First Drive Review
Plans to build Porsche's Boxster S model have spent the past 12 months sitting on the shelf, waiting for a call from marketing. So strong was demand for the standard Boxster that Porsche deemed it pointless to launch more powerful, more expensive version of its mid-engined roadster when the assembly lines in Germany and Finland couldn't keep up with current orders. But now the Boxster is three years old, and some real competition has shown up--the spanking-new Honda S2000 and the proliferating Audi TT. Time to unleash the S.
The goal of the S-model was simple. Its performance should be precisely midway between the Boxster's and the 911 Carrera's. Porsche wants the S to be interesting enough to attract current Boxster owners but not so fast that it cannibalizes 911 sales. (In the U.S., interestingly, the Boxster far outsold the Carrera in the first five months of 1999--6052 Boxsters to 3953 Carreras.) So the engineers did a few calculations and came up with the 3.2-liter engine capacity.
Both the Boxster and the Carrera use different versions of one engine: Porsche's latest water-cooled flat-six. What's surprising is that the S-model's 3179cc capacity is so much closer to the Carrera's 3387cc than it is to the Boxster's 2480cc. The engineers stretched the bore 7.5 millimeters to 93, adopted the Carrera's crankshaft and 78mm stroke (up 6mm) and its Bosch Motronic ME7.2 electronics, and raised the engine redline from 6600 rpm to 7200.
So this new S's power leaps 48 hp to 249 at 6250 rpm, and torque climbs 44 pound-feet to 225 at 4500 rpm. That's still 47 hp and 33 lb-ft shy of the Carrera's output, almost exactly half-way between the 911's and the Boxster's. As predicted, that's the way the official Porsche performance numbers read. Porsche says in the sprint to 62 mph the Boxster S will do it in 5.9 seconds, compared with the standard Boxster's pace of 6.9. The Carrera is well out front of both at 5.2 seconds on Porsche's stopwatch. Top speed in the S-model is a promised 161 mph, 12 mph faster than the standard Boxster but 13 mph slower than the 911 Carrera's 174-mph pace.
Behind the wheel, the extra power is instantly apparent. Porsche says 80 percent of maximum torque--or 80 lb-ft, one shy of the base Boxster's peak--is available at 2000 rpm. The 3.2 engine still loves to rev, but by increasing midrange power and raising the redline so significantly, the S feels far stronger and more responsive, just about everywhere, than the base Boxster. A version of the 911's six-speed gearbox closes up the lower ratios, permits a slightly taller top gear--25.7 mph per 1000 rpm vs. 24.0 mph--to further indulge driver enjoyment. The Tiptronic S five-speed automatic is optional on the S-model and now includes the ability to shift gears via the steering-wheel buttons even when the selector lever is in automatic mode.
