2024 Porsche 718 Boxster GTS 4.0 Review: Driving Distillate
The verdict: Even in the twilight years of its production, the Porsche 718 Boxster GTS 4.0 remains one of the purest and most satisfying driving experiences available at any price.
Versus the competition: It’s getting lonely in the $100,000-ish sports car class. A well-equipped Chevrolet Corvette is likely the Porsche’s closest competitor, and that choice comes down to experiential preferences.
This is one of the most unpleasant writeups I’ve ever put to keyboard.
The car? Brilliant. As close to faultless as a modern mid-engine sports car can be, and therein lies the anguish: Porsche has officially confirmed that the 718 family — and therefore the current 718 Boxster and Cayman — will be discontinued in 2025 to make way for the next generation of the car that’s confirmed to be all-electric, all the way.
There will be no more gas-powered 718 Boxsters or Caymans going forward. No conventional transmissions, no turbos, no natural aspiration. Just electrons and a miles-deep well of instant torque that Porsche hopes will wash memories of free-breathin’ six-cylinder screamers from your memory.
I’m not here to bash that decision, but rather to lament and reflect. My recent spin in this white 2024 Porsche 718 Boxster GTS 4.0 is one of many adventures I’ve had over the years both in this generation of the car and the previous one, including extended seat time in the GT4 and Spyder variants. For us Porsche freaks (could you guess?), the upper-end of the 718 family line represents some of the greatest driving experiences to be had at or just above the $100,000 mark. Some served as whopping alternatives to the increasingly heavy, complex and expensive 911.
An Old Friend
This was my third time in a GTS 4.0, but the thrill never tarnishes. Most of the time a 718 loaner is a toy, a bit of candy between meals — er, commuting — but not this time. This time I found myself fortunate enough to have the time and budget to attend Monterey Car Week, so I requisitioned something low, fast and hot, planning to point it directly and unerringly north from Los Angeles, slithering the long way up the Pacific Coast Highway.
Much of the first two hours of this drive cuts between the traffic-clogged U.S. Highway 101 and extended inland stretches, but the 90-mile coastal California cruise between Cambria and Monterey couldn’t be more jaw-droppingly gorgeous if you had six Oscar-winning cinematographers on the job. It’s truly one of the world’s greatest drives, with any appetite for beauty quickly overstimulated by an endless scrawl of postcard vistas. The late, great David E. Davis put it best: “The rolling deep-cut countryside is so beautiful that the ocean views become sort of anticlimactic, a bit like having ice cream on your ice cream.”
Imagine my excitement and anticipation facing this in the sublime Boxster. Then imagine the cold, 300-pound iron ingot in my stomach when I learned the PCH through Big Sur — the best bit — was closed for the season, and no, there’s no way around it from the coastal side. Instead, I’d have to drive one of the least picturesque commutes in California: up Interstate 5 through the central valley. That’s five or so hours of dusty plains, almond orchards and simmering summer heat.
Backroads Break
But first, a day in the familiar Malibu canyons. That network of roads punishes the powerful and portly; bigger, wider cars like Corvettes and Aston Martins feel every bit their size and 6 million horsepower when maneuvering cliff hairpins. The Boxster, on the other hand, sings and flows, with even the most casual of weekend cruisers able to drink every drop of its 394 hp.
The Boxster has more balance and chassis than power despite performance figures good enough to land it supercar status 15 years ago. The naturally aspirated 4.0-liter flat-six engine is one of the best watercooled sixers Porsche has ever made, a bored-out, de-turbo’d derivation of the twin-turbo 3.0-liter six-cylinder from the 911. It’s a ripsaw of an engine, with almost more intake snort and valvetrain gnash than exhaust, but it still howls with a 7,800-rpm titanium zing that’s an echo of yesteryear’s 911s.
A sound-off between this and a current- or prior-generation 911 Carrera would be a stark comparison. The smaller turbocharged mill in the 911 has the rasp, but it’s muffled under the turbo’s mattress; on full blast, the 4.0 crescendos with a sharpness usually reserved for weapons from Porsche’s GT division.
