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NEWS
Four-pot power for Porsche
Porsche's sweet-handling Boxster and Cayman twins will get long-rumoured four-cylinder power – but not this generationDon't believe what you read everywhere – Porsche's four-cylinder sports-cars are still a generation away.
The Cayman and Boxster twins won't receive four-cylinder power in their current generations, the sports car giant's boss has revealed.
Currently powered by horizontally opposed, naturally aspirated six-cylinder engines, the pair, which shares the same chassis architecture, interior, suspension, steering, powertrain and design hardpoints, will wait until its next generation to lead Porsche's way in slashing CO2.
Porsche Chief Executive, Matthias Muller, last week told Germany's Auto Motor und Sport magazine that a horizontally opposed four-cylinder engine for Porsche's smallest sports cars could belt out "up to" 295kW. That's considerably more power than the current naturally aspirated six-cylinder motor in the Cayman GTS.
The new engines will boast a combination of direct and in-direct fuel-injection, twin-scroll turbocharging and variable valve timing and lift and will slot neatly into the mid-engined layout of the Cayman and Boxster.
Oddly, however, the new engine will not fit into any other planned Volkswagen Group architecture. Though Audi refuses to rule out a smaller mid-engined sports car to sit beneath the R8, it already has a viable thumper of a four cylinder engine in the EA888-based, 420 horsepower motor it debuted at the Geneva Motor Show in the TT Quattro Concept.
Should Volkswagen decide it needs a similarly fast four, the EA888 block bolts into all existing MQB architectures, where the Porsche four would need a unique platform.
The new engine also shuns the V4 layout of the 919 Hybrid Le Mans racer, in the interests of packaging and modular manufacture, but also in terms of reducing noise, vibration and harshness.
"We will continue with the downsizing strategy and develop a new four-cylinder boxer engine which will see service in the next-generation Boxster and Cayman," Mr Muller said.
"We will not separate ourselves from efforts to reduce CO2."
The twins will be the clear CO2 leaders among the brand's models, though the plug-in hybrid versions of the Panamera and the Cayenne will continue to be the most efficient Zuffenhausen machines. Even if one of them is from Leipzig!
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Written byMichael Taylor
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