Porsche Boxster Spyder to get GT3's 4.0-liter flat six?

It’s been a merry-go-round the past few months, the rumormill focused on what will power the next
Porsche Boxster Spyder. First came hearsay of a flat-six going into the special edition of a model line known for its turbocharged four-cylinder engines. Then came tattling that the flat-six in question was the naturally aspirated, 4.0-liter from the
911 GT3. A couple of weeks ago we wrote “
we’d be surprised if Porsche packed anything other than a turbocharged flat-four under the skin.” But
Autocar has a new report that, indeed, a downtuned version of the 500-horsepower 4.0-liter from the GT3’s rump will move to the Boxster Spyder’s midsection.

The
Autocar piece follows a
Wheels magazine article from last November, and the prediction isn’t outrageous. When
Car and Driver reviewed the last Boxster Spyder, it wrote, “the hand-me-down six comes from the older
911 Carrera S, not to be confused with the new turbocharged 3.0-liter flat-six that powers the refreshed 911.” If we can believe a recent report from
Automobile
about the 992-series 911 due later this year, the same thing is happening: The 991.2-series GT3 bequeaths its powerplant to the smaller sibling, and the 992-series GT3 moves to a 3.8-liter, twin-turbo flat-six with around 550 hp.

Autocar quotes Andreas Preuninger, the Porsche engineer leading the development of all of these wunderkinds, saying of the Boxster earlier this year, “Natural aspiration is one of our main USPs. … [We] think we can achieve throttle response and immediacy a little bit better with an atmospheric high-revving engine than any kind of turbo.” We’ll guess that means, by inference, that the GT3 is about to age out of naturally-aspirated university. The limited-edition Boxster Spyder might carry the torch with the 4.0-liter, with output somewhere around 430 hp. The
Cayman GT4 could do the same.

Or, who knows, an evolution of the 375-hp, 3.8-liter flat-six in the previous Boxster Spyder might burble out of left field. We expect to see the Boxster Spyder late this year. Until then, we’ll wait to see what the merry-go-round says next time the Zuffenhausen horse comes around.

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