Porsche Boxter
The junior 911 which ended up outselling its bigger brother
The junior 911 which ended up outselling its bigger brother
Nothing screams 1980s excess like a Guards Red Porsche 911 Turbo but by the early ’90s declining US sales saw Porsche’s fortunes declining. With workers being laid off and the effect of the newly reunified Germany making itself felt on the economy, a radical approach was required.
At the same time the 911 was looking increasingly antiquated, while the firm’s entry-level model was the 944, which was itself an evolution of the 924 dating from 1976. The 928 was stil in production but was very much a niche player, expensive both to build and to buy.
The solution adopted was a two-pronged strategy. To keep an entry-level car in the range, the 944 was developed into the 968, visually similar looking but claimed by Porsche to be 80 per cent new. Meanwhile, the next generation of 911 would be developed in parallel with a proposed new, smaller car which could share its front-end structure in order to reduce development costs.
After a false start with a cheaper, four-cylinder project dubbed the 984, work progressed quickly and a show car was displayed at the Detroit show in January 1993. Christened Boxster – a contraction of ‘boxer’ and ‘roadster’ – the car was styled by in-house Porsche designer Grant Larson and echoed the famous 550 Spyder and 718RSK from the ’50s in its proportions.
Later in the year, the new water-cooled 993 generation of the 911 was revealed, sporting a front end almost identical to the Boxster. At the rear though, things were very different: the Boxster was to be a strict two-seater which had allowed Porsche to reduce its size by turning the engine and transmission through 180 degrees and making it a mid-engined car. This also gave Porsche a point of differentiation for their car which was positioned at a price level above the likes of the MX-5 and meant developing a more compact four-cylinder engine was no longer a requirement.
The engine itself had also been developed in parallel with the new 911 and was a flat-six in the finest Porsche tradition but was now entirely water-cooled and was an all-new design. Although the Boxster shared the same basic engine with its bigger brother, the cheaper car was given a smaller version of the powerplant at 2.5 litres to ensure it didn’t step on the toes of the 911. It was paired to an Audi-sourced five-speed manual gearbox which had the benefit of a cable-operated shift, making the mid-engined installation that much easier.
Suspension shared the 993’s MacPherson struts at the front end, but the rear required a different approach from the