brauhaus

Congrats, it looks great. Did you test drive the other trim models before you picked up the club? If so, how did they feel without the LSD?

Nip are

I test drove a club and a GT back to back same loop. It wasn't spirited enough to notice the LSD though since buying mine and driving it pretty hard I can definitely feel it working. I did notice the suspension difference between the two and preferred the club. Both are fairly soft but the club had less body roll and felt more buttoned down. Bump compliance was very similar on both cars. I'm considering coil-overs for mine both to lower it a bit and firm it up. It handles well stock but ld like some adjustability.

hf1

CaymanSinAR

I could talk about this all day long but I'm at work so I have to keep it super short. I'll come back later with a much longer answer.

Are both of your current Porsches only for the track? If so, get a Boxster. If not, get a Miata.

There are some exceptions to what I say above but I'll touch on those in my longer post.

Hoodoo

Having owned a 2016 Club with the BBS/Brembo package and driven a 981 Boxster S (and 981 CS), I'd take the 981 Boxster any day. The ND is fun, but needs tweaking to be the perfect back-road bomber. The car bobs & weaves way too much on the stock suspension and it could use a bit more power. I live at ~8000 ft above sea level, so YMMV. I'm sure either generation Spyder would be an even better bet.

hf1

Thx. The SPB is the only track car at the moment -- mostly for racing, not doing much DE's these days. The GT3 is exclusively for back-roads duty. I'm sensing your logic lines up with mine and would suggest getting the MX-5 as a much lighter, lower HP counter-balance/complement to the heavier and much stronger GT3? I get plenty of that Porsche feel and mechanical, analog rawness with the 6gt3 (with Motons and monoball suspension).

FYI, I used to have a 987.1 Boxster S (standard suspension) which I bought new in 2006, kept stock, and sold six years later. I loved it.

Looking forward to your longer post.

hf1

Is that with the sportiest mx-5 suspension or the base one? Part of the back-roads fun, for me, is the challenge of maintaining momentum in turns with a low HP car and maintaining composure with a softer-sprung car. Plus, NE country-roads are not famous for their smoothness so softer springs are often more fun.

Suicide Jockey

Love the resurrection of old threads!

On the issue of the Spyder roofs, I guess one man's hassle = another man's pleasure. When technology is moving so quickly to separate us from experiencing, touching, and feeling things firsthand, I welcome any chance I get to lay hands on my car and interact with it directly.

I leave my Spyder in the garage with the roof up, unlike some here that stow the car with the top down, mainly because I look so forward to the act of lowering the roof. To me, I don't see it as a pain at all, but as a sheer delight. It's an opportunity to witness all the engineering and technology that went into what seems like the miles and miles of lightweight metal it took to build that trunk lid.




What a piece of work that thing is and I'm reminded of it each and every time I put that roof up or down. If from the comfort of the driver's seat all I had to do was push a button, I would be missing out on all the fun! For me there is still a sense of occasion when that marvelous expanse of aluminum pops open, lifts up slightly, and then sort of cantilevers back toward you as it is raised in all it's glory. Some serious engineering went into that thing.

I'm also blown away by the light mass of the lid. Because it's such a huge piece and it's made of metal, your brain is telling you when you first raise it that it is going to take some effort, but then your senses quickly make you realize that, no, it's light as a feather. There's that momentary disconnect between my brain and my senses that I love, something akin perhaps to picking up a 47mm Ti Panerai, for instance, and being initially shocked by how its lightweight totally belies its size.

I usually raise the lid just part way and then pause for a moment to admire the two humps from a different angle - closer to eye level - than what you do when the trunk is closed. Beautiful! Pure sculptural art. And then once it's fully raised, I look at the lid's support system, the braces, the bars going this way and that. Again, some thought really went into its design. And I admire how two of the supports are drilled out. Porsche certainly didn't have to do that. No one spends much time looking in their trunk, but there they are - two drilled out supports with three holes each. A nice little touch.





The pics don't do it justice. I wish I had more close-ups handy. While it might be hard to get very excited about a trunk lid, trust me, it's easy to do on the 981 Spyder.

