3rd Anniversary Reminder FEBRUARY 2010 BY AARON ROBINSON Porsche icons don’t die, they just develop carburetor trouble. Media types attending the Boxster Spyder launch near Monterey, California, got rides in an original 1950s Porsche 550 Spyder—until it broke down. So we drove the new Spyder three hours south to desolate Cholame, close by the marker where James Dean died in 1955 at the wheel of his own 550 Spyder. That was cheerful. With the Spyder, you pay more for less of everything except performance. It’s a marketing cow Porsche has milked many times, usually  to enthralling effect. Organic steering and the brassy flat-six wail are Boxster earmarks, but the Spyder’s extra grip creates a g-force pile-on—and, oh, the stability! The Spyder is suckered to the road and unflinchingly neutral, with none of the bounding and steering washout that haunts all rear-engine 911s. This is the best-handling stock Porsche, period. The metamorphosis from $58,950 Boxster S to $62,150 Boxster Spyder happens thusly: The power top is gutted, along with about 200 pounds. The roof is a canvas handkerchief that looks like it came off the Victoria’s Secret XXL rack. It hooks to the windscreen header and snaps to the roll hoops. Where the S model has steel doors and a steel trunklid and top cover, the Spyder has aluminum doors and a single, 22-pound aluminum panel with sexy double-hump fairings. Two long fingers of the top reach to exposed hooks in the panel—the only blemishes on an otherwise perfect bod, which also has a chin splitter, a fixed rump spoiler, black striping, and titanium-hued grille accents. Power windows and door locks remain, but the cup holders vanish (though they are available as a no-cost option). The alloy doors have bare-bones panels with rudimentary pull straps à la GT3 RS. The Spyder drops 0.8 inch on dedicated 19-inch rims—the car’s center of gravity falling by an inch—and the suspension is stiffer. The enveloping, minimally padded carbon-fiber buckets have manual sliders. Add 10 horsepower and 7 pound-feet of extra torque (identical to the output of the Cayman S), and you have a 4.3-seconds-to-60 (possibly quicker with the optional PDK transmission) road-sucking limpet. However, suspension elasticity has been starched right out of the Spyder. It comically jiggles your softer parts as it bumps down city streets. Porsche says people can buy as many Spyders as they want—the company will make more. Worldwide sales should amount to 10 percent of annual Boxster production, or about 1300 really stiff units.
] Long may it run http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&f=48&t=1243583&mid=0&i=200&nmt=Bloody+Spyder+Addiction%21&mid=0
