When traveling for business, I like to travel light. The bare essentials are all I need. If it can’t fit into my wheeled carry-on or soft-sided suit carrier then there’s no reason to bring it along. In fact, I once managed a three week trip to Singapore out of a soft-sided suit carrier and a brief-case (thank God for hotel dry cleaners, overnight tailors and strong deodorant). Given my extensive travel history, it should come as no surprise that I really don’t stress when it comes to packing for a trip. That all changed a few weeks ago.
My wife and I were planning a trip to California to drive a 2009 Porsche Boxster S along the Pacific Coast Highway (that’s it above). California, beautiful scenery, a Porsche cabriolet, where’s the stress? While traveling light is great for business, it’s not necessarily great when you’re on vacation. You need clothes for different activities, different types of dining, different temperatures, etc. etc. Combine these facts that it’s now two people traveling vs. one and the need for more luggage, lots more luggage, becomes necessary very quickly. Where’s it all going to fit? Even with the limited trunk space in my 993 I know I can fit any overflow into the back seat. Not so with the Boxster. As a true roadster, with only two seats and no back seats to speak of, if you can’t get the luggage in the trunk space…
How Much Luggage Fits in a Porsche Boxster?
As we packed for the trip I researched to see if I could get more information as to what we could fit for luggage. While it was easy to find that the Boxster has just shy of 10 cubic feet worth of luggage capacity (a minimum of 50% more than any of its competitors and over twice as much as a 911) I couldn’t get anything solid about what that equates to in terms of actual luggage. I had some tell me you could fit multiple carry-on pieces in each storage area (as the Boxster is mid-engined there’s luggage space in the front and back) and others suggest that anything other than a duffel would be difficult to transport. About the only thing that everyone seemed to agree upon was the need to pack soft-sided luggage. This way if something didn’t fit perfect you could still move or massage it into place.
Without any hard information to go on, and taking my life into my own hands, I did the unthinkable and told my wife she couldn’t take that fifth pair of heels. 🙂 Fortunately, she was very understanding and we both packed more conservatively than usual. Our luggage consisted of one full-sized, wheeled carry-on, a soft-sided suit carrier, an expandable gym duffel bag and two back pack. The picture below shows the actual bags we took with us.
As it turned out, I risked life, limb and a possible night on the couch for no reason at all. The advice to take soft-side luggage is worth listening to, but not all your luggage need be put in duffels. The cargo and luggage space in a Boxster is massive! Granted, it’s no Cayenne, but the front luggage area is deep enough easily store two full-size, wheeled carry on bags, plus a back-pack and a number of other objects packed around them. As the picture below shows, I could have easily taken a second wheeled carry-on vs. the blue duffel and still had additional space.
The rear luggage space, while not as deep as the front, is much wider and accommodated the suit-carrier and larger back pack with room to spare.
What these pictures don’t show is that even with all these bags, there was still much more room to fit plenty more. In fact, we could easily have taken another soft-side bag in the front and even then still have space left over for purchases along the way.
If you’re thinking about purchasing a Boxster and are at all concerned about the lack of storage and luggage space, don’t be. Even the biggest clothes horse could comfortably live out of the Boxster for a two or three week trip with no problem what so ever.
As a side note, and something you don’t want to learn the hard way, be sure to pack anything that could possibly melt (make-up, perishable food, coolers, etc.) in the front space. While I don’t know that exact temperatures reached in the rear trunk space, with the mid-engine resting again the trunk wall, I do know it could easily double as a food warmer in a jiffy. More on the rest of the trip and the 1200 miles we spent getting to know the Porsche Boxster S later.
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[Source: 993C4S]
