Some test numbers for you. All you need to do is floor the throttle – the car accelerates to 100 kph in 5.5 seconds flat and by the time your average Honda City touches 100 kph, you are saying goodbye to the 150 kph mark and still climbing. You don’t need to be a racing driver with razor sharp reflexes to understand a convertible – things actually look and feel faster when the top is down. So when you are actually doing 150 kph, you feel like you are at the far end of a salt-flat and about to set a new land speed record. Brilliant. Porsche literature gives a 100-200 kph time of 19.4 seconds, something we didn’t test for a lack of road, but something that makes a lot of sense in the Boxster indeed.
Porsche is a small company compared to the GMs, Fords and Toyotas of the world, which means they have to share a lot of bits and pieces between their products (remember the 911/996 which had old Boxster headlamps?). This time, the fully adjustable seat of the 911 is shared by the Boxster, and if you know your Porsches, you will recognise a lot of other bits from the new 911/997. That is not the point though. All this smart sharing means Porsche is also the most profitable car company in the world. Yet, dear reader, none of the part sharing comes through as a compromise in the Boxster. Instead it is all value addition to an already brilliant theme.
Enough. Time to turn the key and let the 3179cc horizontally opposed six wake up again.
With 280 bhp at 6200 rpm and 32 kgm of turning force developing at 4700 revs, it does so with a thrum that sends faint shivers down the seat of your pants. There you are, sitting some 50 cm from the ground and a windshield merely half a foot away from your forehead. There is no time to gauge the air of anticipation – you are moving and moving fast. It takes a while to get used to the five-speed Tiptronic transmission, but once you get a hang of it, you will want every automobile in the world to have one. To shift manually, all you need to do is slide the gear selector to M and then play with the buttons embedded in the steering wheel. To get best results from the Boxster experience, you need to fiddle with one or more buttons though – to get Porsche Active Suspension Management and the sport mode switched on. Now you can hear every gravel bit crunching under the massive 19-inch wheels and in this mode, I am sure you will stop to check for tyre damage even if you drive over a sewing needle.
|
