The Joy of Driving: A Porsche 718 Review

As I sit behind the wheel of my trusty Porsche 718, I'm reminded of why I fell in love with this car in the first place. The engine purrs to life, and I feel a rush of excitement as I put it into Sport mode. This is where the magic happens, and I get to experience the thrill of driving a Porsche at its best.

For me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of driving a 718 is the individual mode. I've set this up so that everything is turned to the max except for the suspension, which I leave in the softest setting. This allows me to enjoy the full potential of the car while still maintaining a comfortable ride. When I'm feeling particularly enthusiastic, I switch to manual override and change gears on the paddle. It's exhilarating to feel like I'm driving the car myself, even when it's doing all the work.

Of course, no discussion of the 718 would be complete without mentioning the exhaust tone. I've opted for the Miltek exhaust, which gives the flat four engine a deep, rumbling sound that's both satisfying and infectious. It's not too loud, but just right – it's the perfect accompaniment to the car's sporty demeanor.

One of the most interesting aspects of the 718 is its engine choice. Unlike the previous generation Boxster, which came with a flat six, this latest iteration boasts a sleek and efficient flat four. I've had the chance to experience both engines in different cars, and I must say that each has its own unique charms. The flat four is particularly well-suited to this car's sporty nature, providing a smooth and linear power delivery that's perfect for spirited driving.

As I drive through the rolling countryside, I find myself enjoying the 718's agility and responsiveness. The pdk gearbox is, as always, a revelation – it's so rapid and slick that I rarely think about shifting gears. And when I do need to, the paddle-shifters are responsive and precise. It's a joy to drive, especially on twisty roads like this one.

The brakes are also up to par, providing plenty of traction and stopping power. Whether I'm cruising down the highway or taking a corner with gusto, I know that I can trust the 718 to behave itself. And the suspension? Soft enough to provide a comfortable ride, but firm enough to keep me grounded and connected to the road.

One thing I would love to do in the future is conduct a side-by-side comparison of this flat four GTS against the new four-liter flat six GTS. It's an intriguing idea – who knows how these two engines will compare? – and I think it would be fascinating to see how they stack up against each other.

As I drive on, I find myself enjoying the 718 more and more with each passing minute. The engine is smooth, the gearbox is rapid, and the handling is sublime. It's a car that rewards enthusiastic driving, but also provides a comfortable ride for long days at the office or cruising around town. All in all, I'm thoroughly smitten with my 718 – and I think you should be too.

My next adventure will take me to some of Europe's most iconic roads, including the famous Spa Francorchamps circuit. With its flat four engine and rapid gearbox, I know that this car is more than capable of keeping up with even the most spirited driving. And when I'm not on the track, I'll be enjoying the 718's charms in the great outdoors – perhaps a scenic drive through the mountains or along the coast.

As I come to the end of my review, I want to say that the Porsche 718 is truly a special car. It's an absolute joy to drive, and I feel incredibly lucky to have it in my collection. Whether you're a seasoned Porsche enthusiast or just looking for a fun and rewarding driving experience, I highly recommend giving this car a try. And who knows – with the right owner, it could be even more special than I already know it is.

One final note: if you haven't already subscribed to my channel, please do so now! There are plenty of other reviews and videos in the works, including a review of the Cayman GT4 RS and some exciting plans for Lady P's next adventure. Thanks for watching – and I'll catch you on the road!

