2017 Porsche 911 Carrera on 2040-cars

Auto blog

What's the deal with comedians and their cars?

'Round about the time in his life when it should happen for all of us, Jerry Seinfeld's ship came in with a force that almost split the dock. He'd been doing pretty well with his observational style ("There's a cereal now that's just cookies. Have you seen this? Cookies for breakfast. It's called Cookie Crisp. Cookies for breakfast! They oughta just call it 'To Hell With Everything!'"). But he showed no signs of setting the world on fire until he got cast in a show that was either about – depending on the level of comedy geek you ask – the average New Yorker, the very worst people in the world, or nothing. Suddenly Jerry Seinfeld was pretty much the center of the comedy universe. And while his comedy was at once both brilliantly innovative and rooted in the mundane, his next move was a predictable grab at something exotic – he went out and bought his dream car. A rather nice 911, actually. As almost everyone knows, it didn't stop there, and the man put together one of the most enviable collections of iconic Porsches we're likely to see. So what's the connection, if there is one, between cars and comedy? As far as Jerry Seinfeld (the man) is concerned, he's probably not the same guy as the Jerry on Seinfeld (the show) although it's hard to say for sure; his public persona is almost unnervingly well managed. But cars and comedy were the constants in his life then, and, well, just look at what the guy does now; Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is a cultural constant, and we're certainly seeing Seinfeld the man in that one, and cars are obviously still central to his life. And it's been that way with a lot of very, very good comedy guys. Cars seem to round out their lives, to become the yin to their comedy yang. Ernie Kovacs might not have invented visual gags or surreal humor, but he got them both to kill on television in the 1950s, so he's a comedy hero. He died behind the wheel of his beloved Corvair wagon, so he's absolutely some kind of car-guy hero as well. Bill Cosby, the hottest name in comedy for a good long while, had Ferraris, one of two fire-breathing supercharged big-block Cobras (pictured below), and a BMW 2002tii – none of which either contributed to or in any way make up for the profoundly sociopathic creature he turned out to be, but it's still a data point. The Smothers Brothers, who defied the networks and the norms by getting blatantly political before that sort of thing was cool, went sports car racing.

New Porsche 4-cyl engines to range from 1.6L to 2.5L

Recent rumors of a turbocharged, flat-four-engine from Porsche for the Boxster (pictured testing above), Cayman and maybe other models go back over a year. The latest scuttlebutt indicates that there could be three variants on the horizon with 1.6-, 2.0- and 2.5-liter displacements and power as high as 360 horsepower.
Car magazine in the UK claims to have access to the specifications for the project and thinks the 2.0- and 2.5-liter versions are guaranteed for production for the Boxster and Cayman. However, it believes a question mark still looms over the 210-hp 1.6L because the engine would go into a new, smaller sports car that still doesn't have a green light for production.
Regardless of displacement, the new fours would be turbocharged and direct-injected. The 2.0-liter would produce around 286 hp and 295 pound-feet of torque, and the 2.5-liter would make about 360 hp and 347 lb-ft. Earlier reports pegged some parts sharing with the current flat-six.

Rimac CEO on Porsche-Bugatti deal: ‘I am not somebody to play it safe’

'We are already developing stuff that will be soon in high-volume Porsches'