Porsche’s current Boxster goes bye-bye in 2012, and to keep things moving Zuffenhausen appears to be bringing at least two special editions to market. First up, Auto Motor und Sport‘s Erlkönig spies have caught a Boxster-based Speedster mule testing in Germany. Speedsters are an integral component of Porsche’s rich heritage, first as a 356 variant, and later as limited edition 911s. This latest version should hit the streets in 2010 with a 303 hp version of the 3.4 liter Boxster flat six, a shortened windscreen and other Speedster visual cues (like the weird camouflaged humpback shown here) . But the real news comes from car Magazine, which claims to have caught sight of a Boxster R.
This track-tuned version of the Boxster is said to be tweaked along the lines of Porsche’s recently-released Porsche Sport Classic. Which means power will climb to about 320 hp, a lower sport suspension will tighten up the Boxster’s already epic handling and ceramic brakes will keep everything under control. Expect a larger rear spoiler, new allows, a Sport Classic-style interior and a hugely inflated price point.
It needs more black.
Twotone
It needs a cooling system that doesn’t travel the length of the vehicle…what a pile
Just what Porsche needs – a more expensive car. Yeah, that’ll do it.
I’m going to go heretic here and suggest that if Porsche wants to stay relevant in this economy, what they really need to do is a cool $50-60,000 sports sedan.
Finally a Porsche type R and no R engine in sight. Porsche can go to hell, at 5000rpm.
Nice car still.
So let me get this straight…. The Boxster will be re-designed for 2013, correct? The Boxster model will not be discontinued, will it?
Has anybody else heard the rumors that the Boxster re-design will have 4 doors?
I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that the new Boxster will look like… a Boxster, just as you have to be a Porschephile to tell apart the various iterations of the 911. (Of course, Porsche could hire Chris Bangle between now and then…)
As if the current Boxster’s windscreen isn’t short enough. Unless they make the seats even lower, this thing will be a midgets only proposition.
Rather than add power they should simplify and add lightness.
Auto Motor und Sport have elf-kings for spies!?!?!?!
Nope, “notapreppie”, Erlkönig is standard Car-Magazine German for the object of the spying; the camouflaged cars themselves. Note that this was a report by “Die auto-motor-und-sport.de-Erlkönigjäger“; Auto, Motor und Sport’s hunters of Erlkönige.
The term probably comes from the poem of the same name by Goethe; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Erlkönig . And to be precise, it must actally be a reference to the Alder King’s victim, the unnamed boy in the poem, who tries to hide his face from the apparition: “Mein Sohn, was birgst du so bang dein Gesicht?” (“My son, wherefore seek’st thou thy face thus to hide?”); at least that’s the only logical connection I can see.
HTH!
Here, if you can read German, is a bit more about how the expression came to relate to cars: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_gefl%C3%BCgelter_Worte/W#Wer_reitet_so_sp.C3.A4t_durch_Nacht_und_Wind.3F —
it was coined by Heinz-Ulrich Wieselmann and Werner Oswald of Auto, Motor und Sport, who put parody takes of Goethe’s poem as captions to spy pics of prototypes in the early fifties; the first “Erlkönig” was the then-new Mercedes-Benz 180.