Conventional wisdom has it that Porsche’s Boxster and its younger brother the Cayman - class-leaders though they both are - have an image problem: they are perceived as the poor man’s 911. You hear it time and again, “Of course, he only drives a Boxster because he couldn’t afford a 911.”

Well, The Guide has little time for this point of view and, indeed, we believe that only people who have never driven a Boxster or Cayenne would ever voice it.

The truth is that both cars represent the state-of-the art in their respective classes. If you want a 2-seatre roadster, with the best performance, handling, style, and heritage, you can’t buy a better car than a Porsche Boxster S. A similar statement can be made for the Caymen, though - we grant you - the case is less clear-cut in the high-performance 2-seater coupé segment.

So, although you can argue the details, our point holds: the Boxster and Caymen don’t represent compromises, they’re not ‘second best’ choices. In each of their respective classes, to each of their target audiences, these seminal cars are at – or very near to – the very top of the list.  And they are also an integral part of one of the best thought-out product portfolios in the history of marketing.

Boxster sales are not cannibalizing 911 sales or vice versa. The Caymen S doesn’t tread on the 911’s toes, nor does the Boxster S bite too closely to the heels of the base-model Caymen.

It’s all part of Porsche’s grand plan. That's the genius of the good folk in Porsche’s marketing department. They hook you when you’re still young with something aspirational, something that performs impressively, yet something you can still afford – barely - then they pull you gently up the product range one incremental improvement at a time. Until, a few fun and adrenalin-packed decades later, you’re re-mortgaging the house just to get yourself into the latest 911 Turbo.

The Porsche badge carries some Prodigal promises: superior performance, superior handling, and styling which – though no longer rare - is uncannily resistant to the whims of fashion and, to our eyes, always looks sporting and elegant. (Yes, we’re only talking about real Porsches here – the rebadged VW Touareg doesn’t count). Also implicit in the badge are the excellent customer service and the intangible feeling that you’re driving something a little ‘special’.

The Guide believes that any car in Porsche’s line-up – from the base model Boxster to a fully-loaded 911 Turbo – delivers on these promises. What the Stuttgart geniuses have done so well is ensure that – even though you may be perfectly happy with your current Porsche – there’s always something within close reach which delivers that little bit more. Most Boxster drivers are tempted by the additional horsepower of the ‘S’ model; Caymen S drivers inevitably start eying up enviously those Carrera 2s. Meanwhile, the Carrera 2 owners are already considering the real-world benefits of 4-wheel drive. Should they trade-up to a Carrera 4 or hold out for the additional oomph of the Carrera 4S? When they do so, they’ll be driving one of the fastest, sweetest handling cars on the road. But that won’t stop them wondering about how the experience could be sharpened still further: the raw, visceral experience of a GT3 perhaps, or the sheer continent-shrinking performance of a Turbo? And so the extraordinary ‘circle of life’ of Porsche’s ecosystem continues.

Image problem? Nonsense. The marketers in Stuttgart know exactly what they’re doing and they do it better than anyone else in the industry.