When the escalator at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart conveys you to the main exhibition area and you are confronted by a silver shell not unlike a jelly mould in the shape of what looks like sports coupé, with no wheels, you realise what the fuss is all about. Even without them, you know you are standing in front of something that, when finished, must have sent a shiver of excitement through Ferry Porsche, its creator and son of the founder of the company that makes some of the most desirable cars on the planet.
In the Type 64 prototype, one can detect the Porsche DNA that stretches back over half a century. The Carerras, Targas, Boxsters, Caymans and other legendary sportscars that have come to signify success, a love affair with speed, an appreciation for German engineering or the sating of a mid-life crisis, can be traced back to this simple shell.
I am not a motoring journalist – they are a breed unto themselves – nor am I much of a petrolhead, as car and motorbike enthusiasts like to call themselves. I don’t even see the fun in driving quickly. So it was with trepidation that I agreed to go to Germany’s Black Forest to test drive the latest (and much better looking) incarnation of the Porsche Boxster and Boxster S but by the time I finally made it to the Porsche Museum, I had had eight exhilarating hours of Porsche driving under my belt. And I was firmly bitten.
Two days earlier, I had been a fish out of water. As I said, car hacks are a funny bunch. Hardcore Middle East motoring writers know each other well and travel to an alarming amount of test drives. It didn’t take them long to work out that I was the lifestyle feature guy. I knew nothing about horsepower or torque (I still don’t) and I was at a loss when it came to a discussion about the Boxster being a mid-engine sports car. (What I made out is that this is the best way to go for sportscars and the fact that the more complex rear-engined 911 is a great handling car shows just how smart those boffins at Stuttgart really are.)
On our first evening, we were told the schedule for the next day. Essentially a four-hour drive to the hotel on a mix of autobahns (on which there is no speed limit) and windy country roads, presumably so we could enjoy both the speed and the road handling. All very dangerous I thought, especially when an Irish reporter from Qatar told me that on a recent Ferrari press trip, one of the hacks had driven his car into a house.
At the press conference the next day a very earnest man, who was introduced to us as the brains behind the Boxster’s design, explained what the car was all about and about how when it was launched in 1996, it almost single-handedly saved the company. “We like to see it as a starter Porsche for the 25 to 45 age group,” he said of the car we were destined to drive. Well that’s me out of the picture I thought, before remembering that I’ve never really acted my age. In fact, my wife might argue that even in middle age, I am too young to be allowed behind the wheel.
For those petrol heads out there, here goes. The Porsche Boxster’s base model has 2.7-litre engine with 265hp, while the 3.4-litre Boxster S churns out 315hp. Both engines are flat-6 units with direct injection with the option of a manual 6-speed gearbox or a 7-speed PDK semi-automatic system. The latter does 0-100 kph in 5.7 seconds, while the Boxster S can reach the same speed in 5.0 seconds. Oh yes, and the S has a top speed of around 273 kph.
Back in Stuttgart, it was a case of ‘ladies and gentlemen, your cars await you’. The previous night, I had made the mistake of saying I could drive a manual transmission. I’m still not sure why I stuck up my hand. Apart from betraying the “I’m just the lifestyle feature writer” persona I was carefully crafting, surely the automatic option with the funky paddles on the steering wheel for racing through the gears would have been more up my straße, nein?
Still, they say it’s like riding a bike and before I knew it, we were weaving our way through Stuttgart heading to the autobahn. Our driving coaches had told us to resist the urge to demonstrate any flair. Also, if we got into trouble with the police, we were on our own. Papers were signed. One never reads the small print but presumably, we relinquished Porsche from any responsibility if we did a Jimmy Dean.
Unnervingly, my co-driver – there were two in each car to share the driving – looked like the sort of chap who knew his way around a sports car, which was reassuring, although quite what he thought about my clutch control is anyone’s guess. Still, he was too polite to say anything and appeared more interested in the finishing of the interior to be that bothered.
It was when we hit the autobahn that things got scary. It was one thing to be tootling around Stuttgart, posing like members of a Porsche owners’ club but once we were on the motorway, I realised just how fast Germans drive. The cars in front of me simply disappeared. Hang on! I was doing 150km/h, surely that was fast enough? Clearly not, because in my rear-view, the last car was flashing me furiously. “I think you should be going a bit faster,” said my co-driver from beneath his baseball cap. I presume he could see my panic. “Come on man, hit it. The car can handle it.”
The needle crept up to 180, 200, 220 and finally, to 230km/h. By now I was going faster than I had ever had been in my life. My temples were bulging with concentration as we eventually caught up with the rest of the pack. How much longer did we have to go? We were surely going to die. My passenger seemed unperturbed and sat slumped in the bucket seat, arms crossed.
Afterwards at lunch, I was still in shock but the sensation of exhilaration from driving faster than I ever had before was too wonderful for words. “Do you want me to drive the next leg?” my co-driver asked.
“No,” I replied, surprising myself slightly with the realisation that at that moment, there was nowhere I wanted to be more than behind the wheel, “I’ll keep going a bit longer, if you don’t mind.”
