When one looks for project cars, it’s fun to peruse the classifieds - not only to find a deal on something you’ve been looking for, but to test the limits of your imagination. A car like this ridiculously cheap 2011 Porsche Boxster would work those brain muscles indeed.
This 2011 Porsche Boxster started its life with an engine and transmission and a clean title. After about 4,000 miles and four years existing on this planet, it somehow misplaced those three integral items, but it’s alright - because project cars aren’t about practicality, they’re about making something truly unique, and this Boxster could be the ticket to a true supercar-killer in every sense of the phrase.
With its asking price at just under $10,000, you’d get a nearly new Porsche chassis with no discernible damage from any impact and a clean slate for whatever insane endeavor gets your automotive freak flag to fly nowadays.
While the car is quite small, people have managed to swap over the GM LS V8 engine accompanied by a Porsche transmission in mid-engined Boxsters of old, so a conversion in this car wouldn’t be completely outlandish if you had some fabrication skills and some free weekends. There is also the option of going all-Porsche, with a more powerful 911 engine taking the place of the nonexistent Boxster flat-6.
While these conversions can be costly (ranging into five figures), if you play your cards right and do the work yourself (or hire cheap friends), you can have a firebreathing Porsche Boxster for the price, or slightly below the price of a regular Porsche Boxster. Obviously warranties do not apply, so don’t expect the dealer to foot the bill if your headlights go at 4,500 miles.
When I build my dream garage and I have some space for cars that too ambitious for restorations but not expensive enough to be money pits, I’d buy a car exactly like this and see how far fabrication and some frugal thinking would take me. Having an LS-powered Porsche Boxster that looked brand new, at the price of a hum-drum used model is the exact meaning of the term “budget supercar”.
For those of you with 93 octane in your blood,what would you do with this blank slate of a Porsche?
Tavarish is the founder of APiDA Online and writes and makes videos about buying and selling cool cars on the internet. He owns the world’s cheapestMercedes S-Class, a graffiti-bombed Lexus, and he’s the only Jalopnik author that has never driven a Miata.
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