The Porsche Spyder's incredible lineage: Picking up the thread

The motor fires quickly and loudly. It displaces just 3397cc and is forced to breathe through 44mm restrictors, but somehow the alchemists in the engine shop have squeezed from it 503bhp at 10,300rpm and 273lb ft at 7500rpm. So, as Roland Kussmaul, a man with a direct link to every post-956 racing Porsche, asks me not to bin it, it’s time to consider three simple facts: 503bhp, 775kg, cold slicks.

The car’s aggressive appearance and disjointed boarding procedure has prepared you for the worst, but an unexpectedly friendly character is confirmed within 100 yards of pulling away: it’s easy to drive. A simple foot clutch gets you moving, after which the Spyder becomes a strictly two-pedal, two-paddle device. Flick the right paddle to shift up, the left to shift down. It sounds simple. And that’s before you suss the uncanny accuracy with which the electronic systems blend the changes. Like any race transmission, it likes to work under maximum duress, and there’s significant slip from the cold rubber, but even so I have never driven a car that assists its driver so comprehensively.

The traction control system has many different maps for changing weather conditions and is understandably set to ‘full wally’ for my purposes, allowing me to lean on the rear axle from cold (although the car will still spin with the traction control on, apparently) and marvel at this six-speed transmission. Flat shifts from second to third send only the faintest flutter through the body. Remarkably, it’s even smoother coming back down the ’box. From 140mph in fifth, the driver simply flicks the left paddle, then waits the few milliseconds it takes for the black box to assimilate the difference between crank and cog speeds and apportion the precise number of revs to bridge that gap. This process is seamless, making a mockery of jerky road-going equivalents.

And the brakes – 380mm front and 355mm rear carbon discs – are mind-blowing. With some tyre temperature, it’s now possible to carry more corner speed and thump down the straights. Acceleration is strong up to about 140mph, but then begins to tail off because the Spyder runs more wing than a Fokker Triplane. Lift off the throttle at 155mph and it decelerates like a modern road car using half its braking performance. This means that the Spyder’s initial retardation is aerodynamically assisted, that you can punch the middle pedal as hard as you dare, bracing yourself in the belts as the car pulls 3g. But as speed is shed, so is aero effect, and this means that, just at the point your brain tells you to push a touch harder on the pedal, actually you must reduce pressure in preparation for mechanical grip’s takeover. It’s a strange feeling, but becomes instinctive fairly quickly.

The car’s agility, though, is more difficult to comprehend. Weissach is a technical circuit shrouded in concrete obstacles, yet the Spyder slices at 100mph through turns which a GT3 RS couldn’t manage at 65mph. The final banked right-hander generates in the region of 2.5 lateral g, and after 10 laps my neck is throbbing. Modern racing drivers need to be incredibly fit.

Given the vigour with which it spun its V8 into life, you could assume that the new Spyder’s starter motor is as powerful as the 550’s engine. The air-cooled flat-four has been warming for a few minutes, but I lean in and switch it off. Whereas I was desperate to jump in and drive the other, I want to walk around the 550, absorb its shape and details. Only time will tell if future generations will stalk around surviving RS Spyders 50 years from now and coo with delight – but I doubt it.

And what an engine this four-cam motor is. It loves to rev. The shove is impressive from 1500rpm to around 5000rpm, which is when the induction noise assumes a more serious tone, and it hammers on to 6500rpm. They were capable of revving well into the sevens, and driving it now, I can only assume that some ran them harder even than that, such is the mechanical smoothness and lack of inertia felt.

It’s an addictive machine. You exit the final right-hander in third gear, grab fourth and, as the air rushes over your head and the 550 begins to wander, you begin to wonder how something with a quarter of the horsepower of Porsche’s latest toy can prove almost as thrilling. Even more remarkable is the fact that this particular example feels as though it could lap for hours, but then I suspect it is rather expertly maintained.

It’s an addictive machine. You exit the final right-hander in third gear, grab fourth and, as the air rushes over your head and the 550 begins to wander, you begin to wonder how something with a quarter of the horsepower of Porsche’s latest toy can prove almost as thrilling. Even more remarkable is the fact that this particular example feels as though it could lap for hours, but then I suspect it is rather expertly maintained.

The modern RS Spyder is an incredible machine: so amenable, so nimble, so damn fast. It continues the lineage begun by the 550, and even though this sounds like an emotionally clouded observation, strands of that gorgeous little silver car’s DNA are very much apparent in the yellow monster. Long may such genetic excellence continue.

Jenks on… the 550 Spyder, Moss and Porsche

1953 Paris Salon

The German firm showed a delightful open two-seater competition car based on the factory Nürburgring cars, fitted with the latest ohc engine; this follows the normal Porsche flat-four layout, but has twin camshafts to each bank of cylinders, the camshafts being driven by bevels and shafts. A large double-choke downdraught carburetter is used for each bank and the distributor is driven off the end of each inlet camshaft, supplying sparks for two plugs per cylinder… A power output of 110bhp is claimed and a speed of 225kph (140mph).

October 1953

1954 Le Mans 24 Hours

The three Porsches were the new 550 models, the prototype of which ran in the Mille Miglia. They were open two-seaters, with the engine and gearbox behind the driver, but in front of the rear axle, suspension being IFS at the front by trailing links and torsion bars with swing-axles on torsion bars at the rear. The three cars were perfectly turned out, coloured flashes along the rear wings giving identity, these being blue, green and red, for the pairs of drivers.

June 1954

1955 Lisbon Grand Prix

Never having even sat in a Porsche Spyder before, Moss soon mastered the technique of handling and found the lightness and responsiveness of the car very agreeable. His best time of the two training periods was 2min. 27.27sec, 12sec better than the rest of the field with but one exception. Portuguese J Filipe Nogeuira, driving his own Porsche Spyder, made the excellent time of 2min 30.6sec.

The race was naturally dominated by Moss with the factory car, but as in practice Filipe Nogeuira was the outstanding driver. The Portuguese driver kept the silver Porsche in sight, losing only two or three seconds a lap. When the traffic became heavy, the hallmark of a great grand prix driver began to make itself felt and Moss drew right away, but even so, during the 25 laps of the 5.4-kilometre circuit the Portuguese driver only lost 63 seconds.

September 1955

Team spirit

One is often tempted to refer to ‘typical German thoroughness and orderliness’, but this is never possible while the Porsche firm continue to be successful at racing, for they have the slap-happy sporting attitude of most English teams, their set-up being anything but ‘typical German’.

October 1955