The world sports car manufacturers’ horsepower war appears to be ending, with Porsche waving the white flag by admitting its new models are more likely to have improvements in fuel efficiency rather than straight line speed.
Kilowatt or horsepower outputs over the past decade have escalated with each new model, but recently Porsche said very small increases in power are the most customers can expect in their new cars as emission regulations in Europe and America begin to take effect.
Porsche’s latest Boxster and Boxster S have a smaller 2.7-litre horizontally opposed six cylinder engine than the superceded model, producing slightly more power and less torque, while using up to 15 percent less fuel. In development, is a four-cylinder turbocharged power plant to replace the six-cylinder engines in select models as the Porsche Boxster’s main rivals, the Audi TT, BMW Z4 and Mercedes-Benz SLK all are now powered by four-pot turbo engines.
Porsche engineers however have dismissed a return to the smaller 2.5-litre six-cylinder engine or producing a new hybrid version of any engine which will require huge development costs and sacrifice solutions to obtain a negligible increase in power.