I get your point..

… James Dean's fatal accident while driving his "Lil Bastard" Porsche Spyder 550 to a race.

[www.foxnews.com]

Happy Spydering,
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

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Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

Any idea as to the performance numbers of "Lil Bastard"?

I'm guessing there's night and day between it's number and those of the current generation Boxster, though the lineage is obvious.

Specs below. Slow by today's standards...
[www.scorpiocars.net]

… it was such a dominant car in the late 50s and early 60s..

Syder 550:
The engine produced 130 HP.
The car weighed 1200 lb.
Thats 9.23 lbs/HP.

Today's Cayman GTS
The engine produces 340 HP
The car weighs 2965 lb
That''s 8.72 lbs/HP

Happy Spydering,
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

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Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

....there is a memorial in front of the café in Chalome CA. It's a pretty desolate spot.

You and I and a few others no doubt remember that day well...epochal.

Pedro, those power/weight ratios you are enamored of, rightly, have only one logical conclusion...two wheel power...buy a bike!

Miss my 981S but not the threat of a monster ticket...on the drive returning it to the dealer on the day the lease ended i did a little counting -75 miles cross country, back roads, but the last 15 of them on the Interstate where i am always a good boy...the other 60 there were 23 separate occasions i topped 100...i don't know how you guys can be so well behaved owning a car like that and not driving it the way it was intended to be driven...Appalachia, yes, that helps traffic wise of course...but even that leads to a greater temptation, the 150 plus club...you know the roads and conditions so well and the legal logistics - hardly ever a police car to be seen...hardly ever though is not never so i count myself lucky...luckier than Dean was anyway.

Pedro, race safe, be well!

… you know that you can get into a "lesser" Boxster at a REAL bargain these days.
When James Dean died, I was a toddler, so I have no recollection of the event.
I know of him because my Dad was a Porsche guy and always pointed him out in movies and would tell me the story of how he passed on the way to the track.
Happy Porscheing,
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 311,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

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Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

Pedro!

you don't expect me to believe that, do you? toddler!

re 'lesser boxster' - here's the rub...i have just about persuaded myself that the new Miata at +- 30 K is the worst of both worlds tho i do respect it as a concept - it's still a lot of money and the power numbers are faintly absurd...the 'lesser boxster' concept is fine except - it does not feature 'lesser bills'...in fact it demands more...i traded in my lesser one for a new 981 lease in frustration at having to pay $1200 or something to straighten out my crooked top...1200 for a detail on a car worth 12000 messes up my head...2500 on 80000 i can live with...make sense? so i went with the 80, which we could only afford to lease not buy, and i loved it, adored it even.

Now, if i lived close to you or to another well spoken indie gentleman with a racing fetish and a reasonable hourly rate all would be cakes and ale, likely...i think...but i'm still not sure...that 981, dear god, i wonder how many people driving them have little idea on just how magnificent a car it is...anything else, it will make 'lesser' Ha! But those payments!

Cheers.

but I have to say something here. My 2010 which was well taken care of and garaged has been no problem. There was one incident, covered under warranty. A broken shifter cable which was taken care of under the original warranty. I bought the car when it was 3 years and and had a year left on the warranty. The problem was so rare that Pedro hadn't heard of it happening. Do the research and look at a 987.2.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/04/2015 05:24PM by SteveJ (2010 987 base, manual trans). (view changes)

I read a group of people met at the former Competition Motors in L.A. where he bought the car and drove the same route to the crash site on that day. That would have been a cool thing to do especially in a Porsche. I'm a James Dean fan maybe because I was born in 1955, man I'm getting old!