As I wander around Porsche Cars GB headquarters in Reading at six o’clock on a frosty mid-winter morning, there are a couple of Cayennes, a trio of Taycans, many Macans, near-numberless 911s and Panameras aplenty. But there is no sign of the 718 Boxster; specifically, the Boxster 25 Years anniversary model I have come to collect.
I find it eventually and, even though the clock is ticking and I am eager to get going before the traffic builds, it’s impossible not to take a moment or two to wander around and soak up the styling.
Launched in 2021 to celebrate a quarter-century of the Boxster, which arrived in 1996, the 25 Years model is based on the Boxster GTS 4.0. However, Porsche only built 1250 models worldwide and now they are all sold out.
The car looks sharper than ever thanks to a range of intriguing styling cues that pay homage to the Boxster concept car which was unveiled at the Detroit Motor Show in 1993. The additional features include stunning 20-inch Neodyme gold-painted alloy wheels along with a new front apron and side air intakes which are given the same Midas touch.
Eventually, I climb aboard, fire up the 400hp, 4.0-litre, naturally aspirated flat-six engine behind my shoulders, drop the hood, crank the heater up and get going. On such a cold morning, the six-cylinder manual transmission – Porsche also offers a PDK option – takes a little while to play ball. But, as the oil warms up, the gear change gets slicker, smoother and ever more engaging.
As the brawny 420Nm of torque rows the Boxster effortlessly forwards, all those Cayennes, Taycans, Macans and Panameras sitting in that gleaming, ultra-modern showroom fall further and further behind. Perhaps, in some alternative timestream, they never even existed at all, and maybe, in the same timestream, the Porsche 911 never made it past its fourth (993) iteration either.
Back in the global recession of the early 1990s, it felt like Porsche barely had a wall to put its back against. Not every enthusiast of the marque welcomed the Porsche Boxster with open arms, but there is no doubt that the new junior model saved the company, helped to put it on a sound financial footing and paved the way for both its huge success and the multitude of award-winning, highly diverse models found in the showroom today.
One Porsche enthusiast who certainly didn’t turn his nose up at the thought of the Boxster is the person I am going to meet today: Dr Christopher Efthymiou. In 1993, Chris was a 19-year-old student at St Bartholomew’s in London when he first set eyes on the Porsche Boxster concept car.
“I bought a copy of Autocar with the Boxster concept car on the cover and I absolutely fell in love with it,” Chris recalls. “I put a deposit down on the car and went along to see it at the NEC Motor Show in Birmingham in 1996. At that time, I had a Porsche 914 imported from America – a very rare 1.8 version with electric fuel injection. When the Boxster arrived in the UK, I wrote to Car and suggested that they do a comparison drive with my 914 and write a piece on the evolution of mid-engined Porsche models.”
The magazine took him up on the offer, so Chris duly found himself handing the keys of his 914 over to Car journalist John Simister – with John then offering Chris a drive in the Boxster. “It was as if all my birthdays had come in one day,” remembers the good doctor. “I was really nervous. I did drive it, but I didn’t dare touch any of the buttons with all this new-fangled stuff like LCD screens in case I broke something. The car’s number plate, P159 EGM, became absolutely etched in my mind.”
Although the Boxster had cast its spell on Chris, he didn’t end up buying one in the end. “I kept reading all the magazines and I saw the same car I had driven appear in Autocar, Top Gear and Motor Sport. But then the 2.7-litre and the 3.2-litre model came out and the Boxster started to not look that new anymore, so I bought a 993 instead.”
An absolute petrolhead of the highest order, Chris has worked his way through a host of sports and high-performance cars over the years, including no fewer than nine BMW Z1s. But first love never really dies and, having ended up with a 997 which he didn’t particularly like, he found himself perusing the classifieds in 2019. Twenty-six years after he first saw the Boxster concept car, Chris noticed a Boxster with the registration P168 EGM for sale.
“I thought that P168 EGM was as near as I’ll ever get to P159 EGM, so I went and bought it and loved it. Even though it has a later number plate than P159 EGM, it has a much earlier chassis number and is believed to be the first Porsche Boxster in the UK.”
Now, you would think that most Porsche fans would have been happy with that acquisition. But not Chris, who didn’t stop until he tracked down P159 EGM – the very car he drove on that Car photoshoot – and acquired it as well.
Seeing Chris’s car parked up alongside the Boxster 25 Years model, the flow of the lineage is crystal clear. Memories of the two days I spent with the original car in Germany ahead of its launch with photographer Simon Childs for Top Gear come back. If I am honest, the 993 was a car that intimidated me at that time, but not the Boxster. You didn’t need to be the world’s greatest ‘helmsman’ to get the best out of it. You could just get in, drive it and enjoy it.
With its manual gearbox and six-cylinder engine, the Boxster 25 Years represents a superb driving experience and a fitting tribute to the model’s first quarter-century. It’s one I’d dearly love to be able to tuck away in my garage.
Chris, though, seems very happy with his collection of Boxsters, although he might just be open to an offer from Porsche if the company ever wanted to buy P159 EGM and add it to its collection. During the summer, he uses the cars to fulfil his role as a medical doctor. That’s something he’s been doing for the past 20 years, in between attending race meetings at Goodwood and Brands Hatch and the Silverstone and Monaco Grands Prix.
“My cars are certainly not garage queens,” Chris sums up. “I look after them myself, but I don’t pamper them. When I look back through all the old magazines, which I’ve still got, and see shots of P159 EGM being driven sideways by people like Steve Sutcliffe at Autocar and Tiff Needell at Top Gear, I think it would be a bit late to start pampering now.”