Excellent roadster gets more power
and fastness, becomes yet more excellent
A blue-sky summer’s morning in Germany’s
Black Forest, and the good lord of driving is in his element. A smooth track
hairpins its way up through cool, dark woods against a fresh-polished
landscape, the scent of cut grass on the breeze. The roads are empty, and we
are in the shiny new version of one of the very best roadsters in history.
Germany, in footballing vernacular, has played a blinder.
Dynamic
tweaks transform the Boxster GTS into a car that touches upon genius in places
“They just do things… better than we do in
the UK, don’t they?” I say to photographer Lipman. “Why isn’t Germany in charge
of everything?” Photographer Lipman coughs quietly and raises an eyebrow. Fair
point. But let’s be honest. If you were to entrust our automotive future to any
country on the planet, it’d be Germany, wouldn’t it? Germany, with its proper,
sensible motorsport speed limits (or lack thereof), and its... its scenery,
and, most of all, its annoyingly excellent cars. Like the Boxster GTS, the
fastest iteration of Porsche’s ‘baby’ two-seat roadster ever. Fastest, yes, but
the GTS isn’t the Boxster equivalent of the 911’s GT3, GT2 or Turbo. No, this
is a far more subtle hotting-up of the Boxster S, with that car’s 3.4-litre
flat-six bumped up by a gentle 15bhp, and a handful of torques, to 325bhp and
273lb ft. The GTS’s chassis has been dropped 10mm and treated to most of
Porsche’s usually optional tools of traction trickery, there’s also much
none-more-black GTS jewellery and a new set of 20-inch wheels borrowed from big
brother 911. And that’s it: no vast turbocharger or massive weight loss or
bonnet-mounted weaponry.
‘Grab-handle’
front air intakes differentiate GTS from standard Boxster. Not the most elegant
Which, if you’re the sort of upstanding
chap with petrol coursing through your nostrils and the whiff of tyresmoke in
your veins, you might view as a bit of a half-baked effort from Porsche. Me,
I’m not so sure. And here’s why.
See, if you cook as enthusiastically and as
badly as I do, you’ll be familiar with the concept of the Infinite Spiral of
Flavour Destruction. I don’t think this is an official term, for I just made it
up. Here’s how it goes: you’re getting towards the end of making, say, a lovely
fish soup, and you taste your lovely fish soup, and you think, hmm, that
probably needs a bit of salt, so you add a bit of salt, and then you taste the
soup and you think, hmm, that’s a bit salty, what it really needs is a bit of
lemon to balance things out, so you squeeze half a lemon, and then you taste
it, and you think, hmm, this now only tastes of lemon, probably ought to level
things out with a bit more salt, and very soon you have a pan of inedible salty
lemon juice that tastes not even slightly of fish soup.
Boxster
tail lights have darker ‘smoked’ finish, with dynamic LEDs at the front
Which was exactly – well, not exactly – my
concern when rumours emerged of this faster, harder Boxster. See, the standard
Boxster S is such a delicately balanced car, with every aspect – ride, engine,
handling – in such neat harmony that any attempt to sportify it could throw the
whole thing out of kilter. Witness the Jaguar F-Type V8 for an example of an
over-seasoned roadster: no, you won’t forget the experience, but not
necessarily for the right reasons.
GTS
gets tricksier black diffuser with vertical ‘closed fin’ elements. Minimal aero
effect
But the GTS, thankfully, still feels like a
Boxster. It still rides smartly, steers progressively and dispatches corners
with ruthless simplicity. I’m not sure there’s a more intuitive-driving car on
sale today. You’re never aware of mass moving, or of trying to work out whether
there’s more grip at the front or rear, or of managing the onset of oversteer
or understeer. You just stick it into a corner and follow the line you always
should have taken, the Boxster gently coaching you on the fastest way round.
