did you guys read the $20K showdown in Excellence?
 

turns out the boxster had a coolant leak out of it as well, damn thats common, even while testing the car for a magazine.
2nd place is not all THAT bad hehehe.

Great article, and even though it "placed 2nd" the writer basically said the Boxster would be his personal choice.

He made it seem the Boxster was going to win until the end. Good article.

Coolant leak? As is coolant comming from the overflow hose beneath the car? Or something else?

the author is one of those heritage guys, i don't understand the rewarding to drive part alot of ppl say when buying a 911, unless you are tracking it, the majority of guys would spin their cars into a curb in the real world. i can see a new 911 with psm easily winning a comparision with a boxster but an old 911 with old ac and old power steering would be a chore to use.

I was surprised he picked the 911. If I want a workout on a twisty road, I'll ride my bicycle. For driving, the Box is the bomb.

great article
 

come on guys, did you think for a minute that they would pick ANYTHING that wasn't a 911? Pleeze. Its rigged. Always will be too. Nothing can be better than a 911, didn't ya know?

The thing I found interesting is, originally I wanted a 968. I had wanted a 968 for a long time. I think it is the best looking Porsche, period. I love the rear fender flares and the pop up headlights. I almost bought one, a 93 horizon blue coupe with 31k miles, I still kinda of wish I had bought it. It test drove very well I thought.

Then I test drove a Boxster, and I did want a cab, and the 968 cabs ruin the look of the car. Plus the Box is newer, and it also has smashing looks. But they really pissed all over the 968 in the article. I had two pretty long test drives in them, and thought it was a pretty nice handling car, and the big 4 cyl was a very nice, smooth engine. I think the 968 got a bad rap in the article.

Call me a cynic, but the Excellence dudes know on which side their bread is buttered. Look at the advertising in the magazine. Probably 80% of it has to do with stuff you can buy for your air-cooled 911.

yea it was coming from the overflow hose beneath the car.

and yes the whole way trough reading this i tought the box will win, but then again, based on the driving experience only they should have picked the box, not a 911 based on its heritage.
thats where its kinda weird, you may pick another car because of the name or something along those lines and not pick another car that is clearly better just because its a lower model, even though that may be a better car.

Well I have to say that Excellence have on more than one or 20 ocassions outright written that the engine choices in the Boxster and Cayman were held back to ensure that 911 had the most power. So you can't really say they tow the company line completely.
But it would be foolish to think that there wouldn't be a ton of hate mail if anything other than the rear engined choice was picked.
I once started a poll on Rennlist once asking if a mid engine option was possible for the 997 would they in fact check that box. 3/4's of non-GT3/2 911 owners said no they would not choose a mid engine set up while 3/4's of the higher end 911 said they would. There is definitely a loyalty factor(y) going on there...

When confronted with a clean sheet of paper for a performance/racing car, Porsche, along with just about every other manufacturer, invariably chooses the mid-engine configuration. Porsche has clung to the rear-engine configuration in their 911 GT racing cars for marketing reasons, not technical or engineering reasons.
In terms of pure transportation device packaging, the two configurations that make the most sense are front engine/front wheel drive, and rear engine/rear wheel drive. Once the technology for both steering and power delivery was available, front/front has dominated the market, principally because it packages all of the mechanical operations, including cooling, into one end of the car. leaving the rest for cargo. Rear/rear does the same thing, as long as you have an air cooled engine that doesn't require radiators to be mounted 10 feet from the motor and all of the consequent plumbing.
The mid-engine configuration is a compromise heavily weighted in the direction of pure performance. One of the factors that Porsche struggled with in designing the Boxster was how and where to place big enough radiators to cool the engine adequately.

well I'm not 911 apologist but the rear engined pcar's resume in racing is long with many mid-engined casualties in its wake.
There are some big advantages to having the engine in the back like big time track out acceleration only possible because of unparalleled grip allowed by having so much weight over the rear wheels. Many mid engine cars have gone up against the 911 most have failed to beat Porsche in endurance racing.
BUT**This year the FIA GT championship goes to an all sprint race (except for 24h LeMans) schedule so the Mid engine Ferrari F430 will go up against the rear engine 911's without the enourmous advantage Porsche engines have enjoyed in longer-than-sprint-length races due to their bullet proof reliability over the Italians.
We shall see which is better mid or rear.

it will be interesting to see if the improvements in the gt3 rsr will be enough to beat the ferrari. It will be even more interesting to see what Porsche does if they lose a bunch of races and the constructors title.

Would that spell the doom of the rear engined Porsche? It would be hard for Porsche to deal with getting their butts kicked over and over.

At least they admitted the 2.5 Boxster is not a "no go showboat".

Is there anyone that could send me a copy of this article, I would love to read it !

I just subscribed to Excellence a couple of weeks ago, but have not yet received a copy, and this article is not posted on their website :(

TIA !

Nick

"Would that spell the doom of the rear engined Porsche? It would be hard for Porsche to deal with getting their butts kicked over and over."

Knowing Porshce, they would likely find another series to race in where they don't lose. Or start their own!

I think that's called "Porsche Cup". There are similar series for Ferraris, Mini Coopers, Mazda Miatas, etc, ad nauseum.
I remember years ago when I was running SCCA Solo II, they added the Caterham 7 to the A Stock class to run against the 'Vettes. One of them showed up at a local event and, of course, beat the crap out of all the 'Vettes. Overnight the A Stock entry list went from having a dozen Corvettes to one or two. Nobody likes to have an upstart outsider come in and start mucking up the works in their sandbox.
Porsche, it seems to me, is more tolerant of competition in the classes they run in than most manufacturers. Probably because they have a long history of using racing as a central part of the marketing of their cars, so as a company they have a greater committment to racing.

^ that's exactly what I thought of "start their own series" yeah its called Porsche Cup. BTW, the 996 GT3 beat the 997 GT3 in several events last year. Which makes sense since it takes a new model about a season to catch up to a tweaked previous year model. A big reason why allot of 996 GT3 track junkies aren't diving into a 997 GT3 for the big jump in price and non-existent performance advantage over a well modified 996 GT3 that is taking a beating in resale, well this seems to be the case with all PCars minus the CaymanS and the limited production RSR GT3.

Now the only problem is finding if the Speed Channell will even cover the FIA GT races. I would be surprised if Porsche came out on top. The Ferraris were the benchmark on pace and if not for some better team management (Ferrari drivers crashing into each other) Porsche would have been beaten worse.

ferarri is going to eat porsche's lunch until porsches go to a mid engine design, there is no subsitute for displacement or placement. they have the right idea with the cayman, but if they wanted to keep up the the competition they would put a v8 in there. when i can afford to buy a used bmw 5 series cash, i'm trading in my beloved boxster for a family car with a v8. back to to subject, i still think this article is toilet paper because they dissed the 968, the 968 is one of the best handling cars on the road, even when compared to boxster and for sure an old 911. i bet this pissed off alot of 944/968 owners who hate the boxster.

99% of the article hinted and pointed to the Boxster as the winner. The final decision (911) did not follow from the text.