A perfect Porsche Boxster, seen in Beijing in 2018. The Porsche was in a superb shape, looking nearly new. The first generation Porsche Boxster is a real rarity in China, as it wasn’t officially sold here.
Still, some examples arrived via the gray market and other non-official channels, and our black Beijing car is one of those. It is painted in a typical Porsche black and it has a dark red interior. The first generation Boxster was made from 1996 until 2004.
It is not easy to maintain a vehicle that was no officially sold in China by the manufacturer. Most dealers will refuse to do any work on them, as Porsche won’t cover ant guarantees or warranties.
So owners of this sort of cars have to find general repair shops that are able to source parts from abroad. Nowadays, there are quite a few shops that can do that, but in period there were very few. The owner of this Boxster did a great job keeping his car in shape!
The interior was dressed up with seat covers, head-rest pillows, a steering wheel cover, and figurines on dash top. It seems likely that the driver is of the female kind, but you can’t be 100% sure, can you? Hard to see here but it had the Tiptronic gearbox.
The license plate area is too small for the Chinese plate, a sure sign of an unofficial import. The bumper sections on each side of the bumper indicate this Boxster was originally sold in the United States.
The Porsche Boxster S was powered by a 3.2 liter flat 6 engine with 250 hp and 320 Nm, good for 0-100 in 6.5 second and a 255 km/h top speed.
In all my 16 years in China I have probably seen only a handful first generation Porsche Boxsters, and this is certainly the best.
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