By Backlicker

For some reason, I never seem to drive normal cars under normal conditions. Autocross is an interesting place to test a car because you get to see what it’ll do under the most impractical of conditions. No where else will you attempt to pull 1.3gs in second gear. Or even want to. It is under these conditions that I was allowed to drive a Porsche Boxster S. This car looks like any other early 2000s Porsche, with rounded edges and low gloss paint. The 986 generation was created as a new entry level model, for people who wanted a sports car but didn’t have the budget for a 911. Unlike previous entry level Porsches, it still got a flat 6 motor, and that motor was mounted behind the driver as it should be.

The interior of this thing is questionable. It looks like a mix of gadgetpunk and Fruitger Aero that would be completely absurd to make a car with today. But then you remember this car is from the early 2000s and it just makes sense. Everything is where it should be and easy to get to. Unlike an MR2, there is adequate spacing between the petals so your shoes don’t get caught when you try to brake.

Driving this car was not what you would expect of a Porsche. The way people talk about the brand, you would think that driving a Porsche would be some transcendent experience, but it just feels like a car. It is only once you push it to the edge that you see how this car earned it’s crest. You could almost feel it in the steering, at low speeds and casual driving you had to make an effort to turn the wheel. But once you got it moving, the wheel just moved where you wanted it.

When you drive this car the way it wants to be driven, it would never give up. Apparently this car has an open differential, but it doesn’t seem to care. The only time I broke traction in the rear was because I was being a moron, and it still made it easy to recover. No matter what dumbassery you throw at this car, it just does it. It rejects all forms of logical measurement, almost literally. The owner of the car set it up with all sorts of telemetry, but it kept falling out of place. At one point, the GPS fell on me mid-run, which is a great feeling in the middle of a slalom. The only diagnostic it allows is the lifter tick. If you can hear it, you drove hard enough.

Every run, I tried to go faster, to find a point where I was pushing the car too hard and the car just took it. In other cars, it is easy to find a point where you are pushing too hard and the car just tells you to fuck off. The Boxster? It laughs in your face and asks for more. By no means should this car work, it’s a convertible with an open differential and a meager amount of power, it has every right to drive like a dull country club cruiser. But it refuses to drive like that, and I doubt it would be very happy doing that.