Thread: Top 12 cars of 2012: Porsche Boxster

It didn't take us long to fall in love with Porsche's entry-level roadsterIt only took a warm summers evening, an unbroken stretch of British B-road and some quality time alone for me to fall in love with the new Porsche Boxster.
Id already driven the car in the south of France, but that was a PDK-equipped model with the steering wheel on the wrong side and a photographer in it; Id gathered enough to know that it was very good indeed, but it hadnt worked its way under my skin.
A month or so later and Porsche had the car in the UK, with a manual stick shift and an empty passengers seat adjacent to it. It was only the standard 2. 7-litre model (wed road test the pokier S) but its brilliant blue paintjob matched the sky overhead and it wasnt lumbered with too much optional extra chicanery. Pure would be one word for it, and thats exactly what it felt like on my two-hour route to the south coast.
Weve spent thousands of words since then dissecting the root causes of this vague conviction, but recalling that day, I remember only the gushing, gravelly yowl of the six-pot, the perfection of a fully exploitable 263bhp and the sinewy, scintillating quality of the handling.
Oh, and the expression on my face: a slowly evolving smile that finished, at 6700rpm, as an open-mouthed, gleeful gasp.
The minimum standard for any car capable of putting wind in its drivers wig is invigoration, but on that particular afternoon the Boxster, in a country mostly built from traffic jams and speed limits, reminded me why this, right here, is a best job in the world contender.