Perfect Performance
That makes a bit of sense considering you’ll find the same 4.0-liter engine in the now-discontinued 718 Cayman GT4 and Boxster Spyder, albeit with 20 hp extra from minor tuning differences. This is not the same heart as the GT4 RS/Boxster Spyder RS, which is ostensibly sourced from the contemporary 911 GT3, but you’ll never feel like you’re missing out on a single rev or a lone pony.
Porsche reports 3.8 seconds for the 0-60 mph sprint when equipped with its whip-quick PDK seven-speed dual-clutch transmission, with the fan-favorite six-speed manual clocking in a few ticks behind that. In keeping with history, that’s a conservative figure; you can expect a few fractional seconds to fall off in a real-world scoot. There’s enough low-end grunt to enter any highway at excessively supra-legal speeds, but the delivery is linear enough to never catch you unawares if you become a bit too brave mid-corner.
Mechanical grip and sensational input is the name of the game here. As is the case with the basest of base Boxsters to the gnarliest GT2 RS, a modern Porsche sports car remains as predictable as a bag of Lay’s Classic — and strangely familiar in a way you thought only your weatherworn La-Z-Boy could be. Steering inputs impart immensely satisfying granularity and weighted balance even if the days of a purely hydraulic steering rack are long behind us. Braking feel is just so, with better-balanced pedal actuation and effort than you’ll find in anything short of a supercar.
Giddy? Of Course
It can be frustrating to review hotter Porsche stuff; as you’ll notice, one can come off babbly and gushing, even the third — or is this the fourth? — time around. It’s far from the best or most exciting car I’ve driven, but the GTS 4.0 is simply one of the most comprehensively well-packaged and balanced setups available at any price, riding the micron-thin line between fatiguing excitement and daily banality.
That’s its party trick. Left in Comfort mode with the active exhaust wedged closed, its happy poodling around town or cruising at highway speeds, inducing no more stress than an automatic-transmission Subaru BRZ — at least for a while. It took close to five of the six-and-a-half hours of the first leg of my road trip for me to fray under the GTS’ stiffened suspension and modestly louder cabin. This was exacerbated by the Boxster’s retracted soft top eating up the beautifully usable rear storage area you’ll find in the Cayman, which opens up the cabin a bit.
A little joint and back stiffness meant I was happy to park this car up for the night, but the next morning came fast. For the rest of Monterey Car Week, the Boxster was treated with the same spiritual reverence as a rental car — I had many places to be and many traffic jams to endure. Save some blissful rips through Pebble Beach’s devastatingly gorgeous 17-Mile Drive, occasional full-throttle pulls through traffic breaks and one short venture down the PCH, it was just transportation.
But what transportation it was — size and cargo limitations aside. That said, the Boxster’s frunk and trunk swallowed a hard-shell carry-on bag, full-size duffel, large backpack, shoebox and small pile of clothes; nothing got stuffed in the passenger seat. For two smart-packing folks, there’s enough stowage for an extended weekend in the country.
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Stealthy Sublimity
In direct contrast with this Boxster’s remarkable driving character, it’s impressive how unremarkable it can become in the right context. GTS 4.0 badging aside, there’s nothing particularly eye-catching about a white-over-red-over-black Boxster, especially when flanked by literally hundreds of examples of assorted automotive exotica. More than once, I found myself in a caravan of Ferraris and Lamborghinis only to see their garnered attention atomized by a passing line of Bugattis and Koenigseggs. Yeah, no one looked twice at the Boxster.
That has to be part of the package, right? This Porsche can deliver one of the best drives of your life, then manage your commute home without (much) stress, and no one outside of friendly Porsche dorks will bother you for photos or questions. Even back on the mean Mercedes-clogged streets of Los Angeles, the only attention I got was from my neighbor and garage mate, who asked if I got a new car.
The Boxster 718 GTS 4.0 is, without pretense, one of automotive history’s sweet spots. If you have the financial fitness to swallow its $103,795 starting price tag (or $101,695 for the Cayman GTS 4.0; both prices include destination), I implore you to get one before it’s too late. And if you don’t have the cash, maybe see if you can finagle something anyway. It would surely be one of the most gratifying ways to go into crippling debt.
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