It usually happens when the car has been sitting a while maybe a week.
But it occasionally does it after it has just been run.  You guys may
have something there on just when running a short bit of time.  I was
at the resteraunt the other night and I had to start it again toi move
it into a different spot.  After eating it smoked quite a lot but
always quits.  This smoke is definately from oil.  

Dan I love this car.  It handles like a dream, it has great styling
and I feel quite comfortable in it.  I would love to have a few more
inches in the leg room department though.  I have had zero problems
and porsche has been a dream to work with on service.  

Thanks for your response

John

My BMW motorcycle is a horizontal and smokes after a week or so of sitting
.... just like my 01 Boxster.

Smoke on startup of any flat horizontally opposed engine after some time at
rest is a given.

Oil will at rest gather in the valve covers and no matter how good a valve
guide is, it must have some clearance to be able to move the valve to an
open or closed position. Oil resting in a valve cover will eventually seep
through the seals and the guides into the cylinders. Also it takes very
little oil on startup to make a great deal of smoke.

On a radial engine where some of the cylinders are located upside down, you
should always manually pull them through a couple of revolutions simply to
avoid hydraulic lock and catastrophic damage. It is simply the nature of the
design. Every radial engine you have ever watched fire up in the old war
films smoked on startup.

So never fear, at least with a flat design, you at least you don't have to
hand crank it to avoid damage, unless your Porsche has really been sitting a
long time, then I may actually recommend it.

To the original poster:

While some smoking on startup is a characteristic of the flat-6 Porsche engine,
for various reasons, any smoking accompanied by cold/warm/hot starting or
driveability problems is cause for serious concern.

Could be something relatively simple to fix like a leaking fuel injector but
could also be something much more serious. (My '02 started smoking on startup
and the cause was a failed air/oil separator which almost cost me the engine.
The separator failed in such a way that excessive vacuum pulled quite a bit of
oil from the engine into the intake and this oil was pumped through the engine.
If I had continued to drive the car, this oil could have caused a hydraulic lock
up of the engine and at anything over idle this could have destroyed the
engine.)

If the smoking continues after startup, appears on deacceleration, under hard
acceleration, if accompanied by a howling noise, excessive vacuum at the engine
oil dipstick tube or oil filler tube (with the engine running at idle), shut off
engine and get car to nearest qualified service department with strict
instructions not to start engine, drive car, until source of symptoms found and
corrected.

Sincerely,

MarcW.