The 2024 Porsche 718 Spyder RS Is a Brilliant $165,000 Boxster

this is the new 2024 Porsche 718 spider RS and it's a new high performance version of the Porsche 718 Boxster with a sticker price of around $200,000 2000 Grand for a boxer it may seem crazy but this car is crazy and today I'm going to review it and show you all of its quirks and features [Applause] [Music] today's video is brought to you by cars and bids my online Enthusiast car auction site that recently sold this and this and this and this and this check it out at carsand bids.com all right time for a full review at the quirks and features of the new Porsche 718 spider RS starting with what is it you could think of this car as the convertible version of the new Cayman GT4 RS which is an insane high performance version of the Porsche Cayman that's been getting a lot of interest and excitement this is essentially a convertible version of that but with some big changes and not just to the convertible top I'll get to that but the spider RS has the most important thing shared with the GT4 RS which is the powertrain the 4 L naturally aspirated Flat 6 lifted from the 911 GT3 and put into a boxer this engine is unchanged from the GT4 RS they're identical it has about 495 horsepower and about 330 lbet of torque and it's roughly 80 horsepower more than the boxer spider which is already the high performance version of the boxer which is already a high performance sports car Porsche says 0 to 60 is around 3 seconds with this car which is amazing and just like the GT4 RS it's going to be offered with Porsche's pdk dual clutch automatic transmission only you can't get three pedals and a manual in this car now as for pricing the 718 spyer RS base price is equivalent exactly equal to the Cayman GT4 RS base price at right around $165,000 now earlier I mentioned this car costs around $200,000 and that's because the price can increase significantly with options which I will show you in a few minutes but as far as base price they're the same and you basically pick your poison you want the convertible or the coupe and if you get the convertible you get more changes than just the convertible top like I mentioned obviously that is the biggest distinction from the Cayman GT4 RS but it's not just that because this car is a convertible and Porsche FS it's probably not going to be the high performance track weapon that the coupe is it's a softer car in fact Porsche has reduced the spring rates on the suspension to give it a softer ride more compliant more daily driver usable instead of the hardcore track suspension that you get in the GT4 RS also while both the spyer RS and the GT4 RS have been lowered compared to the standard model the GT4 RS was lowered 2 in this is only 1.2 in lower than a regular boxers so again you got more suspension travel it's going to be more compliant softer ride and you can clear obstacles a little bit better since the ground clearance is a little higher and there are huge Aero differences between the two cars major aerodynamic changes the most obvious is the spider RS doesn't have the giant wing on the back that you see on the GT4 RS instead the spider RS gets this ductail spoiler which for a ductail is still pretty large but it's no near as big is that giant GT4 RS rear wing now the result of that smaller spoiler in back means that Porsche had to decrease some of the other Arrow around the car in order to make the complete package still flow as it's supposed to so you also get a smaller front splitter in the spyer RS it's hard to tell unless the two cars are directly next to each other but indeed this one is smaller and some of the aerodynamic features underneath the car underneath the GT4 RS have been removed for the spider RS because it's not as aerodynamically aggressive so as you think of this as the convertible GT4 RS it's really more appropriate to call it the convertible Road and Street focused GT4 RS not as track crazy but it's going to be more usable frankly where people are more likely to use it on fun back roads where you don't have to deal with that harsh suspension quite as much but the roof really is the biggest change of this car over the GT4 RS and it's not just that the spyer RS is a convertible it's that this car has the single most bizarre convertible top operation of any convertible car I have ever reviewed in 10 years thousands of videos doing this the craziest weirdest most insane convertible top is right here and I will demonstrate putting it on and taking it off here goes you start the process on the key fob by opening up this rear deck lid it pops open a little bit you come around to the back of the car and open it up all of the way that's not too insane but it gets crazier from there you physically lift the roof out of the car it is a piece that you manually open it doesn't stay put you take it out and then try to line it up with the top of the windshield now before you do that I forgot you have to unlatch the latch on the convertible top which you had to latch earlier when you closed it I'll show you that in a minute but anyway you line it up with the top of the windshield if you can and then you reach under here and latch it in place now the top is physically on the car we're making progress from there you begin rolling the top back unfurling it to get it onto the car and your first step is taking this bar that's attached to the top and sticking it inside these little holes that are designed for the bar now next you have this little wire flopping around on the side with that you take this plastic handle in the top storage area and operate it almost like a parking brake you move it up and then kind of push it forward and this little Hook is where you're trying to get your wire to stick into you do that on one side then you walk around over to the other side and you do it