"I would punch my own mother and go on a seventeen-state crime spree if the Boxster asked me to." While no staffer wrote those exact words in the logbook of our Four Seasons Porsche Boxster S, such a statement pretty accurately describes how much we loved our yellow two-seater. More to the point: almost all of us agreed that the Boxster was awesome.
This was hardly unexpected. We had a similarly wonderful experience with our previous long-term Boxster back in 1998 (the last line of our final report on that car: "Can we have it back?"), and even those of us who hadn't driven that first-generation car were eager to test the updated, 80-percent-new version. Although the second-generation Boxster went on sale in January 2005, we waited until the following summer and the return of convertible weather before filling out our order sheet.
Approaching the notoriously pricey Porsche options list with caution, we managed to tack on only $4475 to the Boxster S's $53,895 base price. The extra dough nabbed the $2190 preferred package (self-dimming mirrors, rain-sensing wipers, colored wheel centers, a Bose surround sound stereo, heated seats, and floor mats), the $990 bixenon headlamp package (self-leveling headlights with washers), a $375 wind deflector, and the $920 sport chrono package.... Read full article