It No Longer Possesses The Soft

Inside Porsche is a conflict that鈥檚 tearing it apart. On the one hand there鈥檚 the good old rear-engined 911, the sportscar icon; a car designed with enough space to fit a set of golf clubs in; a compromise. On the other are the more purist options, the Boxster and the Cayman; both middle-of-the-road, mid-engined sportscars with their engines in the right place. Logically, it鈥檚 the 911 that should be softer and more rounded, and the mid-engined cars that should be harder and faster. But no. Legacy and some mind-bending Porsche engineering have proved that the 911 can cut it with the best, less-than-perfect rear-engined weight distribution be damned. The original Carrera RS, the first 993 Turbo and the recent GT3 RS all have that touch of pure Porsche genius, and the fact that the 911 is simply a great driver鈥檚 car is almost impossible to ignore. Question is, how much better could the 911 have been if it had its engine in the right place? Exactly the debate that must be raging inside Porsche, engineers on one side, marketeers and Porsche traditionalists on the other.

Now, understandably, Porsche doesn鈥檛 want to upset the apple cart and wants steady sales of the 911 and its 20-odd derivatives. But there鈥檚 recently been a new reality emerging. The good people at Porsche are now pretty convinced that a 911 customer is very different from a Boxster buyer, and that, God bless them, is part of the reason the new Boxster has taken giant leaps forward. This, without a shadow of doubt, is by far the best Boxster yet. Let鈥檚 take a quick tour. For a start, there鈥檚 almost nothing that鈥檚 carried over from the earlier 987. This new Boxster, or 981, is based on the all-new 911, and that means it immediately benefits from having a much stiffer and lighter chassis. The new Boxster also looks more grown up. It no longer possesses the soft, cuddly, puppy dog-like lines of its predecessor. Look closely and you鈥檒l see a hardness and purposefulness not seen on earlier versions.

917 and the lines are tighter, crisper and more muscular. This Boxster now gets bespoke doors instead of borrowing the 911鈥檚, the rear spoiler is uniquely integrated with the tail-lights and the car can now be bought with larger 20-inch wheels for additional stability and traction. But the Boxster has always been about how it drives, rather than how it looks and feels, and with 400-odd kilometres of fantastic driving roads ahead of me, I鈥檓 keen to get going. Immediately the Boxster puts a Howrah Bridge-wide smile on my face. There鈥檚 a delicious rasp to the flat six motor that鈥檚 straight off a 鈥?0s Porsche GT racer and you can almost picture the exhaust shooting out of the twin pipes at the back. Pull the flat six to its high 7800rpm redline and the blat from the rear gets even harder-edged. We make our way out of the sleepy town of St Tropez, and with the sun coming up, the Boxster rips past the jetty, sending a gaggle of overweight seagulls scattering. The residents of St Tropez are not impressed. Our route today takes us through some of the best driving roads in Europe. We are headed up from the south of France in the direction of the fabled Route Napoleon, where you have corner upon corner of fast and wide tarmac. And if that isn鈥檛 quite enough, we鈥檙e also going to hook past Castellane, a famous special stage of the Monte Carlo rally.

It鈥檚 a bit wobbly around town, but pick up speed and the ride settles down. With that long sixth gear, it鈥檚 surprisingly accomplished on the motorway. It鈥檚 pretty frugal, too. Dacia claims 64mpg, and this example, which we will be running on our fleet over the next six months, has so far averaged 51mpg in mixed driving. Not a bad return for such a bulky car. For 拢2,000 more you can add four-wheel drive which, in our experience, makes the Duster one of the most capable small off-roaders on sale. If you鈥檙e looking for a cheap, go-anywhere 4x4, little comes close, while its superior road manners saw it beat the new Suzuki Jimny in our road test earlier this month. Comfort is the third highest of four specs, and is likely to be the most popular. Top Prestige spec adds premium features such as 鈥榙iamond cut鈥?alloys, climate control and keyless entry. All Duster models vastly undercut cars of a similar size. It makes monthly budgets very tempting. A Duster dCi 4x2 Comfort costs 拢190 per month on one of Dacia鈥檚 four-year PCP finance deals, while even with Nissan鈥檚 current zero per cent APR offers, an equivalent Qashqai will set you back 拢300 a month. That鈥檚 a big jump in annual running costs, whichever way you look at it.