[Lil bastard]

The Boxster Spyder is all about Marketing. It's supposed to herald back to the famed 550 Spyder with a nod to the RS, RSR and RSA's of yesteryear. A purpose-built, no-frills, lightened Track car, designed supposedly, to compete with the likes of the Exige, etc.

In reality, it's much less than that. A lot less engineering than marketing know-how went into it.

I won't even go into the PDK and silicon chip vs. neuron arguement. But, the car has eliminated the door handles and map pockets (ala' the RSA), and replaced them with red straps (which btw have to be double-pumped to open because supposedly one of the higher-up's wife grabbed it out of fear at the apex of a turn during a test drive and the door flung open - only her seatbelt kept her in the car) supposedly to save weight, but then Porsche, seemingly contradictorally, retained the power window which certainly weighs more than some abs and a little carpeting - God forbid you give up any creature comfort on the Track! But, eliminating the power window is not visible, no marketing ammo there. That's just one of it's many contradictions. I'm a bit surprised it didn't come with cupholders! It's not really a serious track car at all, at least out-of-the-box.

To me, it's somewhat insulting; that Porsche thinks people can be so easily fooled with fancy paint, a few gimmicks, and a couple different lines of code to the DME to free up some ponies which should have been offered to the driver long ago.

In fact, it seems the whole Boxster community is continuing to be insulted by Porsche. If my math is correct, the Boxster has now surpassed the 911 as the most sold Porsche ever, and then some. When is Porsche really gonna get behind this model and allow it to be the car we all know it can be?

Still, I predict it will sell like Hotcakes... which is probably going to say a lot more about the Buyers than it does about the car itself.

Cheers!