So it’s a beautiful evening and I’m in the mood for another solitary jaunt across some of my favourite A and B roads during the peaceful midnight curfew that seems to confine most of our public off our streets after 11pm at night.

My ritual begins with the Porsche key. What does this stand for? Trust, quality, cohesion, thrills, solidarity, reliability? This and more and all it takes is for me to pull out of my parking spot to have these keywords reinforced. Having engaged 1st gear and pulled the wheel to the left, there’s an immediate sense of unison between all controls and it doesn’t require me to push any boundaries in order to qualify this craft of precision engineering.

Before long, I’m on an A-road comfortably enjoying 5th gear at which point, as I’m going for 6th, I suddenly realise there isn’t one. Slotting back into 5th, I settle for a cruise speed at a range of revs slightly higher than I’m used to.

You see, I’m not in the GT3. I’m in a vanilla Boxster.

My car has developed a minor oil leak and Porsche have kindly provided me with a 2 day old Boxster as a courtesy whilst my car was in for repairs. This car isn’t the ‘S’ model, so it’s cooking at only 245BHP from its 2.7l. You may be forgiven for berating the car’s relatively lethargic powerplant – especially if you’re used to over 420BHP in GT3 chilli form. However, that would be missing the point entirely and I’d then proceed to ridicule you for not understanding the concept of a roadster. I’m just going to come out and say it:

This is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the best cars I’ve ever driven.

There, I’ve said it. Cue jokes regarding my gender and sexual preference, but I digress, I will stand and fight for this car. It has a chassis and steering setup that is possibly even better than my GT3’s. It offers incredible balance, poise and handling – the likes of which I’ve not witnessed before, and despite its underdog performance, provides enough poke to keep you concentrating on the handling and entertainment so you forget about any power deficit. I can only imagine the ‘S’ is a revelation!

With my roof down at 12am on a Saturday night, it was probably only my hooded top that stopped any leery comments from drunken yobs, but once outside of the suburbs and into rural home counties, I was engrossed in the solitude you can only feel when exposed to the night sky on a summers day. I watched the temperature drop from 15deg when I left home to 7deg when I eventually parked up. The heaters are suitably equipped to keep you warm and there is a sensible decorum in the cockpit when at motorway speeds. Having your windows up further enhances calm in the cabin, but at the expense of the raw experience a convertible can offer.

Brakes were reassuring and offered wonderful stopping power, although feel was a little on the soft side – a fair deal considering its well mannered intentions overall. The chassis handled the power with consummate ease, demonstrating its ability to change direction at full throttle without a single hint of confusion nor consternation.

It also drives like a pussy-cat through traffic and London calming measures and continued to reinforce the point that, really, this is all the sports car anybody actually needs in today’s world of legislation and increasingly oppressive driving laws.

I think the facelift has also matured the car into a very handsome object. I cannot see any worthwhile competition to this car and in fact can only question the motives of someone choosing a Cayman over a Boxster S as a decision that simply makes no sense.

As I came out of the car at nearly 1am, I looked around it and whilst circling the car, soaked up its compact dimensions, which no doubt aid the highly impressive handling characteristics. How much these personalities have to do with the mid-engined layout is unknown, but an educated guess can only credit the layout versus what we’re used to in a 911.

At £33k, it’s certainly not cheap, but it takes a fool to deny the value of what’s on offer here. Also, with 20k mile, 2 year old examples going for £26k, they also appear to offer ridiculously healthy residuals. Honestly, you can’t go wrong.

A call from the dealer 4 hours after dropping the car off confirmed that the oil leak was just a simple seal and it had been fixed and was ready to pick up. I looked out the window, recognised it was a Friday in the midst of an Indian summer and said to the engineer “Actually, I’d like to keep the Boxster until Monday if that’s ok?” I can give no better praise than that!