• RUMBLE SEAT
  • JULY 23, 2010

Boxster's Top Scrapes the Bottom

The nimble Porsche roadster saves weight but adds frustration with a new ragtop—and A/C is extra

  • By DAN NEIL

Columnist's name
 
[CAR]Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal

Porsche's Boxster Spyder

I'd have bet almost anything that Porsche could not get this car wrong. No way. Es ist nicht möglich. Here you have some of the smartest engineers of the Holy Rolling Empire and their mission is to make a lighter, more powerful, more elemental Boxster, an already great little sports car. Is that an easy out, or what?

And yet, to continue the baseball analogy, the Boxster Spyder has the Porsche players manfully sprinting to get under a lazy pop fly, only to collide in the outfield, their great oversized craniums coming together with an awful thwock! I got it! I got it! Damn it, Hans, I thought you had it!

Porsche's Boxster Spyder -- a high-zoot, lightweight version of the Boxster S -- looks like a mini Carrera GT, which is not a bad thing. But deploying the low-slung top is an awkward, slow affair and, if it's raining, wet, as our Dan Neil found out.

I won't tease you. It's the canvas top, um, apparatus that's to blame here, a covering which one disassembles and assembles—frantically, usually cursing, as rain gently fills the suede bucket seats—much as you would put together one of those lightweight backpacking tents. Never in the word "ragtop" has "rag" been more literal. This thing was designed by drunken kittens. The Spyder canvas makes me long for the leakproof design elegance of my old MG top.

I'm sorry. I'm bitter.

The object of the Spyder exercise was to improve the car's power-to-weight ratio and make it more of a weekend track car, which is a sacred cause, to be sure. The product planners turned up the wick on the feisty 3.4-liter direct-injection flat-six (to 320 horsepower, up from 310 in the Boxster S), lowered the suspension 20 millimeters, tightened the laces—springs, dampers, antiroll bars, wheels and tires. All God's work. Meanwhile, they set out to save weight—176 pounds altogether. Remember, more power plus less weight equals better adrenaline. And so, the Porsche guys installed the carbon-shelled suede racing seats. Wunderbar. They replaced the steel doors with aluminum units.Besser. They also crafted the car's sensational twin-hump aluminum rear decklid, as handsome a car component as ever resembled a dromedary. With the top stowed, this car looks like a bantamweight version of the Carrera GT.

Inside the Porsche Boxster Spyder

Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal

Porsche's Boxster Spyder

Lovely, soulful, evocative, mission-specific, more nimble than Rimsky-Korsakov's bumblebee, the Boxster Spyder definitely has some game.

But as the weight-saving enumerations continue, they get weirder and less happy. For instance, the Boxster Spyder package deletes the air-conditioning unit, and that can only be replaced at the buyer's cost. Got that? A/C is extra on a $61,200 car. Meanwhile, the Boxster Spyder presupposes a climate that is always dry and always cool, but really, how many cars does Porsche sell in Antarctica?

The car's gas tank has been reduced in capacity by 2.6 gallons because, of course, too much range has always been Porsche's problem. With a max of 14.3 gallons of high-test on board, the Spyder might have less range than a Tesla Roadster.

And speaking of lithium: Want to save 22 pounds? You may sub out the Spyder's lead-acid 12-volt battery with a chic lithium battery. Only problem is that battery costs $1,700. All things considered I think I'd rather cut off my leg.

Here and there, in nibbles and bites, the product planners took as much weight as they could out of the car—which wasn't easy, I'm sure, since the Boxster is a fairly optimized piece of machinery to begin with. And sometimes the product guys were just showing off. The distinctive red nylon-web slings in place of the interior door handles are silly. Yes, those 8 grams are really going to make a difference in your lap times.

Rumblings: 2011 Porsche Boxster Spyder

[CAR]Dan Neil/The Wall Street Journal

Porsche's Boxster Spyder

The Specs

Base price: $61,200

Price as tested: $67,000 (est.)