there as well then you go back to your little parking brake handle and you tension it you use that to tension it so the top is well tense now from there you move the cloth Parts over to the back and I should mention at this point you have a choice you can continue and finish the top operation if you wish or you can put on the full top which comes in this bag that's stored in the rear cargo area you open this up and you can see there's another cloth top situation that includes windows and if you want to put that on you snap the windows into these little snaps and get the top in place and that creates an actual true physical top seal so that rain or wind won't get into the car but that's an extra step and it's actually rather difficult to do as you can see what I'm going to do here though is foro the windows and instead just put on most of the top which actually is what I suspect most of the owners of this car will be doing most of the time but anyway your next goal is to close the trunk the deck lid in back you got to get it all the way down and closed and apparently if it closes then you know that you've done the top right so far and indeed it does from here you take these red Loops that are sticking up outside the trunk and open up these little latches which pop open and from there you stick this little piece into the receiver component on the latch and then you push it down you got to do that over here on this side as well and it's in the receiver it's pushed down and now the top is on shall we take it off now before I do that I do want to stress again this is just the bikini top position that's what they call it it's not fully sealed there's still openings on the side as you can see where air and water can get in if you want to fully seal it you'll have to use those windows I showed you earlier and add that step to the top putting on process but next we remove the top which is basically the same process backward but with a few interesting twists so we begin by pulling the red Loop which releases the tension on the cloth top part itself and again we got to do that on both sides now that's done then we go over to the deck lid press the key fob and open it on up and now it's completely open then we go back to our plastic parking brake handle which by the way is only on the passenger side of the car there's only one of these plastic parking brake handles to relieve the tension and you push it upwards to relieve then the little wire is FL floppy over here then we go over here and the wire is floppy again then we take this bar out of the little holes behind the seats and then this is the hardest part we roll up the top but you have to do it very tightly I'll show you why it's easier to show you from over here so we roll roll roll the top trying to get it as tight as possible in a little Circle because it's going to have to get stored in the back and there's not that much room for it now we get the top to this position and we have to go under here press this red button to release the top latch which we did oh now the tension is out there and we continue to finish taking it off the car then with the top rolled up it finds its way back in to the rear of the car where you then have to make sure it's all the way down or else the trunk won't close and so we do that here that side looks good we have to make sure this latch is closed in the center so it's good on this side too and then we close the rear deck lid and that's when we find out if our roll was tight enough if it actually closes which it does then you manually close and latch each of these two latches on the side and you're now completely finished taking the roof off the spider RS just as easy as pushing a button yes that's the top it's so absurd that it almost seems like the Germans want me to make fun of them for their idiotic radical over Engineering in the face of practicality and usability for their stupid design that makes the roof on a boxer spider seem like the top softly closing automatically on a Rolls-Royce Dawn the Germans want me to make fun of them but I won't instead I'll just say that this whole Contraption saves 36 lb compared to the power operator soft top in a standard boxer and since we're talking about weight savings let's talk about some of the stuff that makes this car cost the sticker is right here $217,000 I said the starting price was around 165 well this one has a lot of options one of them is the viso package which adds a lot of carbon fiber all over the car to make it lighter that includes carbon fiber on the mirrors as you can see carbon fiber on the roll Hoops which looks cool you get carbon fiber on this side air intake the seats themselves are these carbon fiber buckets very harsh but lightweight and they even say viso stitched into the headrest and you have this carbon fiber hood that saves extra weight looks cool and in keeping with the weight savings the Porsche logo is replaced with a sticker to trim those extra pounds unfortunately the vceo package all this stuff together costs $1,570 extra and it goes from there this car has the forged magnesium Wheels they save 21b compared to the standard non forged Magnesium Wheel but they cost $15 15,644 per pound of weight savings this car also has carbon ceramic brakes which cost $8,000 extra and on and on with other little stuff that really adds up to bring the total cost to $217,000 although I will say this is probably the way you want to order your spyer RS with the viso package the Magnesium Wheels all the stuff that maximizes the performance it's just going to be costly but anyway on the other exterior quirks of this car Beyond a crazy top probably the biggest is the air intake located right here directly behind well your ears when you're sitting inside the car you got one driver and passenger side the Cayman GT4 RS a lot has been made