[pothole]

I'm only 5'10" and I sit too high in my 986 with the seat in its lowest position. Must be pretty crap for the genuinely tall.

Regards the size of the Boxster, I think one major factor is the shared architecture with the 911. The front 2/3rds of the two models are basically shared, so a compromise has to be made. Porsche wanted to make the 911 in particular more capacious, so the front end has to look right attached to the larger passenger cell of the modern 911. Sticking the teeny tiny Boxster concept nose onto a largish passenger cell was never going to fly, sadly, and since the production Boxster shares the same front end it couldn't have it either.

Given those limitations, I think Porsche did a pretty good job with the 996 and 986. Not sure they went in the right direction with the 987 / 997, which are even bigger.

There's also crash regs and particularly pedestrian crash regs which is pushing car design towards bulbous front ends.

Anyway, by today's standards, the 986 definitely looks fairly petite.