Stuck for Christmas gift ideas for the most important person in your life? Why not show how much you care with a £31,000 two-seater sports car? A Porsche Boxster, say. Certainly more exciting than a tub of Cadbury's Miniatures and a music token. And if they don't like it, they can always change it.
Personally, I think they will like it - though it is possible you may encounter some initial resistance. The Porsche badge, through no fault of its own, has a long history of association with pony-tailed advertising executives. It has also traditionally been the marque of choice for wallet-waving City boys.
As a result, some people now find they cannot say the word Porsche without gritting their teeth; and that the mere sound of one passing at speed causes them automatically to begin making hand gestures of a crude and masturbatory nature. If these feelings are shared by the receiver of your Christmas Porsche (and you will know by the hesitation in their eyes as they pull off the paper), don't despair. Stress to them the necessity of holding on to what is important - the faith, not the faithful. And push them as quickly as possible into the driver's seat.
For it seems to me that from behind the wheel of a Porsche Boxster, it is almost beyond the bounds of human possibility to feel anything other than infinite approval. Depress the accelerator and all that cumbersome baggage disappears rapidly behind you, along with pretty much everything else on the road that isn't also a Porsche.
I was given a Boxster to call my own for three days and decided within about six minutes that it was the best car I had driven in two years of writing for these pages. Within eight minutes, I had decided that I never wanted to drive anything else. When they came to take it away at the end of the loan period, I had to be prised out with a chisel and cattle prod.
The Boxster is definitely the right Porsche for anyone with nagging doubts about the image of the marque. It is the prettiest Porsche by some measure (wonderfully low and wide, with simple, flowing lines) and smacks far less of a banker's end-of-year bonus than the altogether more cocky and thrusting 911 models.
It's a practical choice, too. Well, up to a point. The engine is mid-mounted, so you get a wide, if shallow, boot space for clobber, as well as storage area under the bonnet. But I don't suppose anyone buys a Boxster to go into the removal business. They buy one to zip around with a light load and a light heart, listening to the engine play its amazing three-part signature tune: the low growl, the whoosh of air and the keening top note.
This is a luxury sports car in which the luxury and the sportiness are miraculously balanced. It corners so tightly and responds so readily to your every twitch that you begin to feel that your hands and feet have fused with the engineering. But the ride is smooth and insulated enough that you can drive the car for hours without needing to refer yourself and your passenger to an osteopath afterwards.
It manages to be sporty without being macho. (There's nothing oil-up-the-nose or arse-on-the-tarmac about it.) And yet it manages to be luxurious without turning soft. The Lexus SC430 - a highly desirable luxury sports car in itself - is spongy and pleased with itself by comparison.
Casting round for a drawback or catch, I could only come up with the handbrake, which is mysteriously thin and weirdly unpleasant on the wrist. Plus the combination of mid-mounted engine and canvas top means the cabin heats up quicker than an adolescent's sock. But you can control that situation with the car's hyper-efficient air system. Failing that, extreme air conditioning is available via the roof-removal option, and achievable automatically at the push of a button.
My model came swathed to the eyebrows in oxblood leather, which might not have been my first choice. (Other colours are, of course, available.) I don't think I have ever seen so much leather in a small car: an entire generation of cows appears to have been wiped out in the making of this single vehicle. The carpets, too, were cut without fear of recession, spilling halfway up the doors and right across the shelf area behind the seats. They were pink, and thus clashed amusingly with the red leather. It has never been my privilege to stand inside Barbara Windsor's wardrobe, but I imagine this was close to the sensation of doing so.
I didn't care, though. Frankly, the entire interior could have been lined ostentatiously with laminated £50 notes and stuccoed with champagne corks from a broad selection of City wine bars and I wouldn't have objected. Letter to Santa: you know what to do.
The lowdown
Porsche Boxster 2.7
Price: £31,450
Top speed: 157mph
Acceleration: 0-62 in 6.4 seconds
Consumption: 9.7 litres/100km (combined)
At the wheel: Amanda Holden
On the stereo: Alicia Keys
En route for: The end of the earth