about its very cool air intake in roughly the same position but even though the spider RS doesn't have a roof it still keeps the air intake we'll see how it feels and how it sounds when I get behind the wheel and speaking of exterior adornment even though this car doesn't have all of the arrow that the GT4 RS does it has some you still get these holes right above the wheels on the front fenders you get these naad ducts on the hood and you have canards in front of the whole setup to maximize aerodynamics this car may not quite be the track weapon that the Cayman version is but it still has a lot of the good stuff even though it might not have it all but anyway next we move inside the spider RS and in this interior Alanta and carbon fiber absolutely dominant you have alcanta on the steering wheel as you can see you have it along the entire upper part of the dashboard basically covering the entire thing you have it on the shift boot right here more Alcantara and on the door panel alcanta for Acres going across the whole thing on this particular spider RS the owner even selected the Alanta center console lid with the Porsche Crest pushed into it and alcanta sun visors which seems like an odd choice but it makes sense in this car to match all of the rest of the alcanta in here and then you have the carbon fiber as you can see basically the whole center console is carbon fiber trimmed you also have a lot of carbon fiber over on the door panel and on the dashboard in fact even this panel that covers up the cup holders is carbon fiber you push to open and then you can pull out your cup holders and you have a place to store your drinks while you're driving your spider RS in anger and there's a lot of settings in here that help you maximize your high performance driving you look here in the center console there are several different buttons basically all of which are for performance there's pdk sport that puts the transmission in sport mode for quicker shifts the button with the shock absorber that of course turns on sport suspension the button with the exhaust that turns on the sport exhaust which sounds pretty good take a listen of course here you also have ESC off that turns off stability control and ESC plus traction control off if you want to go a step further and another button in here this one is the axle lifter it's an option on this car but you press it and of course it lifts up the front end ever so slightly so you can clear steep driveways and other difficult angles even easier without scraping the front of the car underneath but mostly the big important story of this interior is that it's from the boxer which means that this is just a fairly reasonable competent capable car and as I've always said I love buying exotic sports cars like this one from companies that make regular cars because they don't do stupid stuff to limit your practicality or your usability and in this car that means for one thing storage you got two different storage pockets on the the door panel one behind some netting and then another one in front of it you also have center console storage pop open the alcantra Porsche Crest and there's space in there along with ports to plug in your device and you have a glove box in this car just like of course you would in the Boxster plus the aforementioned cup holders as far as technology you got that too Center screen touchscreen it's pretty simple but it responds great and it includes apple carplay and you have another screen in the gauge cluster that lets you scroll through all sorts of different menu items to see exactly what information display you want to see this car also has cruise control which is a nice touch in an ultra high performance car like this one and even voice control you tap the end of the turn signal stock and you can talk to the car and tell it what you want to do and you even have dual zone climate control in here so driver and passenger can set their own climate temperatures now even with all that stuff this car still has some silly high performance things like these really tight seats that grab you in place they're kind of difficult to sit in to be honest and certainly difficult to get in and out of you also get the Porsche weight saving fabric Loops to open the doors instead of a traditional door handle they give you these I guess to feel sportier because it certainly doesn't save any real weight especially when it's perched there next to the power windows and power mirrors that nobody buying this car would really want to live without so we'll will save weight in some places the door handles but the power windows no no we need to have those and similar to the rest of the car in terms of surprising practicality up front it's just like a box turn and so that means you get a pretty sizable trunk a decent cargo storage area up front where well you can stick stuff you don't lose any of that just cuz you choose the RS you even have a little latch in here that people can pull to release themselves if you try to kidnap them in your 78 spider RS and it's the same deal in back pop open that giant rear panel and not only does it give you access to the roof components but there's another storage area back there as you can see part of this space is taken up by that bag containing the extra top window part if you want to put it on but most of the space is open and available again for extra storage in this surprisingly practical car considering its hard-edged performance capabilities you also have another latch in the back where again people can release themselves if you try to kidnap them so don't go kidnapping people front or rear trunk in your 718 spider RS it won't work all right driving the spider RS I have been looking forward to this for a long time I love the GT4 I love the boxer spider and I love the GT4 RS they're all fantastic cars and