The Bergspyder is the No Frills Lightweight 981 Boxster We Lust For

It's...beautiful

Never before seen by the public, comes this one-seater prototype named after the 909 race cars from the 1960s that were designed for hill-climb races. Those Bergspyder cars were just a scant 847 lbs and were powered by a 275 horsepower flat eight engine, These hill-climb cars were and still are the lightest Porsche cars that have ever been raced. 

They picked the right folks to undertake the build

Now comes the Bergspyder experiment that Porsche undertook in 2015 that was based on the Boxster of the time. The executive board of Porsche, feeling particularly fiery one day, mused to themselves about what kind of car could they come up with that was "as light and minimalist as possible." So the board made a call to the Weissach division and tasked them with building such a car. 

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The danger makes it hotter

What came out of that was a transformed Boxster missing the passenger seat, the windshield, exterior door handles, and the top. Then a small curved wind deflector was placed in front of the driver's seat, and an aluminum roll hoop was fitted behind the driver's seat on top of a fairing. The rear deck and covering for the passenger compartment are both made from carbon fiber. The engine is a mid-mounted flat-six producing 388 horsepower and taken right out of a GT4 Cayman.  

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Bonus feature of headlights

One of the big bullet points for needed modifications was that this new car was as light as possible. The 2015 prototype came in at 2,423 pounds, which shaved off 476 pounds from a Cayman and over 600 lbs from a Boxster. 

The dashboard of the Boxster Bergspyder has been completely redesigned with many bits coming right from the 918 Spyder such as the gauges and bucket seats. 

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Track only sales?

To finish off the homage to the original 909 race cars, the Bergspyder was painted in matching white with green accents and stripes. 

So now that we've gone through all of the specs and the build let's jump back to what became of this prototype once the board saw it. Due to all of the changes made to the car, some of them a bit more dubious than others, (we're looking at you tiny deflector) the matter of registration issues in various countries and the negative effect it would have on sales killed the Bergspyder dream. The prototype was quietly displayed at Weissach until it was moved to the Porsche museum. 

>>Join the conversation about the 981 Bergspyder Boxster right here in the RennList Forum!

For help with keeping your Porsche in racing, trim see the how-to sections of RennList.com.