If there’s one car manufacturer that has perfected the art of making small changes to its cars and marketing them as fully fledged new models, then it’s Porsche. You need only look at the 911 for proof of this. The 911 has virtually remained unchanged over the past decade, and yet it remains one of the best-selling supercars on the market each year. The same can be said about Porsche’s entry-level model, the Boxster. Apart from a few engine revisions and styling tweaks, the new Boxster isn’t all that different to the very first model, which was launched back in 1996, and it enjoys similar success to the 911. Porsche’s whole philosophy is ‘why fix something that isn’t broken,’ and all you have to do is look at the 911’s performance credentials to realise that this is a car that certainly works.

That’s why the new Boxster Spyder comes as something of a surprise, as it represents a significant revision of the standard Boxster. As this is Porsche, however, we know this is not simply change for change’s sake. The car was officially launched at the Los Angeles Motor Show late last year and is not only the lightest model in Porsche’s current lineup, but it’s arguably one of the best looking, too. Harking back to the legendary Porsche 550 of the 1950s, the Boxster Spyder gets a new soft-top roof and the characteristic aerodynamic ‘humps’ at the rear, which was a trademark feature of the original car.

Tipping the scales at 1,275kg, the Boxster Spyder is some 80kg lighter than the Boxster S and significantly faster, too. Porsche has tuned the Boxster’s 3.4-litre flat-six engine to produce 10hp more than the standard model, giving it an impressive total output of 320hp. Thanks to the increase in power and decrease in weight, the Porsche Boxster Spyder covers the race from 0-100km/h in just 4.8 seconds, and cruises on to a top speed of 267km/h (top down), putting it firmly into Audi TT RS and BMW M3 territory. Porsche’s renowned PDK transmission system provides lightning-fast gear changes, while the car is also fitted with a launch control system as standard. So, the new Boxster Spyder is lighter, faster and much better looking than the standard Boxster. And to think, we’d had it pegged as another pointless special edition…

Click here for a video of the official launch of the Boxster Spyder