A promising sticker from Techart: will we see the 50 hp extra from the tuner?
Not so long ago Harald Spijkerman got into his freshly imported young used Porsche 718 Boxster GTS. When he looked behind the tank flap during the first wash, he saw a sticker from tuner Techart. Will he fall into the butter with his nose or will it remain with a sticker?
They are incredible numbers. The four-cylinder boxer engine of the Porsche 718 GTS delivers 365 hp just like that. That’s quite a bit when you consider that the very first Boxster from the late 1990s barely got 200 hp from a six-cylinder. Of course there is a turbo that gives the 718 super power. Harald Spijkerman is the lucky one who has this car to his name. “I’ve had fast BMWs in the past, but over the years I’ve become a real Porsche person. This is very much a sports car and a BMW is always a bit of a touring car. The character of a Porsche appeals to me much more. With this Boxster I fell for the color. The four-cylinder is of course great, but I have to tell you honestly that I do miss the sound of the six-cylinder. And yes, I would love to have a 911 someday. I do wonder if it drives better than the Boxster, but as a Porsche fan you must of course have driven the icon once.”
Surprise: didn’t know it had Techart tuning on it
But that is all in the future, because first Harald will enjoy his 718 for a while. The sticker behind the fuel flap came as a surprise to him. “If that tuning is really done, it would mean that it has to deliver an extra 50 hp. I called the seller when I discovered it, but he never saw the whole sticker, so he couldn’t tell me if the car really had that treatment.”
Our dynamometer specialist Ghisbert van Ginhoven is also curious. “But if it turns out that it’s not over, it’s still no shame, because this car is not slow in itself,” he says. Although Harald has experience with cars with high power, he himself dare not make a prediction whether his car has that extra 50 hp on board.
This 718 Boxster is no longer in the factory position
To measure is to know and it won’t be long before we can accelerate. Soon dizzying numbers appear on the screen. The bank stops measuring at 402 hp. That may not be an extra 50 hp, but it is certainly proof that the Porsche is no longer in the factory position. “Of course we know that Porsche provides some extra power than what is in the brochure, but this is a lot,” says Ghisbert. “The tractive effort is also considerably more. So that tuning is really there. That it is ultimately not what Techart promises does not surprise me either, because a tuner gives the highest power they have ever seen. So that is often a bit too optimistic.”
He also has a tip for Harald: “Be careful when you take it to the dealer, because if they connect it to the computer, it will just be reset to the factory settings and then you will lose all those extra horsepower.” 
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl