911 & Porsche World 212

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November 2011 www.911porscheworld.com

BARGAIN BOXSTERS SEPARATED BY £30,000 AND 14 YEARS -

£5k early Boxster in the ring with current Boxster champ

PS 911 SPYDER DRIVEN GIVING THAT ’50s SPYDER VIBE TO THE 911

PANAMERA GOES GREEN FIRST DRIVE OF DIESEL AND HYBRID PANAMERAS

TRACK DAY PORSCHES TRACK DAY HIRE DRIVE WITH RPM

HOW TO: 944 WIRING WIRING FIX TO CURE 944 STARTING WOES

GT3 BUYERS’GUIDE

How to buy the best 996 generation GT3 road racer

£4.50 US$9.99 CANADA $12.95 No.212 www.911porscheworld.com

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REBELwithoutaCAUSE The factory never made a 911 Spyder, so why not create one? We sample the James Dean culture, courtesy of retro specialist Paul Stephens Words: Johnny Tipler Photography: Antony Fraser

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PS 911 SPYDER

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lue-sky thinking. I’m out in the elements, buffeted like a biker at anything over the legal. No windscreen pillars on this jalopy, so it’s a panoramic view over the wide-open firmament of sunny Suffolk, the cockpit scented by the aroma of... well, let’s just say farmyard.

This is the raw edge of sportscar motoring, and exposure is not just limited to the open road. At traffic lights other motorists can see right in, and in high streets I’m everyone’s friend. Well, almost: tree-huggers turn up noses at the unsilenced flat-six cacophony, but site workers are definitely keen, ‘Go on my son, give it some!’ Naturally I oblige. Thanks to the PS Spyder, I’m East of Eden, a Giant, a Rebel Without a Cause, Dean but not dead.

The Spyder concept goes back to 1953 when Porsche introduced the Type 550 competition car, which quickly made a name for itself on the Mille Miglia, Carrera Panamericana, Le Mans and Targa Florio road races. The formula was simple; light weight, low drag, tiny windscreen and no roof. The engine didn’t need to be excessively powerful since it didn’t have to propel as much mass as a coupé or roadster. But what prompted Paul Stephens to create one, a semi-classic, based on a 3.2 Carrera? He’s taken us down the retro route several times over the years with his tastefully turned out PS AutoArt 911s, and right-hand-man Sam provides the answers. ‘The idea of a special one-off, aluminium-bodied 911 Spyder has been on the drawing board here for some time,’ he says, ‘but it took the acquisition last summer of a rather sorry 1989 3.2 Carrera Targa to finally spur us into action. We were intrigued that Porsche had never produced a 911-based Spyder. They came close to making one with the 3.2 Speedster. But that carried a full-frame glass screen and hood and the kerb weight was over 1,200kg, barely lighter than a contemporary 911 coupé.’

On the other hand, the PS Spyder weighs in at 950kg, which is 350kg less than the 3.2 Carrera Targa that spawned it. An impressive saving, but Sam claims it could weigh less still. ‘Deleting the rear luggage cover, roll cage, heavy rubber floor mats and basing the car on an early coupé rather than a late Targa would probably drop that weight close to 800kg, but the PS Spyder was always going to be a car designed to drive properly and look stunning, so the extra 50kg worth of steel bracing in the Targa’s shell was considered a worthwhile compromise.’

The construction is remarkable, with most of the work carried out by Braintree-based coachwork specialists Clark & Carter. Weight saving was achieved by deleting windows and Targa hoop, plus most of the heater, leaving in place the same system as the earliest 911s where the heat is blown forward into the cabin by the engine fan – not that I noticed, even during my balmy night driving. The heavy original impact bumpers have been replaced with PS’s own composite items. ‘Where the car suddenly becomes very special is when you start to look in detail at the bodywork,’ says Sam. ‘All four wings are standard steel panels, but absolutely everything else is handformed in aluminium.’ The doors swing with an ethereal lightness; they are finished off at the top with a metal roll that sweeps serenely round the cockpit corner and melds into the aluminium dashboard. The front bonnet loses the recess in the scuttle that the standard car uses to feed fresh air into the cabin, so on the Spyder the whole front deck is entirely smooth, apart from the cavity that

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FitforPURPOSE Three RPM Technik-prepared trackday Porsches and, by way of comparison, their standard counterparts; the fast and then literally brand-new Grand Prix circuit at Silverstone; and, finally, rather less than two hours during which to assess and photograph the entire ensemble. What could possibly go wrong?

Story by Chris Horton; pictures by Antony Fraser

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RPM TRACKDAY CARS TESTED

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BOXSTER TWIN TEST

PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT £30,000 separates this original Boxster from the current generation of fighter.

However, you wouldn’t know it on the road as we test them back-to-back Words: Adam Towler Photography: Matt Howell

right up to the 7,500rpm cut out, and in doing so pull out a slight advantage while Jeremy shifts across the gate. We continue, and although the newer car now holds a slight advantage which is slowly increasing I still haven’t quite put a complete car length between us by the time we coast back down to a more politically correct velocity.

