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From Issue Two of the Gear Patrol Magazine.
If you’re hunting for the upshot, let me whittle it down into a single word: truthful. If you understand what that means for a Porsche, then feel free to stop reading and move on. Plenty of photos lie ahead.
If not, allow me to begin our tale by bringing you to Saddle Road, a mélange of chicanes, blind crests and off-camber undulations that bisect the Big Island of Hawaii. Starting from a blazing Pacific coast, drivers first speed across barren lava fields, ascending their way past lush, quaking napier grass as they hurtle towards the sky. For locals and motoring enthusiasts alike, this is a gift of a public road and a proper foil for our topless protagonist. The two in action are astonishing.
The Porsche Boxster Spyder, a spiritual successor to the mid-cen- tury 550 Spyder, isn’t a car that tidily fits into a spreadsheet or marketing plan, but here on Saddle Road all the German zeal makes complete sense. Once you’ve put the top down — a still confounding but somehow wonderfully manual process — and tapped yourself into Sport or Sport Plus mode, it only takes the momentary blur of time between the first light and the first curve for everything to coalesce. Its 375 horsepower and 309 lb-ft of torque are a perfect prescription of power. According to my given information, 0-60 takes 4.3 seconds, but numbers poorly convey just how the car achieves speed and inhales tarmac. It’s best described as a rushing mechanical yearn. Some cars devour roads, the Porsche Boxster Spyder aches for them.
As I plunge toward the island’s southern perimeter I let out a laugh. A light shower has passed (the top is back down after a quick stop), and Hawaii’s dramatic sun again bears down. The road ahead, peppered with passing points, practically lends itself to spirited maneuvers. The Boxster Spyder is a full sensory experience: the snorting exhaust, the sensation of unprintable speeds, steering feel that borders on connective tissue and a suspension (about a half inch lower than your everyday Boxster) that firmly and quickly dispatches with any road defects. This is a 180-mph two-seat touring car.
