Porsche’s Biggest Unspoken Rule Of The Past 30 Years Has Officially Been Broken

For the past three decades, there’s largely been an unspoken rule with the Porsche model range: No mid-engined car shall surpass the 911 unless it’s totally, completely bonkers. The 911 GT1 Straßenversion, a literal race car for the road? Bonkers. The no-assists banshee-screaming stick-shift Carrera GT? Bonkers. The hybrid all-wheel-drive 918 Spyder? Take a guess. That’s about to change. This is the Porsche Mission S. It’s not a full production car, but instead a glimpse of what’s to come—the first non-limited-production mid-engined car above the 911.

Flash back 30 years, and Porsche was in rebuilding mode. After the tides of exchange rates turned and an early ’90s recession further affected sales, a two-pronged plan for survival was put into play. The four-cylinder 968 sports car and eight-cylinder 928 grand tourer were put out to pasture, their aged ’70s bones buried in pursuit of a new strategy: Build the first entirely new 911 since the original, build an entry-level mid-engined sports car beneath it, and have the two share a vast array of components to keep costs low. In 1996, the Boxster entered the world, and its position in the Porsche lineup was cemented.

Around the turn of the millennium, calls for a more powerful Boxster were answered by the 3.2-liter S model. Up 49 horsepower over the original 2.5-liter car, this 250-horsepower roadster filled the gap to the 296-horsepower 911, but nothing more. There was no 911-rivalling mid-engined car. Not yet. In 2005, things got even closer with the launch of the Cayman S. Effectively a tin-topped Boxster S, its 295-horsepower 3.4-liter flat-six split the difference between the 280-horsepower 3.2-liter Boxster S and the 325-horsepower 3.6-liter 911 Carrera. At the turn of the 2010s, the Boxster and Cayman gained their first true high-performance trims, the Boxster Spyder and Cayman R. The former made 320 horsepower and the latter 330, both so close to the 997.2 911 Carrera’s 345 horsepower. See where this is going?

Indeed, it took until 2015 for Porsche to build a volume mid-engined car with the firepower to surpass a 911, the 375-horsepower 981 Boxster Spyder. Granted, this was still a special model, but it was proof that an appetite existed for a seriously potent volume-production mid-engined Porsche. More potent top-rung models followed. The 385-horsepower Cayman GT4, the 414-horsepower 718 Spyder and GT4, and the 493-horsepower GT4 RS and Spyder RS. The last model I mentioned genuinely offers the drama of a supercar, so for the Mission S, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise which direction Porsche’s gone in.

From just about every angle that a normal person would view a car from, this is a mid-engined car. Porsche even says so itself in the press release. After decades of rear-engined revisionism and idolization, the Band-Aid’s been ripped off. The 911 RSR race car of 2017 was a practical admission that a low polar moment of inertia is more desirable than hanging a heavy engine behind the rear axle, and now a similar admission for the road sure looks like it’s coming. However, if some of the more interesting elements of the Mission S carry through to production, we definitely won’t be looking at a gadget-packed rival to the Ferrari 849 Testarossa.

Let’s start with the infotainment, or rather the complete lack of it. There’s no center screen in here, nor a display for the passenger. Just five dials in front of the driver, five physical knobs on the dashboard, and a retractable MagSafe mount for a phone. The best infotainment system is the one in your pocket already because it’s familiar and replaceable and always up to date. The analog rev counter needle’s back too, and the biggest button on the sparsely-adorned steering wheel’s marked “on your own” because it turns the driver assistance systems off.

The most astounding thing about the cabin of the Mission S is how it doesn’t feel like a flight of fancy. The seats look like a logical near-future evolution of the buckets available on fast 718 models. The steering wheel simply looks like the next natural step from the marque’s current steering wheel. The cluster makes sense, the controls make sense, the only real head-scratcher here is the use of a PDK transmission. Surely, if the brand was aiming for the sort of modern classic clientele that’s driving up manual Murcielago prices and influencing 911 GT3 Touring demand, a stick would be on the menu, right?

For now, exact terms of propulsion are all speculation. While a quartet of exhaust tips and a fuel gauge suggest there’s an internal combustion under the rear lid, exactly what that would be is anyone’s guess. So instead, let’s talk about the styling. Porsche’s spent much ink in the press release pontificating about the GT1-inspired nose and tail treatments, the 959-like roofline sweeping under the rear spoiler, and the front end shutlines paying homage to impact-bumper models. That’s all rather obvious, but there’s so much more to this concept than three visual talking points. For one, the black graphics surrounding the headlights adopt a similar shape to the overall headlight design on the outgoing 718 Boxster and Cayman. Then there are the hidden scoops tucked properly low on the rear quarter panels, something Porsche’s wanted to do for a long time. The 1993 Boxster concept had a similar treatment, but the production car ultimately ditched it. Hmm.

Equally eyebrow-cocking, although far more explicitly mentioned, are the wheels. Five holes, where have we seen that before? Oh, right on the phone dial (or teledial, depending on where you’re from) wheels that initially appeared on the 1977 928 grand tourer. While little more than that singular motif has carried through, the rollers here do look immense. Mission accomplished on that front, but what about the messaging?

See, Porsche made the conscious decision to photograph the Mission S in a location where the first U.S.-bound 550 Spyder was photographed, the marque’s first dedicated production mid-engined sports car. The same sports car all over the marketing materials for Boxsters, just recontextualized closer to the flagship that it actually was. Funny how heritage can be warped like that. It’s not done being bent to Porsche’s will, though. A mere 90 examples were built over the classic’s production run, but Porsche has much bigger plans for the Mission S. As CEO Michael Leiters stated in a media release, “The Mission S represents a mid-engined super sports car platform positioned above the 911 – not as a one-off hypercar, but as a permanent and versatile addition to our customer offering.”

So then, welcome to a brave new world where the 911 isn’t the de facto flagship. Where a volume production mid-engined car will sit above the golden child, not just limited-run hypercars. In a way, it’s annoying to see that a formula that once worked on a model cheaper than the 911 now makes more sense to Porsche on the other side of it. On the other hand, an electric 718 is coming on the entry-level side of things, and it’s hard not to be curious about what a maximum-effort mass-produced mid-engined Porsche can do without potentially being kneecapped by say, McPherson strut rear suspension.

Top graphic image: Porsche