If you want the best Boxster money can buy, you get the new Spyder. With gorgeous and aggressive bodywork from Porsche’s GT division to match its newly found suspension tweaks and a new 4-liter engine, the new Boxster Spyder is a good bit more hardcore than the previous iteration. Whereas the old Boxster Spyder featured a more road-going compliant suspension setup and the GT4 was out-and-out track focused with suspension cribbed directly from the GT3, the new Boxster Spyder and GT4 are now sharing an identical suspension with GT3-derived components. Add that 415-horsepower 4-liter (no, it’s not the same 4-liter as the GT3) and a delightful manual folding roof and you’ve got a recipe for exciting drives.
Mr. Smoking Tire, Matt Farah, recently took the Boxster Spyder for a few hundred miles of California back road driving at high speeds. Below you’ll see a video in which he describes his time with the delightful Spyder. Keep in mind, however, that he was in a Euro-spec model with a slightly muted exhaust note thanks to new European restrictions requiring exhaust particulate filters. New Spyder deliveries here in the U.S. market will be a bit louder.
As with the old Spyder and GT4 the main complaint is again found in the transmission’s gearing being extremely tall. From Porsche’s perspective, this helps keep the lower-priced mid-engine cars a bit slower from 0-60 when compared directly to its 911 stablemates. From the driver’s perspective, however, it makes the Spyder and GT4 use all of its torque to keep trucking. Rather than rowing through gears to keep the revs up and power flowing, the new 4-liter’s massive wave of torque will help shove the Boxster along without frenetic shifting. Is that a good thing? As a manual transmission purist, I vastly prefer the feeling of dipping clutch and rowing my own.
Then again, the Spyder is just so damn good!