Introduction

Porsche Boxster – 2007 First Drive: We had so much fun driving the 2007 Porsche Boxster – two hours on one of the finest roads in America – it felt like adultery. Though we have no personal experience with infidelity, we’re guessing the range of emotions we experienced while pressing the new, more powerful Boxster on a sublime ribbon of Tennessee asphalt was akin to an illicit afternoon in a swanky hotel room: spine-tingling anticipation, extreme elation, dank fear, and then guilt.

We started our day in a 2007 Boxster S fitted with a new six-speed Tiptronic auto-manual transmission. As we loafed it toward Tennessee’s tantalizing Cherohala Skyway we could sense the added performance of the larger 3.4-liter, 295-horsepower engine, and it was like a summons to our foolish blood. Then, once we arrived at the road’s start near Robbinsville, we opened it up and the knife-edged mountains on either side of us rang with our whoops and screams. The idea of our tryst being interrupted by a gun-toting chaperone in a cruiser made us pucker and wilt for a minute, but we abandoned our inhibitions to the heat of the moment. Afterward we felt some guilt at having so much fun that it hardly seemed fair or right when so many people must drive boring cars. That too, however, was temporary because we went right out again in a regular Boxster with a five-speed manual.

You know what they say: Once a cheater, always a cheater.