you move to drive it fast, you should forget everything you know or think you know about driving a regular car. To drive her on a wet, winding road, she forces the driver to stretch to the edge of his road reading. Even if you've done this road dozens of times before, this time the lines are completely different. It's not just the rule of "straightening" the reference, it's also taking advantage of every meter and angle to brake as straight as possible.
Because this car is also completely different from other cars. In physics, deceleration is called "negative acceleration" but the boxer is not about the physics lesson, it's for the nerds, the boxer is totally in sports class. In cars with a front engine, while slowing down, moving the weight forward causes this dumbbell on the front wheels and is called an engine to stick to asphalt, and the feeling is like a giant hand clutching the bow to the road. Here, with this barbell in the middle of the car, it feels like this hand, and it's a hand piece of its perforated brakes, pinning the whole car at once to the road.
Road test: Porsche 718 Boxster (Photo: Keenan Cohen, Keenan Cohen)
She is mostly a car that is still, and finally a clear line is drawn between someone who just drives and someone who knows how to drive. She hates hesitant drivers, what she hates - despises them. Here, you must be very precise and very sharp in your commands. It is not one of those flattering cars that will make you feel cheated if you do not deserve it. When you get to it, you have to finish with the braking on time and pull it right up to the second particle you turn, then when its nose inside and the azimuth is fixed to return to gas, to snap it in and snap the rear wheels to the road.
This is so different from the way cars behave with a front engine, where you pull the brake to a peak and then return to gas. Did you do it wrong? A sudden gas departure in the middle of this dance will be met with acute cases of loss of a ventricular fibrillation. In that sense, the Porsche 718 Boxster is the closest thing to four-wheel-drive motorcycle riding, and this is one of the best compliments you can whisper to a car into the air belts when it comes to machine-driver involvement.
I am so part of it, how it travels, that I do not have to look at the speedometer to know how fast we are sewing these bends, I know what its speed is from the sounds that the engine, which is 30 cm behind me, from the tires, the steering wheel, from the buttocks, through the pillar The spine to the brain, from the movements of both of us in the weight transfer.
Road test: Porsche 718 Boxster (Photo: Keenan Cohen, Keenan Cohen)
Mandatory driving
The Porsche 718 Boxster is one of those cars aimed at very specific drivers. There are a lot of good sports cars in the NIS 600,000 sector, some will be more useful, others more powerful, but none of them make this drive better. No BMW Z4, no Audi TT, no Jaguar F Tape (which is very good in itself) - it's hard to say that they are as good as they are, really scratching the capacity of the 718 Boxster.
553.6 km I passed in Boxster, more or less the standard in road tests, considering the stormy days we passed together is not bad, but with it it felt less. Every minute she parked outside was a complete waste of time, every mile of driving it left me on The heart is a souvenir slot, every liter of gasoline 98 for which it gave me 8.7 miles of happiness was worth it.
Like you, like me, this car is a pretty big financial distance from where I live. But leave now if you are the potential customer of one, as far as I am concerned that you define yourself as a driving enthusiast - I prescribe this experience to you, the next time you are abroad, do what you need to put on one - it will bring you back big time.
Road test: Porsche 718 Boxster (Photo: Keenan Cohen, Keenan Cohen)
On the technical side: Porsche 718 Boxster
Engine: gasoline, turbo, 4 cylinder, boxer
Rear Wheel Drive
Volume: 1,988 cc
Power / rpm (kW): 6,500 / 300
Torque / rpm (kg): 2,150 / 38.7
Gearbox: automatic, dual clutch, 7 gears
Measurements:
Length (cm): 438
Width (cm): 180
Height (cm): 128
Wheelbase (cm): 248
Trunk (liters): 150 (front), 125 (rear)
Performence:
0-100 acceleration: 4.9 seconds
Maximum speed: 275 mph
Competitors:
BMW Z4, Audi TT Roadster, Jaguar F Tape Roadster
price:
NIS 496,000 (base), 676,578 (test)