PORSCHE Boxster (986) 2002-2005 Photos, engines & full specs

A mild facelift occurred for the first generation of the Porsche Boxster. Some called it a second generation, but it was a change over the same chassis.

The 2002 Boxster came on the market with new engines and new options. It also had a new face, but not that different than the first generation. And while most of the people hoped to have the IMS bearing problem fixed, it was even worse and affected 8% of the cars instead of only 1% for the Boxsters built before 2000. That was caused by the use of single-row bearings instead of double-row bearings.

From the outside, the 2002 Boxster featured an apron with two air-intakes on the sides. It was considered that the centrally-mounted one was useless. Indeed, it was useless unless it looked good. But the manufacturer discovered that later. The small air-intakes on the rear fenders were considered enough for the new engine range. A big improvement was the introduction of a glass rear window instead of the plastic one. A rounded triangular shaped exhaust was placed in the middle of the rear apron.

The 2.5-liter engine was dropped since 2000 in favor of the larger, 2.7-liter unit. For the 2002 model, the flat-six engine in the Boxster received some additional horses and, if fitted with the 5-speed manual, it could get a 0-100 kph (0-62 mph) sprint in 6.4 seconds, almost a second faster than with the 5-speed automatic (Tiptronic).