Autocar June 19, 2019

POLESTAR IS AN unusual company to grow an electric premium performance brand out of. It spent 13 years running Volvos in the Swedish Touring Car Championship before a road car and tuning relationship was formed with Volvo in 2009. Now 10 years later, after a series of likeable if not overly memorable tuned models, it has produced its first bespoke creation that’s linked to those Polestars before it in name only. As Matt Prior discovers (First drive, p22), with that bespoke creation Polestar has made perhaps the most interesting car on sale. While it would be easy to dismiss the relevance of the Polestar 1 for being built in tiny numbers and in left-hand drive only, and all for just shy of £140,000, as a statement of intent it is of…

Porsche’s GT division is shunning the industry-wide trend for downsizing, turbocharging and automation with its two new additions: the 718 Spyder and 718 Cayman GT4. Both cars maintain a naturally aspirated six-cylinder engine and a manual gearbox and Porsche says they will offer enthusiasts “unadulterated driving pleasure”, a “high level of agility and an almost intimate proximity to the centre of power”. These faster, purer and more hardcore variants of the existing Boxster and Cayman join at the entry point in the road-going GT line-up, but both make use of an engine bored out and adapted from the 3.0-litre unit of the latest 911. The new 4.0-litre flat six – up from the 3.8 litres of the previous Spyder and GT4 – forms a new engine family called 9A2 Evo. It…

POLESTAR IS AN unusual company to grow an electric premium performance brand out of. It spent 13 years running Volvos in the Swedish Touring Car Championship before a road car and tuning relationship was formed with Volvo in 2009. Now 10 years later, after a series of likeable if not overly memorable tuned models, it has produced its first bespoke creation that’s linked to those Polestars before it in name only. As Matt Prior discovers (First drive, p22), with that bespoke creation Polestar has made perhaps the most interesting car on sale. While it would be easy to dismiss the relevance of the Polestar 1 for being built in tiny numbers and in left-hand drive only, and all for just shy of £140,000, as a statement of intent it is…

Much of this Cayman GT4’s mechanical make-up seems familiar. The last-generation version had a Porsche GT department suspension overhaul and an aero kit that could develop downforce over both axles. What it didn’t have was its own atmospheric Porsche flat six, using instead a motor donated by the contemporary 911 Carrera S. The new engine, more than anything else, is what should make this 982-generation GT4 feel so special, given that the rest of the 718 range switched so controversially to four cylinders three years ago. Interestingly, it’s not the 3800cc flat six used by the GT4 Clubsport track car but is related instead to the 3.0-litre turbocharged boxer engines used by the bigger 992-series 911. Porsche had yet to reveal much technical info on it as these words were written,…

Porsche’s GT division is shunning the industry-wide trend for downsizing, turbocharging and automation with its two new additions: the 718 Spyder and 718 Cayman GT4. Both cars maintain a naturally aspirated six-cylinder engine and a manual gearbox and Porsche says they will offer enthusiasts “unadulterated driving pleasure”, a “high level of agility and an almost intimate proximity to the centre of power”. These faster, purer and more hardcore variants of the existing Boxster and Cayman join at the entry point in the road-going GT line-up, but both make use of an engine bored out and adapted from the 3.0-litre unit of the latest 911. The new 4.0-litre flat six – up from the 3.8 litres of the previous Spyder and GT4 – forms a new engine family called 9A2 Evo.…

Porsche’s GT division boss, Andreas Preuninger, claims that electrification is “not something we think about at the moment”. The company’s main line-up will soon include an all-electric Taycan and a hybrid 911, but the GT variants will continue to be all about the purity of a petrol engine without assistance, Preuninger (pictured) said. “There are ideas to maybe look in that direction for the normal sports car line but not for the GT cars. If we would decide to make all the racing cars electrified overnight, then we would have a reason to look into that but, as always, it has to be a connection between the cars we use on the track to the cars we sell with a numberplate attached,” Preuninger said. He continued: “I think it’s very correct and…