Slow then? Not when you consider the latest ‘entrylevel’ Boxster, the 2.9, reaches 60mph in 5.9 seconds before going on to a top speed of 163mph. Remember, the 2,893cc flat six – part of the new family of Porsche engines but doing without direct fuel injection – produces 255bhp at 6,400rpm and 214lb ft of torque between 4,400 and 6,000rpm. That’s more than the first Boxster S. We’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating again here: no rival in this marketplace has ever managed to rival the Boxster. To succeed you need to offer all the casual usability that people not in the slightest bit interested in actually driving the thing demand, while at the same time keeping the enthusiast happy by offering a scintillating ‘drive’. That’s very hard to get right, and while the charms of an Elise are obvious no realist could ever claim it satisfies the other half of the equation. Similarly, the Mercedes SLK and BMW Z4 both fall well short, despite

successive attempts by those manufacturers. In fact, it could be argued that BMW gave up with their latest Z4, taking the car off in much more of a cruiser direction compared with its more rorty forebear.

I’m fortunate enough to spend a few days with the 2.9.

It’s such an easy car to live with, and yet it still manages to turn every journey into an event. These days, car manufacturers throw as many hi-tech features at us as they can muster, but all that technological frippery can’t compete with the satisfaction you can derive from a free revving, naturally aspirated six-cylinder petrol engine hooked up to a manual gearbox and rear-wheel drive.

Turbochargers, twin-clutch gearboxes, various forms of active suspension, four-wheel drive, trick diffs, paddle shifters – the list goes on and on for the modern car

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t seems there’s a misconception doing the rounds in the performance car world, and we at 911&PW should do our best to destroy it. Such irritating pubbanter has often attached itself to the marque, although these days it’s more likely to be a boorish post-Clarkson tirade than the ‘posh-Beetle’, pint-fed talk of before.

Said misconception witters on about the Boxster not being a ‘real Porsche;’ that it’s too soft of spirit, not fast enough, a ‘hairdressers’ car, (at least try and be original…) and that it’s far too much of a common sight to be exciting. But the real wrath is reserved for the original of the breed – the 2.5-litre Boxster. This, said ‘experts’ opine, is simply not fast enough. It’s ‘girly’, they say.

Well, how about this to blow apart some of those ‘truths’. I’m sat in a 5,000-mile-old Boxster 2.9, in second gear at around 2,000rpm. To my right, close enough that I could actually reach out of the Boxster’s open cockpit and touch its door mirror, is a 1997 2.5 Boxster in Guards Red, 90,000 miles under its wheels, and with its owner and newest 911&PW long-term test contributor Jeremy Laird at the ‘wheel. Given the alfresco nature of our motoring today, Jeremy doesn’t need to lip read to understand my 3-2-1 countdown, nor the ‘Go!’ that marks the beginning of our very unscientific drag race.

However, what happens next really is a genuine surprise. As the exhaust notes of two flat six engines instantly harden, the red car is locked in my peripheral vision. The collective wall of sounds grows in volume and intensity, and while the newer car has pulled out a foot advantage, there’s nothing really in it until Jeremy shifts to third at 6,000rpm, right at his power peak but a little short of the old steed’s redline. I keep the 2.9 spinning

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ALLBASESCOVERED Is there no stopping Porsche’s super saloon? In one fell swoop the Panamera gets a long range, low emissions diesel, high tech, eco friendly hybrid power and the monster Turbo S Words: Adam Towler Photography: Porsche GB

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rom being a long, low pencil sketch in the news pages of a car magazine, to selling 30,000 units and counting since launch, the Panamera has made a significant contribution to the marque in a very short period of time.

Unsurprisingly, there were the doubters in advance of its arrival. There was derision, laughter and bile on certain motoring forums. But what these people underestimated was the power of the Porsche brand, and also the appeal of the vehicle itself away from simple press imagery. The Panamera has a love-itloathe-it shape – that much is hard to deny – but in an era when many cars are painfully similar it really does offer something unique, both in content and in the general aura it exudes. Just as when the Cayenne was first launched, the world was ready for this car.

In typical Porsche fashion, the company lost no time in offering a broad selection of models to appeal to the widest possible audience. Initially there were rear-wheel drive S and four-wheel drive 4S variants using the naturally aspirated 4.8-litre V8, and the range-topping Turbo, with its four-wheel drive and technological onslaught. Then came the Panamera V6, the first to be badged simply ‘Panamera’. Now Porsche has widened the range again, offering an alternative at each point in the range: a diesel variant for the regular model, a Hybrid alternative to the V8-powered ‘S’ models, and an even more lairy Turbo known as the Turbo S. The Panamera Diesel is either an obvious and pragmatic

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extension to the Porsche range or the devil’s work. I suspect that if your Porsche passion extends to knowing all the option codes for the Carrera 2.7 RS you may well be in the latter camp, for not only is this big, heavy GT car some way from the ideals of lightweight sports cars it also features that antithesis of the traditional sports car powerplant, the low-revving oil burner. But when you look at the marketplace, and scan the numbers, you can see why Porsche simply couldn’t resist making this car. As we all know, the UK market is dominated by diesel power, particularly in the luxury limo segment, and Porsche GB expect this car to instantly account for 50% of all Panamera sales. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be more than that figure.

Why, is obvious. With fuel prices as they are even Panamera drivers must have one eye on their fuel receipts. And then if you consider that anyone running a Panamera through their business is going to gain significant tax relief through the ‘Panaderv’s’ amazingly low C02 emissions of 172g/km, you can see that any notions of purchasing a V8 will probably be extinguished rapidly for someone in this position. You can also travel for 746 miles between fuel stops, which in a car such as this is not to be underestimated. Think about that, it’s not far off going from Land’s End to John O’Groats without having to leave the comfort of the Panamera’s multi-way, electrically adjustable seat.

Ostensibly, the Panamera Diesel is an entry-level Panamera with Audi’s well known – and well regarded –

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PANAMERA DIESEL/HYBRID/TURBO S

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