Back in 1996, Porsche came up with a small sports car which grew into a benchmark with time. The Porsche Boxster is now an entry step into the Porsche range, giving you almost the fun of a 911 while burning a smaller hole in your wallet. To mark the iconic brand’s 25th anniversary, Porsche has revealed the 2021 Porsche Boxster 25.
Porsche is going to rebadge their Boxster and Cayman as “718” models this year, complete with 4-cylinder turbo engines, the first of which have just been revealed. However, the GTS models will get a stay of execution from the turbo era for now. We drove the last of these naturally-aspirated mid-engined Porsches late last year in Stuttgart, Germany.
Porsche is extending the GTS principle to the Boxster and Cayman for the first time ever. Featuring upgraded engines and adaptive chassis, the Boxster GTS and Cayman GTS stand as the most powerful and fastest iteration of these mid-engine sports models from Porsche.
The Porsche World Roadshow is an event held around the world almost every year by the German carmaker’s dealers, to showcase their latest models to potential customers in the comfort of, well, a racetrack. We’ve attended the UAE event in years past, but for whatever reason, we did not get an invite from Porsche this year. But then an invitation came in from the most unlikely of places — Emirates NBD Bank!
International car launches are common in the automotive industry, where local journalists are flown to various exotic locations to drive a new model before anyone else. Of course, such trips aren’t common for us, but we did go on our second ever trip outside the GCC, to test-drive the all-new 2012 Porsche Boxster in its hometown of Stuttgart, Germany. It beats driving a Hyundai in Korea, that’s for sure.
The Porsche Boxster has undergone comprehensive changes for the 2013 model year, even though it looks largely the same to the untrained eye.
The last Porsche World Roadshow for the UAE was held two years ago at the Dubai Autodrome. It was a superb event for highlighting the entire Porsche line-up in one go. Seemingly open only to existing Porsche customers and us media types, it was a well-organised event that got us some wheel-time with the 2009 models. We haven’t driven any 911s or Cayennes in the past two years since then, simply because Porsche refuses to give us test cars for more than a few hours, but they did invite us to the 2011 edition of the Porsche World Roadshow,
Weighing in at 1278 kg, the new 2011 Porsche Boxster Spyder will be the lightest Porsche available. This new mid-engined roadster attempts to be a true purist form of the quintessential open-top sports car. This third Boxster model will join the Boxster and Boxster S and will make its world debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show on December 2, 2009.
The Porsche World Roadshow is a 10-day event that is held in various cities around the world, usually reserved for Porsche customers, and usually for a fee. The Dubai stopover was from February 4th to the 14th this year. Attending the event itself involves a single day of various activities held from 9 am to 4 pm, using the latest Porsche machinery at the Dubai Autodrome. One of these days was reserved for the media, and I was invited for the first time.