Re: New 981 hardtop

As a two-term Boxster owner I was hoping the new 981 Cayman would have a sunroof or a targa option. Alas, based on the latest spy shots of a still heavily disguised car, it looks unlikely the Cayman will get either option IMHO. The roofs of the cars in the spy shots have all been solid and the slanting roof line design suggests to me that the much discussed "targa" version of the Cayman is equally unlikely. If I'm right, that's a bummer. I was hoping the 981 Boxster would have an automatic hardtop, or the 981 Cayman would at least have a sunroof (a targa option would be perfect!). If true, maybe I'll try a pre-owned 997 Targa as an eventual replacement for my daily driver Boxster.

More interesting, check out the odometer of the test Cayman. It looks like the car has 143,276 miles on it. Possible, or are my eyes playing tricks on me?






[www.motorauthority.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2012 10:37PM by AS2003. (view changes)

big miles put on them and almost all via hard driving. (In a recent issue of a UK car mag it a reviewer mentioned that one supercar -- I forget the make -- in which he was getting a high speed test ride had racked up nearly one million miles of testing.)

Might add that Porsche (and other car makers) use South Africa for hot weather testing (among other countries: USA and Spain are a couple of others).

Probably true of other car makers, too, but I read where Porsche has a special relationship with South Africa. Essentially there are areas set aside that are pretty much off limits to the common folk so Porsche can really push the cars hard, at very high speeds in very hot weather on 'real' roads and not just on a race track/closed course.

There is a cold weather testing area up in IIRC Norway which allows Porsche quite a bit of freedom in testing its cars in cold weather.

In both cases the authorities work to exclude the press or just nosy folks from getting too close. The car testing brings in some big money to these areas and they want to protect that, keep the money flowing in.

BTW, usually (always? I think it is the law) those test mule cars are crushed when testing is complete and after they have been gone over/through to spot any problem areas (like chassis/body cracks, etc.).

Sincerely,

MarcW.

I agree with Marc. All the data sheets are in German, so it's most likely 143,000 km about 90,000 miles. These aren't daily drivers like 60 - 70 miles a day. They drive them hard most of the day, after day, after day. This is where they try to find weaknesses in the car so changes can be made before they go on sale to the public.

as far as the Boxster getting a folding hardtop, doubt that will happen, but maybe at some point the new 991's "hard" soft top will make it down to the boxster. Then, maybe the Boxster could pick up on some of the Cayman's roof line like the 991 Cab's profile is looking much more like that of the the 991 Coupe.

Be careful what you wish for. If the Boxster were to get a folding hard top it would almost certainly mean giving up all of the rear trunk storage space. I for one would definitely not want that. It would be much better to have a version available with a manual folding soft top like what was offered on one of the 911 variants last year. Ideally it would be in a Spyder-ish body . If they do that it would be SilverBoxV2 for me

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2012 09:15PM by Laz. (view changes)