ORIGINAL: flat6 I’ve come back from a 3 great days of Porsche-Clubbing so catching up with the topics here rather than challenging anyone’s opinion. Wasn’t sure I understood the question of whether anyone has weighed their Spyder so I am not claiming to answer that question when I say I really couldn’t care what my Spyder weighs. The car turns me into a half decent driver with its stability and predictability. I’ve just driven some great roads in Wales and then had a great time at the Angelsey track day with a great bunch of guys. “Living the dream…†[8D]
But more on that later… I know there are opinions around optioning extras onto a Spyder and diminishing the weight reduction. Weight reduction is only part of what enhances the Spyder IMO. The other elements are: Lowering the centre of gravity by losing weight in the right places. Revised suspension and chassis. The reduced ride height. If you take just the roof: -21kg, aluminium doors: -15kg, aluminium engine cover: -3kg, lightweight fuel tank: -7kg, Spyder wheels -5kg and interior trim: -2kg, that’s -53kg alone. The debates about radio and air con delete is over a relatively smaller amount of weight, than the ‘de-facto’ 53kg (Factor in the 12kg for the carbon fibre bucket seats and that’s 65kg vs the radio and air con). Regards to going for PCM, climate control etc, if you’d option those on your Spyder and would option those on an S, they add weight to both cars. The weight debate can go on and on but as I say it’s only one contributing factor to enhancing the car’s dynamics. Whatever my car weighs, it was great on track and on twisty roads with much of that due to how they’ve refined the suspension and chassis, how much of a lower centre of gravity you get from the ‘at least’ 53kg weight loss (as well as the weight loss itself reducing inertia under acceleration, braking and turning). As for sports seats vs bucket seats, there’s 5 OPC cars on sale with sports seats. Whether the OPC’s spec’d these cars or not, they have found happy homes for the last 3 years. Out of the 9 Spyder owners who frequent here, 4 of them have sports seats and for at least 2 of them, sports seats were a must have. IMHO there is a clear market for both even if the markets might not be the same size. There’s also a group who will take a car with either, if they have other more important criteria. I’d like buckets because I like how they hold but I have plenty of fun without them. Market supply and demand cycles around unpredictably. Who’s to say that in years to come, owners with sports seats keep their cars for longer as they can still climb out of them when they’re older, or because their wives don’t force them to sell them because they can get out of the car without showing their underwear[
]. Then the ones with sports seats would be in shorter supply for those who really need them. No grounds for or against that fictitious theory. PDK vs manual is a personal thing. As the world moves more and more towards PDK, who’s to say that the classic, 20year old Boxster Spyder is favoured more with PDK than manual as more in keeping with the favoured technology that the car will be owned alongside in future times. Who’s to say that manual will be favoured more for nostalgia in future times when manual will be rarely available. Then again, who’s to say that everyone will think the same way. With such a small number of cars I reckon there’s someone out there for any car, except those that have been butchered with grotesque visual personalisation modifications. We’ve certainly seen a lot of Spyders of different specs shift in the last few months and most with a similar asking price. We may even see numbers for sale at OPC’s climb as the OPC’s work hard to source these cars. Even last year when I was looking, an OPC was contacting a guy to see if he wanted to sell his Spyder because they knew he had multiple cars and didn’t use it much. There may be more of that going on and OPC numbers may climb. Also, the more there are for sale the less people will rush, so we may see some of these 5 cars for a little while. Just my opinion. Brian, glad to hear your roof didn’t leak under monsoon rain and wind[
]. Water will flow down the rear screen into the drains as it’s designed to seal the cabin and channel any water down there. If the rear deck lid is covered in water, you'll also send more water down there if you lift the rear deck lid to have a look[
] But isn't it great that a car designed first and foremost as roofless, has a hood that has had as much thought put into how that performs[
]. My journey home from the dealership was also in bad rain and after that I’ve never mollycoddled the car[
].
