The decision is difficult! Angel or devil? Fire free or pure reason? In front of us, a country road meanders through the picturesque Swabian Alb, no other car far and wide. Behind us, six cylinders roar: “Kick me, kick me”. The joy of driving dynamics gains the upper hand. The fast-paced asphalt polka dance begins. A light pressure on the gas pedal is enough, the speed indicator shoots up and the inferno breaks out. The Porsche 718 Spyder RS sprints off, accompanied by a metallic sawing, garnished with a lustful slurping and sucking that sends the eardrums into raptures. The combustion symphony has an intensity that is second to none. One reason for the feeling of being right in the middle instead of just being there is the intake scoops directly behind the driver and front passenger. “We call it the jukebox,” says Andreas Preuniger, head of the GT road vehicle model series, with a smile.
But the acoustic pleasure also has a dynamic and practical background. “If we had taken the intake system of the normal 718 Spyder, we would have lost 40 to 50 hp,” explains technician Uwe Braun. 368 kW / 500 hp pound the rear axle. Despite four catalytic converters and two petrol particle filters that stalled performance. “If we could, we would have made 520 hp, that wasn’t a question of the stable management,” Andreas Preuninger clarifies. Whether 20 hp more or less, this four-litre, six-cylinder boxer engine is and remains a piece of cake. Even if you already know the engine from various GT and RS models from the Zuffenhausen car manufacturer, it is always an impressive pleasure to see how creamy and powerful the thoroughbred suction cup pushes you from the low revs. Splendid.
All that empowering engineering would fizzle out in boring straight-line acceleration if the rest of the car couldn’t keep up. “The 718 Spyder RS is the antidote for all the race track vehicles,” explains Andreas Preuninger. For this reason there is no official Nordschleife time, despite the set-up runs. The Porsche 718 Spyder RS is an everyday athlete that you can really have fun with on the country road. Left around, right around. Where other vehicles nervously twitch their rear end due to the load change reaction, this 718 Spyder is only in top form. The roadster literally sticks to the road and can be maneuvered around every corner with ease. The way in which the front end swings with relish into every curve has addictive potential. But that is also due to the installed Cup tires, which only fully develop their traction potential when warmed up.
At Porsche, it is now assumed that the steering reports exactly how the traction is going and precisely implements the driver’s commands without reacting nervously from the central position. When you move vehicles from other manufacturers, you sometimes realize that this sounds easier than it is done. That the 718 Spyder RS with a weight of 1,410 kilograms even weighs five kilograms less than the 718 Cayman GT4 RS, although topless speedsters need extra bracing due to the missing roof. If you put the fabric top, which weighs eight kilograms, in the garage, it even weighs 13 kilograms. The effort pays off. The Porsche 718 Spyder RS is a car that even a gentleman driver can easily maneuver. It is precisely this simple-sounding requirement that is difficult to implement. To achieve the axle load distribution of 44 front to 56 rear, the technicians placed the seven-speed dual-clutch transmission behind the engine. However, there is no hand-torn variant for money or good words. That’s where Porsche breaks away from the tradition of power models to a certain extent. But with good reason, because a new manual gearbox would have had to be developed, which would have been very expensive. After all, you can use the gear stick in the center console to click through the gears sequentially by hand.
There is also a chassis that lowers the body 30 millimeters compared to the Normalo Boxter. At this level, common sense in tuning expects a tough tuning that makes the tooth inlays tremble when driving over a pebble. The Über-718 is not a sedan chair, but it isn’t as disc-destroying as assumed. One reason for this is the reduced spring rates compared to the Cayman 718 GT4 RS: 45 at the front instead of 100 and 80 at the rear instead of 140. The result is less “spiky” handling and, above all, more traction out of the corners. Which results in predictable behavior of the car. Short. With this Porsche you can drive extremely fast without having to bite the steering wheel. Details such as wider track widths at the front and rear, ball joints at all connection points of the chassis and a rear wheel camber that is a quarter of a degree higher are further reasons for the neutral handling. “We balanced the car precisely,” says Uwe Braun. We can only nod in agreement. The set-up work is important because the 718 Spyder RS lacks the GT-typical giant plank. It would also go badly with a roadster.
When things really get going, the 718 Spyder RS reaches the 100 km/h mark from a standing start in 3.4 seconds and has a top speed of 308 km/h. Especially when changing lanes quickly, the Gurney flap on the ducktail spoiler adds a shot of reassuring additional stability. But it is only available with the Weissach package, which costs an extra 11,965.45 euros. Only for the exterior. The interior then costs another 1,755.25 euros. Instead, there is more leather and Race-Tex, basically Alcantara. Especially since the Porsche 718 Spyder RS is not a bargain with a basic price of 155,575 euros. Our test car, including the aforementioned Weissach package and various other extras such as the 20-inch tires with magnesium rims (14,875 euros), costs 198.177 euros.
But before you can enjoy the real Spyder feeling by pounding around corners topless, you have to dismantle the top yourself. The procedure is similar to putting on an elaborate holiday costume and it takes a lot of practice before you can do it on your own. But the dynamic reward of the low weight due to the lack of servomotors is all the greater. In any case, you should only move this Spyder in perfect weather and topless. The infotainment is just as archaic as the hood, which with the outdated graphics and the DVD slot under the small monitor can hide its proximity to the Boxster 987 and 981 series. But at that time the principle applied that as a Porsche driver you didn’t need any complex infotainment. “This is the sharpest 718 we’ve ever built,” says Andreas Preuninger proudly.
