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36 991 Speedster road trip
RIGHT The Speedster
gets a six-speed manual
transmission from the
991.2 GT3
FAR RIGHT Speedster’s
side window profile is lower
and more rounded than
a Cabriolet
LEFT The hood is
technically electrically
operated, but you do have
to partly unfurl it yourself
There’s no heated seat. Forgivable in
a Speedster, particularly given the
likelihood being that most, if not all,
will be used on warm, sun-kissed
days and fitted with full bucket seats.
Not this car though, as someone’s ticked the box for
Adaptive Sports Seats and saved the £333 extra that
would have added the possibility to warm them. The
winter sun, such as it is in Northumberland, left us
an hour or two back, and the digital temperature in
the dial in front of me is reading three degrees. It’s
dark and cold but, in the absence of the possibility
of a toasted butt and back, I’ve come prepared with
thermals, a good coat, hat and gloves. Sensible in
mid-winter, but given the Speedster’s cabin is, unlike
its Cabriolet relation, lacking in buffeting preventing
equipment, even more necessary. The Speedster
should feel open too, the hood an occasional item,
which GT boss Andreas Preuninger admits they
considered not bothering with. I’ll be leaving it down,
then, just as it should be.
We’re in Northumberland because Porsche GB is
celebrating its most visceral open-topped cars, the
new Speedster joined by its 718 Spyder relation and a
Boxster T. The two mid-engined machines are back
in the carpark and the other guests preparing for bed.
I have other ideas. Photographer Richard Pardon and
I have come up with an idea, stealing the Speedster
to make a break for the border. It’s a loose plan, my
hometown of Edinburgh our destination, simply
because it’s there, the roads between it and us are
familiar to me and, well, why not? There’s a tenuous
Speedster link too – the Cannonball restaurant, the
last building before our intended Edinburgh Castle
destination, is number 356 Castleview, the first of
Porsche’s Speedsters, of course, being a 356. That’ll
do. Pardon’s convinced and chucks in his cameras,
and we point the red, open car north.
It’s cold but clear when leaving, so an early
diversion is in order. Kielder Forest is a few miles
away, and it’d be mad not to run through it. It’s a
place that’s captivated me since the early days of
rushing home from school to watch VHS recordings
of Top Gear Rally Report, ‘Killer Kielder’ being the
famous stages that more often than not determined
the result of the Lombard RAC Rally. We’re obviously
not on the gravel forest and fire roads, instead taking
the main route through Kielder Forest Park, turning
left off the B6320 Pennine Way, through Hesleyside
towards Greystead, before tracking around Kielder
Water and towards the Scottish border.
Kielder Water might be the largest artificial lake
in the UK, and I know it’s over to the left of me, but
I can’t see it. Actually, I can’t see much, the reach
of the standard bi-Xenon headlights limited in the
freakish darkness surrounding us, their reach denied
not just by the inky blackness, but the undulating
roads that characterise the tarmac around here.
Like the lack of that heated seat, I’m wondering
who didn’t tick the optional Porsche Dynamic Light
System; it’d be helpful here, and even if you’re not
intent on driving it late at night, the dark chrome
metallic internal parts and surround look really cool.
It’s little wonder there’s an observatory located
in Kielder, there being next to no light pollution in
the woodland park. It’s quiet too, except tonight, as
the howl of the 4.0-litre naturally aspirated flat six
is breaking the silence. The 4.0 is doing a better job
of piercing the eerie quiet than those headlights are
doing in revealing what’s ahead, the visceral effect
of that incredible engine heightened to another
level when it’s experienced without any other