I’ve a full day to get acquainted with Porsche’s most evocative new car in years

Friday, September 30th, 1955 was shaping up to be the start of a great weekend for Jimmy Dean.

Free at last from the on-set pressures of filming, not to mention the killjoy ‘no racing’ clause written in to his contract for his third movie, Giant, he had good reason to be happy. For today was his long-awaited opportunity to bond with his new Porsche 550 Spyder.

Dean was a proper petrolhead, having previously owned a 356 Speedster and an MG TD before that. He’d already been bitten by the racing bug, and scored some good finishes in the 356, but the success of East of Eden, his debut movie, meant he’d been able to indulge his passion and upgrade to the lithe, pocket-sized road-racer.

Not all Jimmy’s circle of friends and colleagues ‘got’ the Spyder, with its exposed cockpit. Some of them even seemed spooked by it, which gave him all the reason he needed to have its profane nickname – ‘Little Bastard’ – painted on the tail. Never one to waste time, no sooner had Giant’s director cried ‘It’s a wrap!’ than Jimmy left the film studios and headed straight for the racecar tuning shop at Competition Motors in North Hollywood, where the Spyder was waiting.

The plan had been to trailer the Porsche to Salinas Airport, venue for the weekend’s racing activity, 270 kilometres or so to the north. But when Dean arrived he asked them to unload it so that he could use the journey to get a feel for the car. And so, with shirtsleeves rolled-up, sunglasses on and his regulation cigarette hanging effortlessly from his mouth, Jimmy and his buddies struck out for Salinas: mechanic and friend Rolf Wütherich riding shotgun in the 550’s exposed cockpit; Bill Hickman (his language coach) and photographer Sanford Roth following behind in Dean’s Ford Country Squire station wagon with the trailer.

By mid-afternoon their convoy had attracted some unwanted attention from the California Highway Patrol, which resulted in both Dean and Hickman getting tickets for modest speed infringements. It was a petty deal, but Jimmy had spent enough time at the wheel of exotic, alien-looking German sports cars to know his raucous-sounding silver Spyder wasn’t the stealthiest device, especially for patrolmen with CHiPs on their shoulders.

With the sun beginning to sink and the big Ford a speck in his mirrors, he peeled off Route 466, pausing at a gas station in Lost Hills to refuel, allow the guys in the Ford to catch up and to rendezvous with a few of his racing friends who were also heading to Salinas. When Roth and Hickman arrived, Roth had just enough time to grab some candid shots before Jimmy lit another cigarette, jumped into the Porsche and gunned it back out onto Route 466 for the final leg of the journey…

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 is shaping up to be an equally good day for Dickie Meaden. The sky is a cloudless, gas-flame blue, and while there’s a chill in the air, this California winter’s morning is doing a damned good impression of what summer days should always look like. Better still I’ve got the key to a silver Boxster Spyder in my pocket and a full-day’s driving in which to get acquainted with Porsche’s most evocative new car in years.

Of course, were it not for the connection to Dean it’s doubtful even Stuttgart’s open-minded money men would have seen the merit in building a lightweight, low-volume Boxster that discards one of the best power hoods in the business for what, on the face of it, looks like a cross between a skullcap and a catapult. True, there’s plenty of motorsport pedigree pinned to the Spyder name, but still, in a game of word association, when someone says ‘Porsche Spyder’ I’d wager the first thought that crosses your mind is James Dean.

Word association’s one thing, brand association quite another. In these hyper-litigious times, the prospect of a global megastar meeting a grisly end in one of your sports cars is the stuff of defence lawyers’ nightmares. Yet there’s no question that in the fateful, sickening split-second when a lumbering Ford Custom Tudor coupe driven by a 23-year-old student called Donald Turnupseed collided almost head-on with Dean’s skeletal 550 Spyder, it wasn’t just the 24-year-old actor that was immortalised.

Whatever the motivation, I’m glad Porsche has built the Boxster Spyder. Predictably, the cynics have poured scorn on it, poking fun at the vestigial roof and wondering who on earth is going to buy such a compromised car. But consider the facts. Most significantly, the Spyder is the lightest car Porsche builds. At 1275kg it’s some 80kg lighter than the Boxster S on which it’s based, thanks in large part to the use of aluminium for the doors and bespoke ‘double-dome’ engine cover, which together save 18kg. Sports seats shed another 12kg, while shallower side windows save more precious weight. Gone is the electric roof – replaced by 6kg-worth of canvas and carbonfibre bracing rods – and so too are the air-conditioning system and the in-car entertainment if you so wish. New ten-spoke ‘Spyder’ design 19in wheels are the lightest of that size that Porsche makes. Such obsessive weight loss alone qualifies the Spyder for RS status.

Further grist to the RennSport-by-another-name mill comes courtesy of the 316bhp 3.4-litre DFI flat-six engine, which delivers 10bhp and 8lb ft more than in the Boxster S and has a greater appetite for revs. The chassis also reflects the Spyder’s uncompromising brief. Lowered by 20mm and employing firmer fixed-rate dampers and stiffer springs (PASM is not available), thicker anti-roll bars and a slightly wider front and rear track (thanks to those new rims), the combined effect of the suspension drop and weight-loss programme has lowered the Spyder’s centre of gravity by 25mm compared with the Boxster S.

