Disabled Driving
by David Finlay (08 Dec 99)

 
It was not - and I cannot stress this enough - the car's fault. The fact that we entered the chicane backwards at 60mph was entirely down to me.

The problem was that I had forgotten to switch off the traction control before we headed out on to the test track. Now, traction control is a wonderful invention, and there is no question that you should always use it on the road if it's available, but it does tend to blunt a car's responses when a guaranteed absence of both traffic laws and oncoming traffic allow you to storm around the place at high speed.

It was obvious that the Porsche Boxster S I was driving would be much more fun with the traction control disabled, but it took me about a lap and a half to find the switch. By that time, of course, I was used to what the car was already doing, and the sudden extra sharpness basically caught me off guard.

I'm pleased, and not a little relieved, to be able to say that that was my last spin of the afternoon. The Boxster S handles notably well at high speed, and even when you get near the limit the twilight zone is wide enough for you to be able to sort out any difficulties before they become too overwhelming.

Just because a car is fun to thrash round a circuit doesn't necessarily mean it will be up to much on the road, but the £42,161 Boxster S is in fact very pleasant at real-world speeds, thanks most of all to wonderfully sharp steering and an engine that pulls strongly from low revs.

Not that you would want to keep it down there all the time. This is the 252bhp 3.2-litre unit from the Carrera, which makes one of the truly great engine noises as you scream up towards the 7000rpm red line, passing 60mph in under six seconds on the way. The Carrera also supplies the gearbox, which has one ratio too many (six) and an unbelievably clumsy linkage. This could have been a rare problem, but the fact that it occurred in both cars I drove makes me rather suspicious.

The uprated version of the standard Boxster, now 200cc bigger than before at 2.7 litres, has a much better gearchange quality, and also the right number of gears - five is all you need with these cars, and the fact that the S has six is a marketing ploy pure and simple.

At least that makes some kind of sense. I'm still trying to work out why anyone thought it was a good idea to mark out the speedometers of each car in multiples of 25mph. Try keeping to a 30 limit while reading one of those, why don't you? You could always look at the digital speedo instead, but if anyone tries to tell me it's logical to have two dials giving the same information on one dashboard, I will scream.

Some colleagues were rather sniffy about the slower Boxster after sampling the S, but to be honest I enjoyed both of them. I suspect, though, that the very slight visual clues (most noticeably the tailpipe arrangement) will make the difference between a knowing smile and a haughty sniff from an experienced Boxster watcher, and that this will be enough to persuade owners to pay the extra £8000 or so for the S.

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