Pants in Motion

I need to apologise, as it seems every lazy blogger does from time to time, for my dismal output of late. I’d like to be able to say that I’ll get better but I don’t want to make a promise I can’t keep, so let’s just see how it goes.

It occurs to me that I never bothered explaining why I occasionally post pictures like the one below on my Twitter or Facebook pages along with short comments like, “This was good, I liked it”.

Anyhow, this is how it’s happened:

I work at a fairly large company that deals with the automotive industry – I will not mention the name here – and quite a while ago I got into a semi-conversation with the editorial manager about cars. Now, I’m terrible with people I don’t know. I’m awkward, I’m distant, I don’t make eye contact… and yet from time to time I manage to make some kind of connection anyhow.

Maybe I made an impression or maybe he’s just a really nice guy, but I was talking about how I had issues with fitting into a lot of cars due to my height. I’d been interested in the new Nissan 370Z and he happened to have one available. I asked if it would be possible for me to sit behind the wheel to see if I had enough headroom. And bugger me, he hands me the keys and told me to take it around the block.

So here I was behind the wheel of a $70k+ sports car without supervision, and the guy didn’t really know me from Adam. Amazing. As it turns out, the 370Z is kind of stupid for tall blokes – the steering wheel doesn’t extend and headroom is much less than you might imagine from the specs. It’s virtually impossible to see anything out of the back, which makes reversing pretty nerve-wracking, and it really doesn’t feel very refined.

Now, there’s another person over in Editorial who I have chatted to from time to time, and I once took a photo of her sitting in front of a bright yellow Zonda. I guess she’s taken a shine to me as well because she offered to let me take the new GT-R out for a spin a couple of months ago, and since then I’ve also driven the Toyota Prius, the Audi TT coupe and today… the new Porsche Boxster.

Because I’d had some warning that it was coming I mentioned it to Steve K, and he sounded quite interested in coming for a quick spin in it – possibly because I’d been sure to mention every.. single.. other.. car I’d been driving. I figured I could probably get away with a slightly longer drive to get to his work, after all it was only 5 minutes away. The first problem occurred when I opened the door to the car and suddenly had a sinking feeling in my stomach – I didn’t think I could fit! Was this going to be another roadster like the MX-5 – lovely, but impossible for me to fit inside?

But then! A miracle! My hand found… MEIN GOTT! THE SEAT LEVER! It slid back, and the steering wheel, it went up! LAWKS-A-LAWDY! I could fit! I quietly snuck out of the basement garage as this is oh-so-not-what-the-dealership-intended and really it’s all rather secret squirrel. Once out on the road I adjusted my mirrors and got acquainted with the instruments. I have finally gotten used to driving a European car so I no longer hit the wipers every time I want to turn a corner, thank god. Everything else in the Boxster seemed very intuitive and straightforward, from the large, prominent tachometer to the powered roof which only took me 30 seconds of hunting to find the controls for… blush.

I don’t like automatic gearboxes and so I don’t like the Porsche PDK, although it’s not as rough at downshifting as the VW DSG system when you slow to a standstill at the lights. The only dual-clutch system I’ve been able to tolerate is the one in the mighty GT-R and I think that’s because the car is so ridiculously fast and powerful that I can’t even start thinking about the gears. In something more moderate like this Boxster though, you have time to hear the system working. Every time the computer fails to predict that you’re about to do something idiotic and the engine revs stupidly without you really going any faster, it frustrates me. What’s more, the Porsche controls are strange. The gear stick is backwards in manual mode (pulling towards you drops you down a gear, rather than going up as you’d expect) and the paddles on the steering wheel don’t work in the traditional way where one paddle drops you a gear and the other one raises it. Instead, they both allow you to push to shift up or pull to shift down: again, the opposite to what feels natural to me.

Here’s what I loved: the seats are extremely comfortable (especially given that this is a sports car), the power roof is fast and smooth and the overall build quality is excellent. It’s incredibly valuable to drive all these different cars; you really get an idea of what to expect in various price ranges. Sadly, after driving the Audi and Porsche I will not be able to buy another Japanese car. Regardless of the speed of the GT-R, I would buy a Boxster ahead of it. The Porsche is light, agile, fun and still has a comfortable ride over speed bumps and rough surfaces.

I love this car. Right now I think I’d buy one over pretty much anything else on the market except perhaps the Audi R8 V10, but I haven’t driven one of those… yet.