In 1968, Porsche wanted to win hill climb races, so it built a one-off experimental car called the 909 Bergspyder, which translates to mountain spider. I was absolutely smitten with it when I saw it in the Porsche museum in Stuttgart back in 2018:
The 909 Bergspyder was one of the lightest Porsche race cars ever produced, weighing in at just 847 pounds (384kg). For comparison, a tiny Smart Fortwo weighs about twice as much! The Bergspyder could do 0-60mph in 2.4 seconds – a feat most cars still can’t pull off today, even electric ones.
Here’s a modern Porsche Boxster alongside the 909 Bergspyder for size comparison – and the small Boxster looks giant in comparison!
Porsche sometimes mines its history to produce special editions, and I’ve always thought a Bergspyder would have been a great lightweight edition for the Boxster. In 2015, Porsche built a one-off Boxster Bergspyder (pictured above, the car at left), but they never mass produced it. At the time, they didn’t think they could sell it because they’d have problems getting governments to approve a car with such a low windshield:
So it sits in the Porsche museum’s collection:
Today in 2025, though, there are several road-legal cars with low-or-no windshield: the Ariel Atom, Mercedes PureSpeed, McLaren Elva, and more. My personal favorite is the Ferrari Monza SP1 for its stunning one-person cockpit design that seems to tightly stretch around the driver:
I think it’s only a matter of time before Porsche attaches the Bergspyder name to a very, very expensive special edition car, but in the meantime… I wanna build one of my own.
My Starting Point: a 1999 Boxster
I’d had my eye on the Boxster market for quite a while, and I was going to pick up a salvage one from an auction like Copart. I figured as long as I was making changes to the body and painting it, why bother with a pristine car?
However, good-condition used Boxster prices collapsed so much that it made more sense to buy a perfectly functioning Boxster as a starting point. This one came up on CarsAndBids near me in Vegas, and I was able to get it for $8,050 – not much more than a salvage Boxster would have cost!
I love this first Boxster generation, the 986, for this project because the body shape is so clean and simple. Later generations have more exaggerated hips which absolutely look great, but for a Bergspyder, I wanted cleaner lines.
This 986 had 134K miles and a clean CarFax, which made it a great starting point. It did have an automatic transmission (Tiptronic), but before you groan about that, hold that thought.
That windshield is coming off, and the roll bar is going to change.
I want to build a cross between a Bergspyder and a Ferrari Monza SP1, and that means we’re gonna saw the windshield off. That right there means:
- It’s going to have to be titled & registered in a state that allows cars without windshields (for example, Montana allows it as long as the driver wears goggles)
- This isn’t going to be as safe as a regular Boxster (but no one’s ever riding in this with me – it’ll be a single-seat car, period)
- It’s never going to be allowed on race tracks
Folks have built track-only Bosters with no windshield and a giant roll bar to compensate, but they end up looking pretty awful. When Porsche did their one-off Boxster Bergspyder, they kept the original Boxster’s 2-hoop roll bar, which looks kinda dumb:
Not my style – why are there two roll bar hoops and two flying buttresses when there’s only one person in the car? I’m guessing Porsche had to cut corners to get the one-off design study out the door, and they probably didn’t wanna spend the engineering money necessary to do a new roll bar.
Ideally, I want a single roll bar behind the driver’s head, like the original Bergspyders:
That’s the even-earlier 910 Bergspyder. The naming’s a little confusing – the 910 Bergspyder above came out in 1967, and then the 909 came out later in 1968 and was never raced. (It was even more unsafe, hahaha, using 1″ aluminum frame tubes.) Speaking of unsafe, I’m also considering going without a roll bar altogether, like this Boxster-turned-550 went without a roll bar. That one looks particularly nice with low-cut driver’s seats. The decision’s still out on the roll bar.
So back to the automatic transmission. If my Bergspyder won’t be driven on the track, and it won’t be as safe as a regular Boxster, do I really need a manual transmission? Nope: I’m just not going to be driving this thing fast, and it’ll be plenty engaging even with an automatic transmission.
Here are the changes I’m thinking of.
- The windshield needs to come off.
- Remove the convertible top mechanism – because the top won’t have anything to mount to, hahaha.
- Remove the roll bar – and get quotes to build a roll bar with a single hoop behind the driver. If the single-hoop roll bar is affordable, I’ll leave the driver’s seat as-is for now (and probably switch to a racing seat later.) If I end up with no roll bar, I’ll switch to a low-back driver’s seat to keep the car’s lines nice and smooth.
- Build fiberglass tonneau cover – to cover the passenger seat side of the car, a la Ferrari Monza SP1. This is going to be tricky for all kinds of reasons, like there are no attachment points built in for this kind of thing.
- Switch the wheels out – I really love these wheels in silver, but they’re ugly when painted black, and I don’t think silver wheels make sense for a Bergspyder build.
- Wrap it – with a simple white and black livery to match the original Bergspyder. (It also crossed my mind to do something skateboard-ish because this car is going to end up looking pretty flat.)
- Maybe lower the suspension – depending on how the stance looks after the changes.
I considered putting a wide body kit on it, but the ones I found seemed to make the car look visually heavier instead of lighter, and I think a light-looking car is part of the Bergspyder appeal.
Race car folks would gut the interior in order to save weight – especially if we’re going to use the name Bergspyder. I have mixed feelings about that – remember, we’re not taking this on a race track or driving it in anger. I don’t think it needs to be purposefully uncomfortable or ugly, so I’m thinking of leaving the interior as-is for now, except for removing the passenger seat and replacing the bulky steering wheel with something more classic like a Momo Prototipo.
Oh, and I gotta find the right pair of goggles.
My budget for the whole project is $15K, including the $8K for the car purchase. Wish me luck!