Top Gear USA may be trying to find their way to super stardom, but Top Gear UK has been sitting in the celebrity lounge for quite some time, so when they sit behind the wheel of a sports car and want to tell us about it, we listen. In this review, James "Captain Slow" May takes a drive in a Porsche Boxster Spyder which is probably a little bittersweet considering the famous TV presenter just decided to part with his own beloved Boxster.
The Porsche Boxster Spyder is powered by a 3.4 Liter direct injected flat six ahead of the rear axle that delivers a total of 320 HP, 10 HP more than the current top of the line model in the Boxster lineup, the Boxster S, while still getting as much as 30.4 MPG. Like all the other current Porsche models, the Boxster Spyder comes equipped with a seven speed PDK gearbox and a Sports Chrono Package. This allows the Boxster Spyder to sprint from 0 to 60 MPH in 4.8 seconds and reach a top speed of 166 MPH. On the US market, the model is priced at $61,200.
Check out the video to see what James May has to say about the Porsche Boxster Spyder.
Usually when people drive a car like the Porsche Boxster S, they are very pleased with their form of transportation. Then there are those people that are never fully satisfied with what they have, the old "grass is always greener on the other side" scenario. The latter description fits the owner of this Porsche-turned-Lamborghini Murcielago. Yep, this guy overhauled his Porsche to turn it into a Murcielago. Maybe he missed his chance to own the Lamborghini once the last production model rolled off the line, but that still isn’t a reason to do this to a perfectly good Boxster.
Now, we really shouldn’t share this type of information for fear of someone else creating this type of sin, but this little project - complete with Lamborghini’s scissor doors - cost the owner $45,000. So if you want everyone to make fun of you and turn their nose up at your decision, go ahead and save up $45K and do this to your car.
The next generation Porsche Boxster has been caught testing yet again at the famous German race track, the Nurburgring. And seeing as though the sportscar has been mostly unwrapped, we think it’s safe to say that it’s in its final stages before its official launch in March at the 2011 Geneva Motor Show.
From these new spy shots, we can finally take a good look at the front of the vehicle as well as the doors, even though the real dirt on the Boxster is the fact that it has grown in length to make room for the "baby Boxster."
Under the hood the Boxster will use a slightly revised version of the 310-HP 3.4-liter six-cylinder engine, but rumors suggest that it might receive an advanced four-cylinder engine producing about as much horsepower as the current 2.9-liter six (255): "A Boxster with a four-cylinder engine, or maybe even a three-cylinder turbo, could produce between 180bhp and 200bhp and emit just 180g/km of CO2," said Hans-Jurgen Wohler. "Given the Boxster’s history – that it started with a 200bhp, 2.5-liter engine – I think this is possibly something that customers could accept."
Production is scheduled to start in early 2012, this time in Stuttgart and not in Finland as the current generation.
There is a rumor out there that sports cars aren’t reliable and that they should be used sparingly, for the fear of an expensive repair. That doesn’t seem to be the case, as the Porsche Boxster has been rated the most reliable car in the world, according to Consumer Report’s New 2010 Survey.
The smallest vehicle in the Porsche lineup has proven to be one of the best, as the magazine found predicted reliability, owner satisfaction, acceleration, predicted depreciation, and accident avoidance in the Boxster to be near flawless.
The Boxster’s big brother, the 911, scored fairly good as well, although it was ranked as Porsche’s worst model. The 911 scored just about the same as the Boxster is most categories, but owner costs and fuel costs were considerably higher, while predicted reliability was a tad lower.
Porsche proved to be one of the only German automakers to score well in the survey. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Audi all came in the bottom ten, but that won’t stop us from loving them. The magazine ranked the high-performance M3 as the worst BMW of them all, with the 135i ranking highest.
Low ranking sports cars seemed to be a theme in the survey, as four companies found their sporty machines coming last. These include the Chevrolet Corvette Z06, Mazda MX-5 Miata, Cadillac CTS-V, and the M3. Only one company, besides Porsche, had a sports car ranked on the top and that was Hyundai with the Genesis Coupe.
German wheel manufacturers, ICW, have released an all-new design exclusively for selected Porsche models. The twin-five-spoke design, dubbed the i-BI, was inspired by dynamism and power, and is meant to evoke what ICW calls “optical sophistication”. Whatever that may be, one thing is for certain, they look a lot like the current GT3 wheel – with a bit more menace. The wheels themselves are milled from a single block of billet Aluminum making them strong and lightweight – two of the most functional aspects of a performance wheel. Fitment does require the use of high-tensile adapters to get the deep dish look without the nasty rubbing that can sometimes occur. Applications include the Porsche Boxster, Cayman, 911, or Panamera and will shortly include the Audi R8 and others. Customers have the choice of 18 or 19 inch options, in either hyper silver or matte black. Pricing starts from €244 per corner which is really not bad considering other options for these cars start at around the €300 mark.
