Porsche 718 Spyder design & styling

At the heart of the Spyder sits Porsche’s new 4.0-litre flat six, with 414bhp and 310lb ft. Despite possessing similar displacement, this is not a detuned version of the motorsport-grade, 9000rpm engine you’ll find in the 911 GT3 but a development of the 3.0-litre twin-turbo unit used by the latest Porsche 911 Carrera S. The old Boxster Spyder also used an engine from the contemporary Carrera S, although in that case the 375bhp 3.8-litre was directly swapped without undergoing major changes.

Here, the 9A2EVO unit has been bored, stroked, relinquished of its turbochargers and fitted with new cylinder heads, pistons, valves and con-rods. The crankshaft is also new and spins to 8000rpm. You may wonder why Porsche has gone to all this trouble when it already has an awesome 4.0-litre six at its disposal, and the reasons are twofold.

Its action might not be quite as slick as that manual gearbox, but even the cupholder feels as though it has been built to an impeccable standard. The engineering that has gone into this car is just mega.

Simon Davis

Road tester

First, with a 911 GT3-spec engine, the cost of the car would have been considerably higher, perhaps more than £100,000. Second, for a mid-engined application, that engine would have needed to be switched around 180deg, leaving no space for the external oil reservoir.

The engine’s efforts are put through a short-throw six-speed manual gearbox attached to a dual-mass flywheel from the 911 GT3 and then to the rear wheels via a mechanical limited-slip differential.