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"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enforeign I can't quite believe that I've had this car nine months I don't know where time has gone I've covered in the reason of six thousand miles albeit best part of 3 000 miles of those was done in the first 10 days of ownership when I took it to the Pyrenees and the Alps and I'm conscious that I've never really done a review of the car and I've never really done an update I've done a few videos around the tour and when I took it on track but I thought it might be interesting just to walk around the car and give you my thoughts of ownership after nine months first up I absolutely love the car and I'm trying so hard not to be that guy that's worried about mileage and depreciation costs and running costs and driving it in bad conditions and road salt and all those things I know this car is a car to be driven but there's also an element of me it was a very expensive car if you didn't see my collection video I paid around 62 000 pounds for this car double what I've ever paid for a car in my life it's on finance we'll talk more about that in a moment as well so there are things that I want to bear in mind but let's have a bit of a walk around the car and talk about some of the things that I've found about the car I've done a few things to it in terms of modifications as well let's start off with the front end now when I bought the car I knew I was going to be doing some Drive tours and spirited driving and track days and I wanted to protect the paint as much as possible and I was very keen to have paint protection film installed and I went to my good friends at Fresh layers and they did an amazing job I decided not to have the whole car ppf because that's quite an expensive thing to do you're looking at I mean it varies from car to car but for this car it was going to be somewhere in the region of kind of four thousand pounds so I had what's called a track pack which is basically the whole front end of the car the side seals a little bit around the rear arches and actually we had a bit of ppf left over for the rear spoiler but the ppf's holding up really really well and actually there are bits on the car especially just in front of the rear wheels where you get the stones flicking up or rubber flicking up on a track day and you can see that the ppf's done its job and if the ppf hadn't have been there then the paint would have paid the price with chips and marks and so on so front end the ppf's holding up really really well and I've had a couple of incidents with the car some scratches and those types of things where I had the ppf not been on the car I would have ended up having some issues with paint work so I can't recommend highly enough if you're getting a car that's got good paint and it's an expensive car ppf although it's an expensive thing at the time I mean again the track pack for this car was about 2 000 pounds it's a lot of money but it's well worth it in my opinion just to protect the paintwork and then the other thing I've done at the front of the car again it's a protection thing really is um from Factory the front end of the car these areas here are completely open with the radiators behind and I fitted Sunsport grilles on the front again there's a fitting video on the channel and I'm firstly I think these look fantastic and they give the front end of the car a little bit more protection I think I mentioned in the video there is some question as to whether or not Porsche have a sense of humor failure when you fit these and invalidate your warranty I find that really difficult to get my head around and I know that Paul should just like you to keep the car as it came from Factory but if you look at something like a GT3 or a GT4 they have grills already fitted to them that look exactly like that and for me I'm actually doing my car a favor by protecting my radiators behind by fitting these grilles um I guess you can always take them off when you take it in for a service but I'm really pleased with the way that these have been fitted again I'll put a link in the description below if you're interested in the grills loads of people were and and took me up on my uh my offer with Sunsport so very very pleased with those the other thing I've done for the car is around the back now when I first went to see this car at Harbor cars I only went to just have a look at a GTS to see what the spec was like and see what they were like to sit in and those types of things I had no intention of buying one at that point and I just fell in love with the car and there are a few things that really made me fall in love with it one of them was these two kind of rear diffuser panels being in body color because on most boxes and caimans these are black and the kind of whole diffuser just melds into a a black area I love the way that these stand out and it's not a massively common option I've not seen many cars with that on which I really like I I think um I set the internet on fire with my number plate being a slightly different shape lots of you absolutely hate it I really really like it and I love the fact I can get my little UK sticker on there rather than having to have a massive great big sticker somewhere else on the car but the main thing I've done around the back of the car was not long after I got back from my drive tour I went up to the guys at miltech and we put a miltec exhaust system on it so it's an OPF back basically straight through OPF back and I am so happy with the exhaust and it's one of the things I haven't talked about a great deal on my videos it's got a really deep Bassy Rumble it's not obnoxious at all um the car even with the stock Porsche sports exhaust every now and again you get a sort of a whip crack and a few few pops and bangs on downshift and so on nothing too horribly shouty this is if anything a little bit more subtle but when you start the car and when you rev it it just sounds Wicked listen to this foreign very very pleased with the exhaust now there are a few things I want to do to the car one of them is on the outside we'll talk about that then we'll jump on the inside and talk to you about some of the things I found out on the inside of the car when you're driving so the car came shot with Pirelli P0 tires and not got anything against the tire but I really wanted to have Michelin Pilots bought 4S