Roadtrips: Boxengasse Megaphonics 25, the cult of Porsche

If you're not into German sports cars then look away, your about to get a gushy overload of Stuttgart's finest all crammed into what is establishing itself as the Mecca for UK Porsche owners.

Rally Cars outside where they belong, race cars in the big fancy shed

What the Fuchs is Boxengasse Megaphonics?* For the German reader probably no translation required but for the Brit that probably didn't even do GCSE French, let alone German the name translates into "Pit Lane" - that's the weird bit sorted out. Now for physical aspects of what is Boxengasse, well we're not sure how you'd describe it, it's kind of an upmarket industrial estate nestled in the Bicester triangle of motorsport and heritage car locations. There's some fields, a lovely lake, some beautiful buildings and some garages, one which is occupied by Porsche specialists Auto Farm and the others are occupied by Boxengasse's Youtube star owner Frank Cassidy and his insane collection of air cooled Porsche. Cassidy looks kind of like midlife Teen Wolf, he's got a decent selection of Dickies shackets and a toy collection that we're all jealous of.

The car park is the real sweet shop, so many great cars in so many great colours

Like every roadtrip feature we write, the journey becomes part of the destination. The reality is a lof of cool stuff happens in the South West but unfortunately some even cooler stuff happens a little further afield. Our transport for the day was a 2002 Porsche 911, 996 edition. If you don't know anything about Porsche cars and that sounds like a foreign language then here's a brief interlude whilst we explore the basics so you can hold your own at your next car meet and we'll inadvertently reveal that the 2002 Porsche 911 that we have is your most likely entry point to Porsche 911 ownership.

The 911 is Porsche's most iconic car model, they do other models but only one has the engine at the back - think vintage VW Beetle that's evolved - that's the 911

Whilst it's called a 911, they're actually coded into model versions based on their age, examples are the 930, 964, 993, 996, 997, 991 up the current 992 model. They're all 911s and some are holier grails than others but they're all part of the club.

You can split all 911 models into two distinct eras, everything up to the 993 edition which ended around 1997 was air cooled (the engine not your feet) and everything after that had water cooling (like you'd find in most cars). There's some snobbery around air cooled being the preferred option but generally I only ever hear this from people that drive a Mondeo and have never owned a 911. The whole engine cooling chat is more autistic than hunting down Pokemon at the weekend so if you're reading this and thinking you couldn't possibly have anything other than an air cooled 911 - congrats you have been diagnosed.

Owning a Porsche is like being in a cult, 2/3rds of all Porsche sports cars ever built (since the 60s) are still being driven today. Air cooled Porsche models are minimum £50K these days, water cooled models are more widely available and typically start around £15K for a half decent 996 model and go up to as much as you like. They're pretty basic in terms of comforts, it's car focussed on the driving experience and outstanding quality.

Most Porsche 911 models carry the name Carrera (named after La Carrera Panamericana road race) the only exceptions to this are the Targa (removable roof version) and Turbo models. Sometimes people will say Porsche Carrera instead of 911 or use the model derivative instead of 911 - it's all basically the same thing.

Big breath, now back to the roadtrip. So, we left early, pointed the car east and headed up the M5 towards Swindon, only stopping once at Cullompton McDonalds because that's just what has to happen when you have a teenager in the car, the section of M5 between the off ramp and the on ramp at Cullompton is the least driven motorway in Britain. A little cross country fun towards Oxford and 3 hours after leaving home we Boxengassed. Finding the place was easy, Porsche cars were pouring out of junctions like rats escaping drainpipes, all models, all colours all mostly driven by middle aged men of the same model and same colour. Despite having gone to a few Porsche events, and the Porsche factory, I can honestly say I had never seen so many Porsche cars in one place. Segregation is still alive and well in the Porsche fraternity with car parking happily split into three zones, "general public", "Air Cooled" and "Water Cooled" with cars of the same era all bundled together in their zones; hundreds of cars.

What the team at Boxengasse have done really well is tap into the mindset of the visitors, the car park is as much a display as the displays themselves, the vibe isn't anywhere near as pretentious as it could be and there's not really much to do but walk about looking at cars yet that happily seems take most of the day. The food offer is tailored to match the audience, you can see they've trusted that the visitor is probably going to like the kind of thing they also like and they're spot on - we're big fans of that vibe, that's basically what we're doing here.

The cars on display are the stars, cars you're not going to see in the flesh anywhere else - not even in the Porsche Museum, because they're pulled from private collections, race teams and owners that often are still driving about in them. Race cars, rally cars and super rare models that in many cases are just one of one. They're right there, you can touch them, get up close to get some great shots and plenty of people about flexing their car knowledge. You can walk the car park, spot a super rare Speedster model and then realise there's actually multiple of them, all in the same colour, all in the same car park.

The only downside was it pissed down and we went from air cooled to water cooled so it was time to exit through the gift shop and head for home.

Follow @boxengasse on the gram for details of next year's event

*Fuchs is the brand of wheels designed by Otto Fuchs but awkwardly used here to replace the word Fuck