Changing lanes at three digit speeds, cresting apexes that will aviate most mortal cars and blowing away the last hair standing on your scalp are stuff that this Porsche is very good at. Call it the fastest hairdryer if you may, but in the hands of a good driver, the Boxster S that you see on these pages can be a potent weapon that can make any twisty bit of tarmac a very long extension cord. They say all Porsches are fine-tuned at Nurburgring (and apparently, most Porsche competition too, from Nissan 350Zs to the upcoming Aston Martin V8) and it is easy to understand why. Porsche takes into account the most lunatic drivers in the world and the thousands of combinations and permutations of stupid things he or she might do while driving one of their cars, and it seems all that can be programmed into a punishing testing schedule at Nurburgring. No, talking on the mobile phone while trying to shave, smoke a cigar and make children at 200 kph is not what they mean here.
The result of all that testing is a car that tracks so true, trains have reason to be ashamed. Normally I don’t trust Srini to drive anything that is built after 1950 and has more than 100 horsepower, but on the Boxster’s day out, I was egging him on to straighten a 150 kph corner flat out. And he did, for only the second time in his life. The first was in a wet dream involving a ‘gull-wing’ 300 SL.
So is the Boxster a better buy for India than the 911 Carrera S that we featured in December? Ahem. No. Actually, ‘Noooooooo.’ The 911 is master and the Boxster is disciple. The 911 is king and the Boxster is princess. The 911 is surgeon’s scalpel and the Boxster is Gillette Mach III. Get the point? It is not even a close shave! It is a nice enough car that costs just about Rs 50 lakh to buy and drive, and it is quick and fast straight out of the box. So buy one if you want to get initiated into the religion. Trust me, some day you will be ready for the God, I mean, the 911.
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