[Lurker]

The Chinese market may be seeing a de-tuned version of the 718's. Porsche plans to drop the power on them, therefore dropping the price to try and boost the attraction for sales.

Instead of the 2L and 2.5L flat fours producing 300 and 350 horsepower, they will now only have a 250 horsepower 2L.

I wonder how long it will take for the Chinese market to produce a copy-cat model of the 718s

 

[Justin]

When equipped with a PDK gearbox, the Cayman coupe is able to sprint to 100 km/h in 5.6 seconds while achieving a top speed of 260 km/h. Sport Chrono brings things down to 5.4 seconds, while the 718 Boxster does pretty much the same thing.

That means the 50 lost horsepower resulted in an increase of 0.7 seconds in the 0 to 100 km/h sprint time and a 15 km/h top speed decrease. In also means something like an Audi S3 or Golf R could have your sweet Ingolstadt tush.

The weird thing is that losing power has had an adverse effect on the fuel consumption, which has gone from 9 to 10.4 liters per 100 kilometers. CO2 emissions have increased by about 10 grams.

So why is Porsche offering a cheaper car in China and not in Europe. Simply put, because the Audi TT had success with its 1.8-liter offering there. That was largely down to price, as the cheapened TT was offered at 543,800 yen or $81,550.

Porsche wasn't able to keep the Cayman that cheap, but it got very close, as the hardtop version of the 718 series stickers for 588,000 yuan ($88,340) while the Boxster is 598,000 yuan ($89,840).

Found this on AutoEvolution. Seems like it'll be called the Sport Chrono ?!