as you may know if you've been watching a lot of my videos I'm more of a con convertible guy and and I live here in Southern California where it doesn't rain all that often and you can use a convertible pretty much year round and that negates the whole issue with the top too I mean if I own this car I don't think I would ever put the roof on there's really no need to all right so starting the drive clear as day the intake noise is just fantastic that's one of the coolest things about the GT4 RS but here it's even cooler you hear it even better listen to that oh it's just so fcking in that air and it sounds so good so mechanical so cool oh that is [Music] fantastic that is the most wonderful combination of intake and exhaust that you can have that is a amazing sound just wonderful sound let's listen oh that's so good that's so good that alone is worth the price of admission oh my God I love that oh this is just stupendous superb Magnificent the sound is incredible okay I got to talk about more than just the sound it's not just the sound that's amazing the steering is fantastic tremendously precise and so is the handling that the car is flat it is predictable it Corners perfectly and you know exactly where it's going to go I will say I think that a lot of people talk about oh the the coupe is harder and I can tell and I'm a really serious driver so I can tell the difference of a little bit of spring rate actually in this case I do think you can tell it is a softer car I have the sport the suspension in sport and it's still a softer ride than the GT4 RS and going around corners it just doesn't feel quite as aggressive for me personally that's a good thing the GT4 RS is really pretty aggressive car and it's for guys who really want a cosplay like they uh like Racers when really they have a a center touchcreen and and power windows you want you want to drive a hard Edge car get in the Countach okay this more gives you what I think most people actually want which is this feeling of great handling and great steering without getting completely beaten up [Music] this car is just so good it's so perfectly well-rounded especially if you're into convertibles I could see people preferring the GT4 RS for a lot of reasons however as a Southern California guy as someone who's realistic about how I plan to use a car like this uh it would be a convertible for me in a second it's much easier to drive on the street it's a little slower to rotate in terms of cornering but it's still so much better than basically every other car in existence and the sound from that intake noise is just better than the coupe it just is and it's just it's so precise you get the wind in your hair The Full Experience of an open car I mean this is this is about as close to a perfect sports car as you're going to get in the modern era just before everybody switches over to the world of you know plug-in hybrids and electrics and that includes this car the only drawback is I wish it had a manual transmission and I know that's the common complaint about this car oh it should be a manual and it's said by people who have never driven one or even be around one but I've driven several GT4 rs's now plus this they're amazing cars but man three pedals would change everything it would change everything it would just make it even more engaging and involving the Dual clutch is incredible and it's going to be perfect on the racetrack but the 911 St proves that a manual is possible in a car like this now deliver it deliver it give us one last swan song before you ruin this car by making it electric please I am astonishly impressed with this car just like I was with the GT4 RS but I like this better I like the softer ride it feels better I like the sound more and I just like an open car more that's what a true sports car is and should be and that's what this is to either way you're getting I mean Porsche is coming to the Pinnacle of the combustion engine car uh and this is one of the great drives that's out there right now just really really a fantastic vehicle in basically every way and even though you have to have an automatic transmission it is also a joy one of the very best and even the feedback on the shift pedals and on the gear selector when you select gears with that is just perfect a really wonderful car and it is not ruined by the roof the roof is stupid but just don't ever put it on drive the car only on sunny days and enjoy it for what it's meant to be which is just almost perfect and so that's the 2024 Porsche 78 spider RS this is a fantastic car in my opinion one of the greatest sports cars on sale today at any price you hear some of those Porsche losers saying oh the boxer it's no 911 it's not as good as the 911 well this one is it's better and now it's time to give the spider RX yes a Doug score and the Doug score is here 68 out of 100 which actually places the spider RS here against some similar cars ahead of the GT4 RS but just barely and only based on one point for styling frankly I think that's reasonable I would rather have the spider RS than the GT4 RS as it offers slightly more Comfort a top- down driving experience and it skips some of the goofy design details of the GT4 RS the drawbacks are a bizarre top mechanism and a little less focused high performance Driving Experience but I think the spider RS is better matched with how people actually use their cars with an emphasis on road driving enjoyment over track use overall I love this car and I'm so glad to get some time with it I just wish it had three pedals [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 101,575

Keywords: porsche boxster spyder rs, Porsche review, Doug demuro, Doug DeMuro porsche boxster, Boxster rs spyder, 718 Spyder rs

Id: KiNwJhG9jT8

Length: 27min 36sec (1656 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 16 2024