Powertrain: Direct-injection 3.4-liter flat six engine with variable valve timing; six-speed manual transmission (optional dual-clutch manual); mechanical limited-slip differential; rear-wheel drive

Horsepower/torque: 320 at 7,200 rpm/273 pound-feet at 4,750 rpm

Length/weight: 172.1 inches/2,811 pounds (est.)

Wheelbase: 95.1 inches

EPA fuel economy: 19/27,
city/highway

Cargo capacity: 5.3 cubic feet (front), 4.6 cubic feet (rear)

Diet Plate Special

One hundred seventy-six pounds lighter and 10 hp more horsey than the Boxster S, the Boxster Spyder is intended for weekend-warrior duty at the track. With lowered suspension, mid-engine layout, racy tires, and springs and dampers than could teach a Neil Peart a thing or two about percussion, the Spyder has got some major asphalt game. But because the chassis is so ferocious, it tends to make the powertrain feel a little soft in the brisket.

Off With Its Head

The car's signature design flourish is the low-slung canvas top with the flying buttresses. It looks great on the car and great off (note the Carrera GT-like humps on the rear decklid). In between on and off, however, the top is an odyssey of aggravation, a fussy, overly complex nuisance of a mechanism that feels like folding a roadmap in a windstorm.

But here we come to the real villain of the piece, the top, which looks exactly like Mrs. Shrek's garter belt. It's psychotic. To remove this item, first you open the twin-hump tonneau and put down the prop rod. This releases tension on the canvas buttresses that friction-fit into the red hoops on the decklid (and these look very cool, I admit). Rolling up the now-limp buttresses and Velcro-ing them in place on the top, you now reach down into the right side of the tonneau compartment and release a tensioning device on a cable that runs along the rear edge of the top. At this juncture, you wrestle the steel eye-loop off the hook of the tensioner and walk to the other side of the car and do the same at the other end.

Then the whole thing collapses into the cockpit like a dead condor.

Now you have to wriggle under the top and release the header latch, climb back out from under the canvas, and roll up the piece and stow it behind the headrests. However, the rod propping up the tonneau makes this exceedingly difficult. Would a gas strut to hold up the tonneau have been prohibitively hefty? Don't ask me. I studied literature in college.

I suppose this apparatus is lightweight. Porsche estimates the Spyder top assembly represents a 46-pound weight savings over the conventional Boxster convertible mechanism. However, if aggravation were measured by the pound this thing would have the curb weight of the Chrysler Building.

And, by the way, has Porsche ever heard of the Mazda MX-5? Now that's a manual top.

As I said, all the dieting is in the cause of performance, but here's the truth. This car doesn't actually feel that fast in a straight line. I mean, it's fast enough to kill you, sure. The official 0-60 mph acceleration number from Porsche is 4.9 seconds with the six-speed manual transmission—which is how our test car was equipped—or 4.6 seconds with the dual-clutch, seven-speed PDK transmission. I didn't have a chance to do my own acceleration test but let's be generous and shave two-tenths off the factory figure for the six-speed manual. Four-point-seven seconds? Meh.

Speed is primarily a perception and so I think I know what's going on here. First, the Porsches I've been driving lately have all had the dual-clutch gearbox, which is vastly superior to a manual transmission—more efficient, quicker, faster, more exhilarating. Those purists out there still clinging to your six-speed manuals, please go home. Your black-and-white TV is on the fritz.

The PDK allows better and more fluent access to engine torque, which in the Spyder is mostly upstairs (273 pound-feet at 4,750 rpm). With the six-speed manual, the car tends to feel a little soft in the brisket.

Second, the chassis of the Boxster Spyder is so exquisite—so vampiric in grip, so Swiss in neutrality—that it kind of shows up the powertrain. Yes, the car has a terrific mechanical rear limited-slip differential and, yes, it makes sounds that would curl Wagner's hair. In a tight sequence of eases, the Spyder wriggles like a greased eel down a drainpipe. But could I have some more power, please?

No, never mind. I think I'd rather do my Salome impression. Find me the guy who designed the canvas top. Bring me his head on a platter.


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