2016 10Best Cars: Porsche Boxster / Cayman

10BEST CARS

From the vantage point of nearly 20 years, it’s apparent that this little car, born in open-top Boxster form, rescued the company. It was no mere entry-level Porsche, no unter-911; it may have been co-developed with the 996 to save money, but it emerged as something wholly unto itself. The original Boxster was a high-proof distillation of the company’s history and point of view, and its excellence elevated the brand at a time when the economic waters were up to Porsche’s chest. It certainly allowed Porsche to start charging ridiculous sums for its 911, a car that outdrove the Boxster only by fierce and concerted intramural manipulation. And it made Porsche’s profitable forays into SUVs defensible. How could a straight-faced person say the company had lost its way when it was still so obsessively consumed with its mid-engined sports car?

The legitimacy of the Boxster, and the Cayman coupe that followed it nine years later, derived from Porsche’s R&D temple in Weissach. These cars drew on Weissach’s legacy of engineering experimentation to make them as faithful to their drivers’ intentions as they were to Porsche’s way of thinking. Though suspended by struts all around for the sake of packaging and cost, its rear suspension used the so-called Weissach link, a lateral arm first developed for the 928 that worked to control wheel deflection and keep the tire’s contact patch stable. The archi­tecture itself took lessons from another Weissach project, the mid-engined 914, though most of these were of the “don’t-do-it-this-way” variety. Such as: Don’t forget about rigidity. The Boxster’s high level of structural stiffness (higher still on the Cayman) lets the suspension do the work it was intended to do—i.e., provide an agreeable and composed ride but also impart the handling sensitivity and sharpness that are hallmarks of great sports cars.

“After driving this you won’t be able to drive anything else for a month. This car will ruin you.” –T. Quiroga

And what a great pair they are. Few cars have steering this alive, brakes this stout, or damping this nuanced. There is no other mid-engined machine that pairs the Boxster/Cayman’s instantaneous directional changes with such progressive breakaway behavior. No other cars transition so immediately out of turns, either, their ­slalom-skier bodies effortlessly setting up for the next corner.

These are sports-car fundamentals rooted in Weissach soil, and they are always tangible in the cars we are lauding here, even at low speeds. The inherent rightness of Porsche’s mid-engined lineup hasn’t faded with age; if anything, it’s intensified. And this is where the cars break ties with the brand’s icon, the 911. Purists will tell you that the 911 lost something when it got power-hungry, that its escalating output and weight gains marred its responsiveness and controllability. They’ll say that an early car with the long-wheelbase chassis and the 2.2-liter flat-six is the perfect 911. Exactly no one says anything similar about the Boxster or Cayman. These cars improve with power. Yes, the early, least potent versions were great, but they are not the fully realized ones. Maybe today’s models aren’t, either, as nimble and flexible and powerful and non-turbocharged as they are. Maybe the fully realized ones are a long way off. Or maybe they’re being developed right now, somewhere inside Weissach’s outbuildings.

How We’d Build It

Choose the GTS versions of the Boxster or the Cayman and Porsche does all the hard work for you. No need to worry about whether to get the Sport Chrono package, the sound symposer that pipes exhaust noise into the cabin, or the 20-inch wheels. Get ’em in GTS trim and you also get an additional 15 horsepower over the S models and an extra 7 pound-feet of torque. When you tally all the GTS extras, you save $3000 over the same equipment fitted to an S, not to mention that power bump. Still, there’s more to add, including the excellent Burmester audio system for a not-insubstantial $6730 and Porsche Torque Vectoring for $1320. Be careful, though, this gets to be a pricey exercise. Avoid the $7400 Ceramic Composite Brakes (you’re not Walter Röhrl) and the seatbelts in Yachting Blue for $350 (you’re not Judge Smails). Total: $86,830.