Boxster S is the latest among the fast, furious
I chose a dry, narrow canyon road as my personal test track. It was a crisp morning, but I’d already put down the top on the 2003 Porsche Boxster S and pulled my baseball cap on snug. In a few blinks the digital speedometer read 106 and I’d formed my first hard impressions about the car.
Although the Boxster came with a six-speed manual transmission, I was still in fourth gear with more oomph to go before the tachometer hit the red line and with more power under my foot than I would ever use. A second discovery was that the wind screen rattled -- a flaw that turned out to be timely. Thirty seconds after I stopped to snap it shut, a sheriff’s car moseyed into view from a blind curve in the opposite direction.
Fighting the urge to drive fast was a constant during my week in the Boxster. My friend Catharine took the car at lunchtime on the Glendale Freeway and soon was humming about 90, and itching to go faster. She also attacked the accelerator on any curves she could find. “This is the first car I’ve ever driven where you gain speed going around a corner,” she said.
Porsches are addictive. Thirty years ago I owned a Porsche 912, with its pokey, air-cooled four-cylinder engine and meager 110 horsepower. It was my favorite car -- it taught me the pleasures of responsive handling and tight cornering and how to feel the road as you drive. Back then, pre-OPEC gas crises, in Nevada there were no speed limits outside cities and my 912 maxed out at 116 mph. I would have loved to have taken this Boxster back in time for a spin.
My recent test-drive marked my second go-round in a Boxster S, and both were head-snapping adventures. Ever since the car’s introduction in 1996, I’ve liked the Boxster’s engineering and style, although many purists view the mid-engine roadster as an unwelcome first cousin to the rear-engine cars that made Porsche’s reputation.
But the current two-seater 911s and Boxsters are rear-wheel drive, and they share many of the precise, hard-cornering driving characteristics of their classic predecessors.
Many of the Boxster’s parts were lifted from the 911 series -- so much so that, in the first few years, it was hard to tell them apart from the front. For the current model, Porsche tinkered with some aerodynamic changes in the Boxster’s front bumper and light housings to try to distinguish it from the 911.
The Boxster’s rear end, however, with its clean, rounded fenders, retains its styling cues from the legendary Porsche Spyder 550 racer of the 1950s. (James Dean owned a Spyder and was driving one before his fatal crash on California 46 east of Paso Robles.)
Porsche offers two Boxsters: the base model and the S. Both have liquid-cooled six-cylinder engines and are equipped with speed-activated rear spoilers, anti-lock brakes, front and door-mounted air bags and either a manual or Tiptronic automatic/manual transmission.
The base Boxster, with a sticker price of $42,600, comes with a 2.7-liter, 225-horsepower engine; its five-speed transmission covers zero to 60 mph in 6.2 seconds. The Boxster S, base price $51,600, weighs in with a 3.2-liter engine producing 258 horsepower, and the six-speed manual paces zero to 60 in 5.4 seconds. The S is rated at 18 miles a gallon in the city, 26 on the highway, but I found the car thirstier; note also that it requires premium fuel.
The model I drove had 18-inch wheels in place of the standard 17s, fancy metallic paint and a computerized stability management system. With digital sound and other extras, the car topped out at $57,905.
Inside, the feel is cockpit-like; the ground clearance is a mere 4 inches. The once-spartan Porsche instrument panel and interior have given way to a busier look. I counted 16 warning lights in a row at the bottom of the dash, in addition to a speedometer with a combination digital readout and floating-needle design. And with a click of a button on the wheel, the on-board computer displays various fuel and trip length readings, oil usage and maintenance reminders.
With the engine packed immediately behind the two seats, interior space is at a premium. To help, Porsche designers equipped both doors with covered storage compartments and put an extra slot in the passenger-side floorboard, as well as a narrow wall compartment behind the seats with enough space for a couple of Thomas Guides.
I was pleased to discover a few old-school design touches in the Boxster that date back decades: The ignition remains on the dashboard to the left of the steering wheel; the tachometer, not the speedometer, is the central display; the fuel gauge has the German markings “4/4,” “2/4” and “0” for “full,” “half-full” and “empty”; and the front trunk relies on a double safety latch so the hood won’t fly up.
Perhaps the best ergonomic design is the car’s electric top. It requires opening one latch, then pushing a dashboard button for 12 seconds for everything to fold into place. When the button is activated, the electric windows drop slightly so the top won’t rub against them.
Still, there were a few flaws. At 6 feet 1, I found the car almost cramped, with only 2 inches of headroom; an NBA point guard would not fit into the driver’s seat. Another gripe is that although the steering wheel adjusts forward and back, it doesn’t move up or down, so my knees kept rubbing against the wheel.
Porsche also crows about the double cup holder that slides out of the center console and has an adjustable ring to secure different-size mugs. But it’s a flop. I kept shoving my In-N-Out Burger cup to keep it upright while driving.
Anyone sensitive to temperature will notice that heat gradually creeps into the cabin because the Boxster’s engine is packed behind the seats. Even with the ventilation flowing, the seats feel a bit warm.
Unlike other Porsches, the Boxster has two trunks, and though the company can boast that its luggage space is bigger than that of any other roadster in its class, that’s still only 9 cubic feet. For fun, I tried to squeeze my golf clubs into the trunks. Forget it. The only way I got them into the car was by leaning the bag against the passenger seat.
I also found it unsettling to be so close to a powerful engine but to never see it. The evolution of car design, with its heavy reliance on electronics, has increasingly removed engines beyond the maintenance skills of most owners. With a Boxster, the likelihood of your ever seeing a spark plug or an oil filter is remote. In the rear trunk are slots for oil and windshield washer fluids, but the engine remains hidden.
For all these gripes, driving the car was pure pleasure. Long ago the clutch on my 912 was so stiff it seemed to crunch the cartilage out of my left knee. Not so today. My wife, Vani, who was a bit frightened of the Boxster, took the wheel in Malibu Canyon and found the clutch smooth, the gearbox easy to use and, yes, the accelerator hard to resist.
The main lures of the car are its acceleration, the jolting torque in each gear, the exhaust’s rumble and the nimble handling. My son Jann, at 14 a budding car nut, was so mesmerized by our first drive that he didn’t start fiddling with the CD player for half an hour.
On a cold Sunday, he and I went for a long drive, with the top down and the heater blasting so that we could savor the openness of a true sports car. As the sun went down, Jann said, “When do you have to return the Porsche?”
“Tomorrow.”
“If you drove it to Mexico, would they come after you?”
There was a joke underneath his words. But the sentiment was much like that of being on the last day of a memorable vacation -- and we were almost out of time.
Final words: The car is an adventure. The downside: It may max out your allotment of speeding tickets, and you may need a home equity loan to cover the lease payments.
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Barry Stavro is an editor in The Times’ Business section. He can be reached at barry.stavro@latimes.com.