All Spyders come with a limited-slip diff, and our car has the unfashionable six-speed H-pattern transmission. I’m pleased about this, for not only is it more engaging than the optional PDK ’box, but it’s 30kg or so lighter. This seems wholly appropriate to the Spyder ethos, even if you do sacrifice a few tenths of a second in the 5.0sec sprint from 0-100kph. Despite the lack of the deliciously vocal sports exhaust upgrade, optional PCCB brakes mean our car is in full anorexic spec.

There are plenty of great roads in this part of northern California, notably Highway 1. If our sole objective was to find out if the Spyder’s any good that’s exactly where we’d head. However, there’s a far more emotive duty to fulfil today: to complete Jimmy Dean’s last journey.

‘The Alcantara-rimmed wheel connects you to the action like no other mid-engined Porsche’

Time is tight if we’re going to make the 480-kilometre round trip and get some pictures, but we like a mission here at evo, so we slap on the sunblock and nail it for Cholame. Handily, we’re soon on an excellent mountain road that takes us within spitting distance of Laguna Seca. It’s a pretty much relentless sequence of sweeps and curves, twists and turns. None so severe as a European hairpin, but the tightest are sufficiently coiled to need second gear, while the faster bends suck you in and force you to turn, brake and come down a couple of gears as the Tarmac tightens and you dive towards the apex.

Like many US roads, the surface alternates between silky smooth and frost-riven craters, then back again in the space of a kilometre. This road is no exception, but rather than expose the limitations and compromises of the Spyder’s lower, stiffer, non-PASM set-up, the car rides the lumps and bumps with smooth assurance. Yes it’s firm, but there’s no sharpness or jarring, so you’re left to enjoy the clean, direct turn-in and sweetly progressive, elastic-feeling reserves of grip and equally emphatic stopping power. You can lean ever harder on the chassis and it just seems to soak up the lateral loading, each additional fraction of a G generating a tangible increase in weight and feel through the Alcantara-rimmed steering wheel. It connects you to the action like no other mid-engined Porsche this side of a Carrera GT.

‘A silver Porsche Spyder has finally made it to Salinas. Jimmy’s journey is complete at last’

All too soon we’re heading along Highway 101, but at least it provides the excuse and opportunity to extend the Spyder’s flat-six in search of that extra 10bhp. Unsurprisingly the motor doesn’t feel hugely different in character to that of a regular Boxster S, but what you do notice is an unmistakable sense of increased urgency to the way it accelerates. Despite being loaded with two blokes and a lot of camera gear, the Spyder responds more keenly to the command of your right foot, even in fifth and sixth gears. One-up with no luggage there’s no doubt this Boxster has a meaningful performance advantage, and while PDK is more accelerative, the gearstick is a perfect partner for the Spyder’s back-to-basics style.

I honestly didn’t think I’d feel particularly emotional when we arrive in Cholame (pronounced show-lamb). After all, Dean died sixteen years before I was born, by which time his preternatually beautiful face had long since become a kind of iconic tragi-brand for successive generations of disaffected youths. But as we stop by the sign, walk across to the memorial, visit the Jack’s Ranch Diner and ultimately make our way to the accident site itself, I suddenly feel increasingly and unexpectedly melancholy.

To say Cholame is a one-horse town is polite understatement. There’s a steady flow of traffic today, but it’s not what you’d call busy. Fifty-five years ago it must have been desolate. It occurs me that the odds of Dean even meeting an on-coming car must have been slim, let alone having the misfortune to collide almost head-on. It also strikes me that this is a lonely, barren place to die.

The sun’s setting directly in our face as we turn and head for Salinas. Turnupseed claimed he never saw Dean’s low-slung Spyder in the moments before the accident, and in a spooky moment of spectral enlightenment I can appreciate why. Even though it was Dean that was heading into the blinding orange horizon, the dazzling reflection cast from the silver bodywork of his car could quite easily have concealed his presence. It’s one of the futile but irresistible ‘if-only’ scenarios that run through your mind when contemplating such tragic and apparently avoidable events.

Despite my best efforts to get a speeding ticket in Dean’s honour on the fast, straight Highway 101 (267kh is certainly feasible), the Smokies aren’t taking the bait. Still the sun has outrun us and it’s pitch black as we roll up to the perimeter fence at Salinas Municipal Airport. The last hour or so has been cold but the roof has remained stowed, as it has all day, the potent heater doing a valiant job of supplementing our hats and coats in keeping our extremities warm. No rolled-up shirtsleeves and a smouldering Marlboro for us.

There’s nothing to mark the specific importance of this unexceptional provincial airport, but then it occurs to me that in the handful of hours it has taken us to drive from Cholame, this destination has assumed a far greater significance than I ever thought it would. So too, I’m pleased to say, has the Boxster Spyder.

It could so easily have been a folly that proved the cynics right, but instead I think it’s a brilliant success. Its distinctive looks, pared-back build and driver-centric focus leave an enduring impression; a vivid, deep-seated desire that conventional Boxsters – hugely accomplished though they are – never seem to manage, at least for me. Perhaps most importantly, tonight sees a silver Porsche Spyder finally make it to Salinas. Jimmy’s journey is complete at last.