The Boxster, the poor man's porsche and Inferiority complex

[Perfectlap]

Madmods,

You must not spend very much time on the Carrera forums. This is by far, and I mean like a country mile, the most civil auto forum I've visited since the internets were born. Even the auto detailing forums have had more arguments over whether this wax is better than yours (epic death matches).

p.s.
Regarding the inferiority complex thing. First of all if you drive at least a 97-01 Boxster, you are essentially driving a Carrera by part number.
If you consider the unecesarily de-tuned Carrera engine in the Boxster as one part, and randomly pulled a part off the 986 there's a better chance that you'll be holding a 996 Carrera part than Boxster. The Boxster and Carrera were developed as essentially one design. Any other manufacturer producing cars with identical middle to front ends would have simply called the Boxster the Carrera Roadster, and of course this would have meant putting in a non-detuned engine. But Porsche masters at marketing as they are, came up with this forced hierarchy even though the parts bin betrays them. Then they went one better in the 987 series and presented to the world a simple Boxster variant (one with a tin top) as a car with a completely different name. What was esentially one car evolves into three, production costs slashed. The public none the wiser.

Also, I find that a many people won't drive a Boxster because of inferiority complex/insecurity. They bought into the highly effective Porsche marketing spin and feel that people will judge them as being less successful, or worse less masculine, if they aren't in the most expensive Porsche.
This same mentality applies to Miatas, Mini Coopers and maybe even the FRS. At the end of the day, the one Porsche that sets the bar in its class is still the Boxster. That's all it can do.