tires on the car for me for the kind of driving I'm doing I wouldn't go as far as having cup twos because although I'll track the car every now and again I don't do that much track driving and I think PS4s for Road and a bitter track is just such a good Tire So the plan was to change them out quite quickly after I'd done my drive tour the challenge I had and I covered this on another video when I talked about insurance and so on is on the way back from the Pyrenees and Alps Drive tour we hit a rock and blew out the front left tire um and we're basically stuck in France the company that we got recovered to were having huge problems sourcing a tire and they were being quite Difficult about things they would only they were going to basically replace a pair they wouldn't just do one tire so they wanted the same Tire on on the front axle and I said well okay if you're gonna do that can you get me a set of Michelin Pilots bought 4S tires for the front axle I know I've got Pirelli p0os on the back but when I get back I'm gonna I'm gonna change them anyway and we kind of had a broken conversation me with a bit of my bad French then with a bit of bad English and I went back to my hotel in can to wait for them to Source the tires went back the next day and they'd fitted a set of Pirellis um and then I got the bill um are you sitting down the two front tires on this car cost me a thousand Euros 500 euros each they often saw must have seen my passport when they're ah Le roast beef we will uh we will make him pay um and yeah they made me pay a thousand Euros so that made me think well maybe I won't change the tires out straight away I'll get as much money as I can or you know as much use for that money as possible um now the rears um then they're not finished by any means but I can just start to feel like I'd like a a new set of rears anyway and and therefore I am going to change the tires out and I've got a drive tour coming up at the end of April which I'll tell you about in a moment uh and I'd quite like to by the time I do the drive tour to have Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires on the car but yes that's my tale of Woe of having a puncture in the middle of nowhere in the south of France anyway let's jump inside the car because it is pretty cold although I Mighty drop the roof because that gives you a better view on the inside and then I'll tell you about the inside and also I want to tell you about this drive tour because it's going to be awesome foreign I love being able to drop the roof with the key the character of the car changes so much actually with the roof up it feels very much like a tintop car but then you drop the roof and it's just that exposure to the elements that I absolutely love and the reason why I have a convertible to be fair now the inside of this car for me is very special it's the other thing that made me have to have it and not just go and have a look at the car and go and find one somewhere else the GTS Interior pack in this car makes it so special and there's a lot of Alcantara the seats are beautifully trimmed they've got the GTS Insignia they've got a lot of carbon fiber trim along the dash on the center part of the console here Alcantara on the steering wheel it's just such a lovely place to be very very comfortable when I bought the car I had this debate as to whether I go manual or automatic I've done quite a few manual drivers car videos recently and raved about how much I love a manual car and yet my own personal car has a pdk twin clutch but it is a stunning gearbox it makes the car super easy to drive in just normal Auto when you're on a on a you know a more relaxed drive but when you want to get more engaged you can go into manual override you can use the paddles on a track it's stunning on a track so yeah I'm so so pleased with how um the car has delivered all of the things I wanted it to I mentioned before about the the cost and the financing and you know I'm I'm I'm quite Keen for people to understand that you know that there's a an image I think portrayed by some YouTubers naming no names that you know you see them swapping out of supercars every three to four months and buying you know multiple cars at a time and it just makes it look like that's a normal thing to do and it just really isn't um and when I bought this car 62 000 pounds was just a massive amount of money and I thought long and hard about how I did it and you know I um I've talked about my finance partner Lillian Stanley Finance helped me get the numbers together so that I could get the car I'm actually going to do a separate video on the financing aspects of this car so stay tuned to the channel but I am going on a drive tour so I'm going to be teaming up with Podium tours so I've done quite a few bits of work recently at podium place in Newbury and and that's going to continue throughout the year got some super exciting projects with those guys but they have started a a tour company whether they do Drive talks called Podium tours and on the 28th of April to the 1st of May I'm going on a Podium tours tour now there's still spaces so if you want to come along I'll put all the details below and then have a look on the uh the link that I'll send you they'll take to the website it's a super exciting tour so basically we go from Podium place in Newbury we're going to drive to Belgium and we're going to go go-karting at the end of the first day and then the next day we're going to see the World Endurance cars at spa the six hours at spa when that race is finished we're then going to drive to Luxembourg overnight in Luxembourg and then the next day we're going to drive to the Nurburgring to the north shive we're hopefully going to do some high-speed Autobarn runs so I'm going to be taking um lady P it'd be great to see how fast she goes on an Autobahn and then we're going to go to the north shelf I don't know whether I'm going to be brave enough to take her on the North shaft I've never driven the north shaft before I might get a ring taxi or some something like that just to have my first laps but it's going to be a super tour I've got a few people I know coming along so if you are interested I'll put all the details below um it's uh it's going to be a huge amount of fun but let's head out onto the roads for a bit of a drive talk a little bit about the Driving Experience of the car on what I've learned in the