During the Boxster’s debut year 1996 both the media and the customers immediately accepted Boxster and made it a hit. Built when the Porsche company experienced much more difficulties than usually the Porsche Boxster helped the company to overcome the troubles.
With its two seats and corresponding road manner the roadster resembled the famous 550 Spyder produced in the mid-1960s. A new water-cooled horizontally opposed engine (‘boxer’) with sex cylinders added to the charm of the Porsche Boxster. In fact, the name Boxster is comprised of the world “boxer” according to the type of the engine and the world “roadster”. What made Boxster even more unique is that it was the first clean-sheet-design Porsche after the Porsche 928 produced more than 20 years ago.
The new Porsche model, the Boxster was sold at an unexpected initial price of $40,000 that made Boxster the most affordable Porsche car in years.
The Porsche Boxster had several rivals – BMW Z3, Mercedes-Benz SLK, Mazda Miata, that were designed as retro roadster with front engine or rear drive. These open sports cars appeared to be less interesting than the Porsche Boxster. Besides, the brand “Porsche” gave the Boxster other advantages over less competitive rivals.
In the early 1990s Porsche launched a new Type 989 project but the plan was replaced by Boxster plan. That was the time when Porsche’s sales went down and nearly came to naught. The public preferences changed and to find a way out Porsche needed to manufacture new cars that meet newly emerged requirements. To survive Porsche searched for a model with greater details sharing and the idea was to produce a modified Porsche 911, a new generation sport car. The developers understood that one more high-priced but low-volume car would not save the situation. The demand was to design a low-priced sport car that could increase the sales.
Wendelin Wiedeking, Porsche chairman and CEO at that time understood the situation well enough to make efforts sufficient to create a new generation low-price Porsche. The Boxster was to share components so that the price may be reduced to make the car more affordable. A group of Japanese engineers, who previously worked with Toyota, helped the Germans. Eventually the new Porsche, the Boxster, was introduced a year after the work began. A great demand for the car helped to solve financial difficulties that Porsche faced and put the beginning to a new era in the history of Porsche.