"Involving" is the word that keeps coming to mind as I think about raising and lowering the roof. Simplier doesn't always mean better. Sometimes simplier means you're missing out on some exquisite details that cannot be appreciated by the mere pushing of a button.

hf1

Jockey, I appreciate the thoughts on the spyder roof. I saw a few yt videos on opening and closing the roof and I too was impressed by the quick procedure and the lightness of the lid and the roof. The cons against it in my case would be:

1.) I live on a (hard packed) dirt road, about 300ft away from asphalt which oftentimes gets a little dusty in the summer so I was used to driving my Boxster on it with the roof closed (to keep the dust away from the interior) only to open it when I reached the asphalt. Then the same on the way back but in reverse. I would do this without stopping. I can see how stopping and doing the spyder-roof dance at each cross of the asphalt/dirt border (in front of neighbors' houses) could get old over time.

2.) I often combine country back-road joyrides with meeting friends for coffee/lunch or whatever which adds a couple more spyder-roof dances to the show.

3.) It rains much more often here in the NE vs CA. A summer shower or a sprinkle could catch you any time. A push-button roof is much more enticing than stopping and doing the spyder-roof dance each time the rain starts/stops. If I lived in CA and with no dirt-road segment, I would probably leave the top open at all times.

Suicide Jockey

^^^ hf1, you present three good reasons why an auto top makes sense in your particular case. I get it, particularly the part about having to daily travel an unpaved stretch of road and the dust that can kick up.

Having said that, and at the risk of getting WAY too far afield (my specialty!), the convenience of an automatic top, though admittedly trivial in the grand scheme of things, reminds me of the following article which appeared in the Feb. 18th issue of the NYT, entitled, "The Tyranny of Convenience," which can be found here:"So let's reflect on the tyranny of convenience, try more often to resist its stupefying power, and see what happens. We must never forget the joy of doing something slow and something difficult, the satisfaction of not doing what is easiest. The constellation of inconvenient choices may be all that stands between us and a life of total, efficient conformity."


Appreciate you indulging me as I use your automatic roof example and go off on a philosophical tangent about the pros and cons of technology that is making everything so damn easy, a topic that's been on my mind as of late.

Suicide Jockey

Back on topic . . .

I've never driven a Miata on really great roads, but I'd have to imagine its FPG numbers (fun per gallon) exceed even those of the 981 Spyder, mainly due to the Miata's enviable weight.

hf1

Jockey, I appreciated the article but I thought it was beating up a strawman and found it to be logically inconsistent. If an activity or a process gives you pleasure then, by all means, take the longer road and take your time to do it. The author says that "you need not churn your own butter or hunt your own meat" but his boundaries and delineations of what constitutes too much or too little convenience are mere aesthetics (subjective valuations). Some people love to churn their own butter and hunt their own meat. To me, opening or closing a roof of a roadster is an activity similar to changing a wheel or changing oil. Some people enjoy and look forward to doing those -- I see them as chores that must be done on my way to enjoying the car on back-roads. I hope this made sense and thx for the fun segway.

Hoodoo

My car was a Club, which had the "sport" suspension.

That describes the ND exactly, so it sounds like it's time to start shopping.

fast1

To me the only downside to the Miata is its size. I live in a land of mostly monster SUVs driven by inattentive drivers. The Miata is so tiny that I doubt SUV drivers can even see them on the country roads on which I drive. Otherwise it's a great value, and probably the best fun car for the street. Moreover, the maintenance for a Miata is peanuts, whereas it's caviar for a Porsche.

spyderphile

If you want to run through tight backroads at high RPM without excessively exceeding posted speed limits, while enjoying an organic engine note, then I would add S2000 to the list. In my view, for the spirited street driving, it is probably the best. The gearing is super low. Low end torque is non-existent. So, you will shift a lot, near redline. The sound is organic and musical. Extremely reliable. The styling is understated and timeless. Though somewhat heavy (about 2850 lbs), highly tossable; much better than 981 Spyder. You can place it exactly where you want. With little mods, you can make it a solid performer for the backroads. Build quality is superb. Very practical if it needs to be. Oh, and, it has got power top!

I consider 981 Spyder to be near-perfect package (tall gearing ruins the experience), at any price. S2000 is pretty close, in my experience and for my needs.