Photo: Stefan Baldauf / Guido ten Brink
The Porsche Mission R show car is meant to represent a vision of what customer motorsports will look like in the future and following its debut yesterday at IAA Mobility in Munich, everyone got even more excited about the world of electric race cars. But what if I were to tell you there’s another reason why you should find the Mission R concept exciting, and it’s got nothing to do with fast lap times.
That reason, so to speak, was hidden in plain sight right inside the official press release, within the paragraph where Porsche compared the Mission R’s size with that of the current 718 Cayman, stating that the concept is shorter, wider and significantly lower.
Well, of course it’s all those things, especially wider and lower. It’s wider because of those massive, flared arches, and lower because it’s a race car not a road car. Now, what I’m about to tell you is nothing more than a calculated hunch, but I believe the Mission R could also serve as a genuine preview for the next-generation 718 Cayman.
Why? Because there’s no reason for it not to. This clearly is Porsche’s brand-new design language, as applied to the Taycan and Taycan Cross Turismo, and since you’re going to use these same styling features on a race car (and seen as how the 911 992 is still in its infancy), the next-gen Cayman/Boxster duo really should be next in line for this redesign, don't you think?
We’ve already seen test mules for the new, fifth-generation Cayman getting unleashed on the Nurburgring, and they were wearing improvised fourth-gen Cayman bodies with extended arches, indicating a wider car if nothing else.
Still, don’t expect to see a new Cayman, or Boxster for that matter, out on the road until sometime in the next 2-3 years, unless we’re talking about more test mules and prototypes. Of course, once the first production body prototypes get rolled out, that’s when we’ll know if the cars truly do feature the same design language as the Mission R or something a little more traditional/conservative.
Well, of course it’s all those things, especially wider and lower. It’s wider because of those massive, flared arches, and lower because it’s a race car not a road car. Now, what I’m about to tell you is nothing more than a calculated hunch, but I believe the Mission R could also serve as a genuine preview for the next-generation 718 Cayman.
Why? Because there’s no reason for it not to. This clearly is Porsche’s brand-new design language, as applied to the Taycan and Taycan Cross Turismo, and since you’re going to use these same styling features on a race car (and seen as how the 911 992 is still in its infancy), the next-gen Cayman/Boxster duo really should be next in line for this redesign, don't you think?
We’ve already seen test mules for the new, fifth-generation Cayman getting unleashed on the Nurburgring, and they were wearing improvised fourth-gen Cayman bodies with extended arches, indicating a wider car if nothing else.
Still, don’t expect to see a new Cayman, or Boxster for that matter, out on the road until sometime in the next 2-3 years, unless we’re talking about more test mules and prototypes. Of course, once the first production body prototypes get rolled out, that’s when we’ll know if the cars truly do feature the same design language as the Mission R or something a little more traditional/conservative.
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