As the silver Porsche roadster dashed to the top of the hill, it might have been Edgar Barth in a Spyder RS at Mont Ventoux, or Wolfgang von Trips winning at Gaisberg. Well, that's the kind of thing that fluttered through the driver's mind. But the real-life situation was many years on from the European Mountain Championship of the 1950s, and involved just myself, having a bit of fun on a favourite minor-classification hill road, during an outing with a 2002 Boxster.We'll be writing about several Porsches in the next couple of weeks, but I'm getting in first with a report on the cheapest, least powerful car in the Stuttgart catalogue - one of the models I like best.The standard Boxster has a fruity-sounding 2.7-litre flat-six engine with a mere 220bhp at its disposal. That's 32bhp down on the Boxster S, although I didn't really miss the extra power. Road-going Porsches in the UK are available with engines pushing out up to 462bhp (in the 911 GT2), but on the kind of roads in the CARkeys neck of the woods I reckon there's a lot of enjoyment, and possibly more, to be had with less than half that.Personally, I'm not interested in "fighting" or "taming" a car, or in any other euphemisms for hauling it around. I'd rather have one that just gets its performance onto the tarmac without a lot of drama, and the Boxster does that very cleanly. This, of course, is the mid-engined rather than rear-engined Porsche model line, and it's more of a light, dance-around sports car than one with the potential to cause upsets.It may not be the first thing to think about when considering a car of this kind, but the mid-engined layout means that the Boxster has far better luggage accommodation than the 911. That's because the designers were able to provide two separate compartments, one behind the engine and one under the front bonnet. Together, they'll take a very handy amount of clobber.Elsewhere in the housekeeping department, the Boxster makes no pretence at having occasional, rudimentary, virtual or imaginary rear seats. It's a two-seater pure and simple. The seats are neatly upholstered in alcantara, and there's leather on the wheel rim, handbrake lever, gearlever knob and door pulls. This all looks very smart, and it's certainly well-finished. Other cabin features have soft-touch black paint or aluminium-look material.The Boxster uses similar instruments to the 911, although not so many of them. There's much less of a problem with reflections in Porsche dials than there used to be, while the lettering and numbering are understated rather than flashy. You have to watch out, though, for the fact that the italic numbers on the speedometer go 0-25-50-75 and so on, not necessarily the best attention-grabbing layout for UK drivers.Hood down, the Boxster has an unusual combination of wind deflector gadgets. There are "net" inserts in the open-design headrests, and a clear plastic sheet between them, much shorter from side to side than those in most other two-seater or four-seater convertibles. Travelling hood up, driver and passenger are each as snug as a bug in a rug. The Boxster has a high-quality hood, well-insulated and nicely finished on the under surface.But look, although this may be the baby of the Porsche range, the Boxster is still a sports car. Wottle she do, mister?Using the standard five-speed manual gearbox, whose ratios seem pretty well spaced, with a quick change which needs some slack to be taken up first, the Boxster will rip to 62mph in under seven seconds. On the . . . er, Autobahn you can get the speedo needle swinging past 100mph in just under 16 seconds from a drop-the-clutch standing start, and on a test track there would still be 50mph-plus to come.That's pretty brisk for real-life out-in-the-country motoring, and the performance doesn't overwhelm the handling. You can place a Boxster accurately on the road to take account of brows, bumps and tightening bends, and feel more "at one" with it than you would with many other cars which have extra performance but keep the driver on tenterhooks much of the time.Road noise in this country is almost certainly more pronounced than it is on German surfaces. Ride quality is fair by sports car standards. And the Boxster certainly does squat down and scurry up the gradients to please those of us with Mont Ventoux in our memory banks.Second opinion: It depends what you're looking for in a Porsche. If commuting in central London in a 911 Turbo is your bag, the standard Boxster is not the car for you. Nor will it satisfy anyone hungry for horsepower and enthusiastic about occasional leaps forward when gaps appear in the motorway traffic. But if you want a well-balanced sports car, you could do a lot worse than choose this one. If it almost wore any other badge I'm sure it would be hailed as one of the finest two-seaters you can buy. Speaking as someone who loves to drive a car in the real world, rather than be occasionally impressed by things it can only sensibly be allowed to do on a race circuit, I'm happy to say that this is my favourite Porsche. David Finlay. Engine 2687cc, 6 cylinders Power 220bhp Transmission 5-speed manual Fuel/CO2 28.5mpg / 245g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 6.6 seconds Top speed 156mph Price £31,450 Details correct at publication date
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