>> Let's face it; you don't buy a Porsche for tech toys. But they do have to compete in the marketplace so they offer them. Let's check the tech in the 2007 Boxster S.
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The '07 Boxster S is part of the second generation of the Boxster family recently revised. And of course it is a significant part of Porsche sales though declining since the Cayman entered the lineup. However, the boxster of course succeeds with its open top. The car is a 295 horsepower rig, 3 point 4 liter flat 6 when you get the S model, it's only a 2 point 7 liter engine if you get the standard boxster with about 50 less horsepower. And all that power in our car goes through a standard six speed manual transmission or you can option up a five speed tiptronic, which is basically an influencable automatic. Let's get on to the high touch technology. This system's actually pretty good. Seven speakers around the cabin, one of which is in the dash; it's a center channel. There is no sub-woofer as you might expect when you see an odd number of speakers. But the low end is okay in this car; not thundering but not bad considering it's all door and dash speakers. The system gives you a choice of AM and FM, CD, but in this system it's CD only. You have to upgrade to the navigation based audio system if you want to play MP3's and none of their systems play Windows Media audio disks. And of course, you might have imagined there is no video screen DVD playback even when you have the nav system. This is not a car people watch movies on the road. In other accessories, you're not going to find things like an iPod adaptor; not available anywhere on the option sheet. In fact, not even auxiliary input jack. Good news though on the noise front is even though it's an open car, they offer noise cancellation. That's interesting. It's part of a Bose audio upgrade above and beyond the audio upgrade system. It will give you the audio pilot and center pilot technologies. Audio pilot is the one that provides noise cancellation. So it samples road noise and then sends a flip signal through the speakers to cancel out a lot of the harshness. Other technologies on the fun list include, ironically enough, park assist; rear bumper sensors to let you know when you're going to back into something. Not exactly something in keeping with the sporty image of a car like this but they're on the sheet. Not for the front however, of course with a sloping nose like that I would hope you won't need help seeing what you are about to bump into. There's also Porsche active suspension management available. That is a set of electronically controlled shocks. The [inaudible] rates are modified by a computer when you option that up and you can go to the sport or normal mode and that system also brings the car's ride height down about ten millimeters so that would definitely be one for the person who wants a little more aggressive stance on their boxster S. It doesn't look bargain does it? And it's not. Fifty-five five, the base price for a boxster S and on top of that our car has the nine hundred and fifty dollar Bose surround sound audio upgrade. We also have fifteen hundred dollars worth of Carrera S wheels, and about a thousand dollars for byzeenon [assumed spelling] headlamps, all in about sixty-four with a few other items and delivery. To make it CNET style, we would add Porsche communication management, which is their navigation hands-free and more elaborate audio system. That's about three thousand dollars. We'd also go two grand more and get the Porsche active suspension management system for those electronically controlled shocks on all four corners.
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