Porsche built a track-ready camera car from a Boxster that looks like it's straight out of Wacky Races, and it’s cooler than I expected

If you’ve ever tried shooting fast cars from a moving vehicle, you’ll know it’s a delicate balance of speed, stability and not falling out. Enter Porsche’s secret weapon: a 718 Boxster S converted into a dedicated camera car. 

Suprisingly, this wasn’t designed by some elite motorsport R&D team, but by nine second-year apprentices in Porsche’s training programme. Yet it’s a thing of beauty that's apparently been getting the shots (silently, reliably) since 2017.

What's a camera car?

For the uninitiated, a camera car is the vehicle used to film other vehicles in motion. Think of those dramatic tracking shots in commercials, motorsport promos or glossy car reviews. 

The camera car has to be fast enough to keep up, smooth enough not to shake the footage to bits, and safe enough for a photographer or cinematographer to hang off it in all kinds of precarious positions.

Porsche had a problem: its previous camera car, an older Boxster, couldn’t keep pace with the newer machinery tackling the track at the Porsche Experience Center Leipzig in Germany. Instead of sending the job to a specialist shop, they handed it to a team of apprentices as a real-world engineering challenge.

The starting point was a standard 718 Boxster S: 350 horsepower, mid-engined balance and enough agility to chase down a Cayman GT4 or 911 Turbo whilst keeping everything smooth.

Thoughtful design

Off came the soft-top roof. In its place: a robust roll bar, serving both as safety protection and a high mounting point for cameras. The entire car was resprayed matte black, eliminating reflections that would otherwise ruin a shot. Every surface was considered. Every bracket had a purpose.

Steel mounts were added to the front, sides and rear to allow rigs, arms, stabilised heads or handheld operators to work from whichever angle the shot demanded. Both the frunk and trunk were padded and fitted with harness anchors so a photographer could actually work from inside them securely. A standing platform between the seats offered yet another shooting option, again with a harness point.

Though it looks like a stealth performance special, the mechanicals remain stock. And that’s the point: the Boxster already has the power, grip and ride balance needed for smooth motion work. What really matters is practicality and uptime.

Internal wiring lets the camera or rig system connect directly to a laptop for monitoring or backup. A power inverter keeps equipment charged throughout the shoot. That means no “hang on, we need to find a socket” moments: when you're filming cars that cost more than most houses, you don’t want to interrupt the rhythm. In short, this Boxster gets out of the way and lets the shot happen.

Motion matters

For photographers, it's all a timely reminder that motion changes everything. To convey speed, you can’t just freeze it; you have to move with it. A camera car lets you shoot at matched velocity, creating natural motion blur, real parallax and a sense of momentum that no gimbal or drone can fully replicate.

It also shows that functional creativity doesn’t always start at the top. Sometimes the smartest solutions come from fresh eyes, fewer preconceptions and a willingness to ask: what do we actually need to make the shot? This Boxster is a working lesson in designing for the image, not the spec sheet.

What I love most is that it didn’t launch with fanfare. It wasn’t teased or previewed. It just quietly went to work; capturing GT cars, motorsport icons and hillclimb heroes, from angles the average tracking setup could only envy.

Now that it’s finally out in public view, it stands as a reminder that the most exciting piece of kit on a shoot isn’t always the camera. Sometimes, it’s the car you shoot from.