time since I've had it but yeah interior wise I am so chuffed oh now then spring forward a couple of days the weather still is horrible but it's not raining so the roof is down and I guess that's the first thing is the vast majority of the miles I've done in this car have been with the roof down the major exception is probably coming back through France after the drive tour when you sat on the Auto Route 140 K's an hour it's much much nicer with the roof up but most of the miles I've done in the car have been with the roof down drive mode wise um the O I guess that's ordinary the only time I really drive the car in that is on the motorway because what it tends to do is it favors the higher gears and it drops the car all the way up into seventh gear and it's really great for cruising but on a normal bit of driving like this I'm pretty much always in sport now when I change it into sport the exhaust tone does change a little bit but that miltek system doesn't have a valve on it so it's open all the time but it's not proved to be droney or too offensive at all even though there's no if you like valve to turn it off in sport mode when you've got the Porsche exhaust on the valve opens and the little noisy exhaust button light comes on it does make a difference in this but I think that's much more to do with the mappings and so on so in sport mode it's a really nice responsive car if I'm driving it in Auto it will normally be in sport mode I did all of my masters driving in sport mode and I know the gears that the car's in for the relative speeds and so on if you go up into Sport Plus you can hear that change straight away and it it favors the higher gears it holds it in a higher gear it's now holding me in third gear I'm going to come into this 30 and come down and it's changed down into second for me to do 30 miles an hour through the 30 Zone Sport Plus mode also stiffens up the suspension this car's got the pasm suspension and I just find that actually Sport Plus mode is a little bit too much the suspension doesn't need to be that firm and if you're wanting the car to change gear on its own it just holds gears far far too much so let me just drop that back into sport mode while we go through this 30 and it's just gone up into third gear that is the gear I need to be in to go through this 30 mile an hour Zone the mode that I use when I want to have some fun is I've set up an individual mode and what that's basically done is it turns everything to the max except the suspension so I leave the pasm in the softest setting and then when I'm in I I generally go into manual override and I change gears on the paddle so I only really put it in I mode when I want to manually change if I want the car to change for me I keep it in sport and those that that mode that the the way I drive that's pretty much what I've learned in my time with the car now let's go and find another piece of road because I want to talk to you about this flat 4 as opposed to the flat six that came in the previous generation Boxster and whenever you do a review of a Boxster or Cayman 718 people will always get in the comments and go uh but it's not got a flat six okay so keeping another potholes I'm gonna put it into eye mode you can hear the exhaust tone change I'm going to drop into manual override and what I love about the flat 4 in the 718 is it's so torquey no I'm not going to say that a flat four is better or worse than a flat six because they're both so completely different and if you saw my GT4 RS review I mean that's probably one of the best sounding flat sixes there is on the road right now an absolutely Sensational thing but this this flat four it's just got now hopefully you can just hear the rumble I haven't really done a spirited driving a spirited driving video with the miltek exhaust in it and it's just got this rumbly burble to I absolutely love it it's not too Subaru it's still Porsche but it's just Bassy and deep and I absolutely love it so yeah the the flat four for me in this car is a brilliant brilliant unit to drive now what I would love to do and let me know in the comments below if this is something you'd be interested in I would love to do a side-by-side comparison of this two and a half liter flat four GTS versus the new four liter flat six GTS because you can't buy this GTS anymore so I might have a chat with my good friends at Porsche GV and see if I can borrow a 4 liter GTS bobster to do a comparison I'm not so sure I'd have overtaken that but never mind absolutely lovely classic Mini in front although it's the not the classic classic Mini it's the last of the old minis but still very cool so hopefully not too much is going to turn left here and I'm going to be able to just have a little bit of fun listen for the to James down rumbly verbally go as I said we've just got it's a little bit cold and a little bit the power delivery is so smooth and so linear the changes on the pdk are so slick it's such a good gearbox I get bored of hearing myself say how great the pdk is every time I drive a Porsche and I know Porsche make magnificent manual boxes but honestly for the the type of driving I do in this car the pdk is just wonderful and it's so rapid this car on Drive tours you can keep up with the best of them I never want for any more power it's got plenty and it means that you can drive it relatively spiritedly down an A or a B Road without getting into too much trouble it's got a beautiful front end loads of power loads of torque coming out this is this is why I bought the car to enjoy a road like this it's not the nicest the weather it's a bit cold but I've got the roof down and it's just Mega absolutely Mega brakes are really good and then so much traction so I think it's safe to say I love this car I really really do I can't wait to get it on our Podium tours tour up to spa and the north shy I can't wait to see what I can get it up to on an unrestricted Autobahn but yeah there you go nine months of ownership and I'm still a very very happy boy guys I hope you enjoyed this if you did give me a thumbs up comments below are always welcome and if you haven't done so already please subscribe to Petra bed for plenty more content to come I hope to film more stuff with Lady P this year but the next thing she needs some new tires then we take her on tour that sounds like a good plan I'll see on the next film guys you take care drive safe foreign\n"