2000 Porsche Boxster S

What would you drive to work if your office was a race car? Say, one of Porsche's potent 911 GT3s? And in that single seat boardroom, you managed successful takeovers of the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring in the same year?

What would your set of wheels be if your business card introduced you as the 1999 American Le Mans GT Champion, the 1999 USRRC GT3 Champion and recipient of the Porsche Cup Championship?

Well, if that was your resume, you'd be Cort Wagner, and if you were Cort Wagner, you would, of course, drive a Porsche. But which Porsche? For a man who has made a living in the brutal arena of endurance racing, stood on podiums at Silverstone, Road America and the Nrburgring, anything displayed on a showroom floor would be, well, blue collar.

Navigating the byways of Los Angeles, of course, does not require the same strategy as defying the high banks of Daytona, yet it is difficult to surrender the power, agility and excitement of piloting a pure race car. At the same time, after being lashed to a carbon-fiber seat and surrounded by a web of steel tubing, Wagner decided his daily driver had to be a shade more civilized and most certainly a cabriolet.

Surprisingly, the latest soft-top 996 was not the racer's pick. Instead, Wagner purchased a midnight-black 2000 Boxster S from McKenna Porsche, in Downey, Calif. "It goes back to the 914-6, which was a real sports car," Wagner said. Tall and lean, the champion driver is the consummate athlete and could model Versace business suits as easily as he wears Nomex. He might be cool and collected at the wheel, but as he talks about his S, his voice reveals honest enthusiasm. "The mid-engine layout creates the proper car. I love how nimble the Boxster is. It is a little smaller inside than the 996, but it is a tremendous car when it comes to turn-in, rotation and feel."

As spry as the Boxster S may be, Wagner admitted it was short on the power he appreciated in his company car. "The Boxster S has nice mid-range torque, but Porsche purposely detuned that motor so the car doesn't compete with the 996 cabriolet."

To invoke the kind of performance he was after, Wagner decided to swap the car's original 3.2-liter, 250-bhp motor for a 996 3.4 liter, which in stock form generated 300 bhp and 258 lb-ft of torque. Naturally, he turned to McKenna to acquire a new unit.

To fit the new flat six into the center bay, a mounting kit was purchased from Mike Schatz of Schatz Motorsport, the West Coast distributor for FVD-Brombacher, one of Germany's foremost tuning specialists for Porsche automobiles. While there have been several 996/Boxster conversions, Schatz knew Wagner was going about his upgrade correctly. "It's much easier to convert the Boxster S to a 2000 or later 996 motor," Schatz said.

Like the 996, Schatz noted, the Boxster S is equipped with E-Gas, Porsche's electronically activated throttle control, making modifications to the wiring harness and 996 intake manifold unnecessary. Also, the S model was equipped with the same six-speed transmission as its stablemate, thus durability for the gearbox was not a concern.

Knowing Wagner's compulsion for power, Schatz also supplied headers specially designed for the Boxster S and a set of high-flow sport catalytic converters to replace the car's more restrictive units.

For the physical work of slipping the engine into the Boxster S's mid-bay, Wagner turned to longtime associates at Andial, one of the leading high-performance and race-car preparation shops for Porsche automobiles.

"There are dozens of modifications that have to be done, especially if you want to use the 996 intake manifold system," said Dieter Inzenhofer, one of the shop's founders and whose first name contributes the "di" in Andial. "We had to fabricate the intake pipe for the throttle body, because everything on the 996 points in the wrong direction."