This is not a real estate deal, and there is very little recourse. Your guy should have gleaned all he needed to know about the exterior of the car by looking at the pictures offered for sale. If the seller did not post pics of these areas, perhaps it's more the sellers fault but you relieved the seller of any real responsibility by doing the PPI.

Have you contacted DART directly? How about the seller?

PM me if you want me to liason the conversation in person. Not sure what might come out of it, but at least it would give them a chance to offer some perspective.

Also, I'm in Boulder and happy to do a friendly once over on a P-car. Not going to run a leakdown test, but am pretty good at sniffing out issues/generally qualifying condition.

Given the visual evidence, reframing DART as an unreliable PPI resource seems like a pretty good piece of advice for this board. DART deserves a rebuttal, but nevertheless...

+1 No matter people's opinions on the Buyer's actions / non-actions, Dart were hired to do a job and they failed to do a good one. If I was the owner of Dart i'd be ashamed of that report based on the pictures posted. That rust for example is clearly visible and could very easily cost a pretty penny to correct

Hah !

I do agree.

But it is still the buyer's responsibility to ask for and decipher the PPI finding documentation. If it doesn't seem spot on, question everything.

Earlier this year I had a "very reputable" shop in Richmond VA perform a PPI simply for a 3rd party opinion on a motor purchased from yahh off this forum. Frankly, the seller "yahh" provided more than enough documentation from his rebuild of the motor and subsequent tuning etc but i thought a PPI was the right thing to do.

Said shop didn't have any knowledge of how to perform a leak-down and returned "fantastic" results verbally...but the photos they provided said otherwise. According to their photos, the newly rebuilt motor was junk. Left me and seller scratching our heads, and frankly freaked out the seller that he'd just invested a lot of $ and time but his result was a paperweight...

I worked this through with said shop owner who was reasonable enough to refund my $250 PPI fee for the inconclusive results.

Now that I have the motor, the plot thickened... These clowns who didn't know how to perform the job also damaged the engine by cross threading the sparkplug on cyl-3... You can imagine my joy as I made this discovery earlier this month as I was installing fresh plugs as final prep before motor install..... LUCKILY, a gracious local race shop owner came to my house and was able to use a thread chasing tool and straighten out the mess (from the inside out).

Thank God, otherwise my "due-diligence" would have cost me a left bank tear-down and timecert installation on a newly rebuilt motor :rolleyes:

That's fair enough. I guess my point is that people seem to be jumping on this guy's case with points like "well you should have done more" when that's fairly obvious at this point.

Put another way, I see a ton of "I'm about to buy a Porsche what do I do", and the single most common answer is, "get a PPI," not, "Get a PPI and make sure to see it in person, and make sure the PPI place is reputable, and..."

The assumption is you find a shop that deals in Porsches and you have to trust them to some degree to do their jobs. I'd say it benefits all of us to see and call out places that don't play fair. Buying Porsches long distance isn't super common, but it's also not all that rare.

Give it a couple years and shops will no longer offer PPI services and it’s because of the internet and threads like these. They don’t want the brain damage. They spend a couple hours for a few hundred bucks for a customer who is never going to come back since they aren’t local. And then their reputation gets called into question because they missed something or often they get accused of taking a payoff from the seller to lie, etc. no business owner in his right mind will deal with it for a couple hundred bucks.

While I’m local, I don’t know Dave at Dart. He’s not one of my dealers. I’m definitely not defending him. I have challenged the OP to post more details because we don’t really know anything about this car. As others have mentioned if the ad pictures are good, we will be able to see this stuff if we are looking for it. I do think the buyer’s bone is to pick with the seller. If he took pictures in a way to hide the rust it’s on him, not Dart. I still don’t get why we can’t see the listing...

I made similar mistakes with my first ppi. But I never posted the shop name because I didn’t really give them a clear enough list of what I wanted done. Nothing ended up ‘wrong’ but the PPI was of nil value. Don’t ask for a ppi - that’s like asking for dinner. One guy will give you a 3 course meal and one will reheat some old soup.

Ask for a check on 5 things which have verifiable results, plus a drive test. Things like compression, leak down, number of broken head studs, number of underside panels with any visible rust, brake thickness, paint depth - whatever. Pay for facts not opinions, except for a drive test opinion.

that's not a PPI, it's simply a visual and relatively casual once-over of the car. the OP will not get anywhere with Dart, although a complaint with the BBB or state authorities might offer a little bit of solace.

the potential beef is with the seller. if I were the buyer and if the ad listing photos and text failed to disclose the rust issues - especially if the ad listing only offered the typical "rust-free" lingo - I would contact an attorney in Colorado and ask at least a couple of questions. this is not likely to offer any particular solutions, but you never know.

Every service should get used to their work being scrutinized and broadcasted. They’ll either get used to it or stop doing business altogether.

I’d agree with you here extcept if that’s what the Car actually looks like and the PPI passed with flying colors then they were pretty cavalier and deserve a panning.

Everyone here has seen threads where you see a little bit of rust in corners then get under panels and see a mess. It at the very least deserved a callout and some deeper investigation. It got zero.

What you seem to be saying here is communities should just keep their mouths shut no matter the service they receive which is a pretty silly opinion. This forum has plenty of people defending mechanics and giving a dose of perspective. Sometimes it’s needed. I don’t think that’s the case here.

The shoe being on the other foot there are several shops with a solid presence on here that get great PR and a lot of love from the community. The blade cuts both ways. But they are known because they give great service with integrity.

I'm not saying that at all. People can, and will talk. Where have I told anyone they shouldn't be talking?

The OP came here asking for our help. He gave us very little details and expects us to take him at his word about everything, with very little back up and no other side of the story. Some will see those couple of pictures of rust and say,"Damn dude, you got screwed. You should be pissed." What I'm saying is," Let's see the whole car and how it was presented." I think the seller pulled a fast one and the OP's venom is misguided.

I don't think it was a very good PPI, nor do I think a very good PPI was paid for. It doesn't even have a leakdown test. It's a used car prepurchase checklist. That is NOT a proper PPI on a vintage car and the fact that the buyer took it as such reflects on him more than it does the guy doing it.

Just saw this thread.

I have no dog in this fight.

I feel badly for the buyer but something jumped out to me.

DART is NOT a body shop, they do mechanical repairs (check their website). While, perhaps they should have noted some visible rust, they did not do an examination of the body to determine it's condition. If body condition was important to the buyer, he should of had a body/restoration shop inspect the car.

I want to thank the community for protecting each other in these situations. We are here to support each other with knowledge and insight. As a 30 year Porsche veteran myself, I don't have all the answers and I thank those users in this thread that kindly offered words of wisdom. I hope we can come together as we address these types of situations with a positive focus and look at all options. I appreciate everyone here. Thank you all.

As a follow-up, I plan to come back to Dave, the owner of DART auto repair in Denver to do the right thing but the last attempt was unfortunately not productive and he was not willing to budge. It's a shame when rust is present and the box on a PPI is checke off as OK on blatant rust and there are other mistakes ... the Porsche community has us keeping these cars for decades because we love them and I hope we can educate the community on those that support us in our endeavor.

I see 50 items on the check list. 3 of which are body related Interior, obvious body damage and rust. Several of these have notes (cant read what they say). If 25% of the items listed were totally wrong I would say there is a problem. In this case one item out of 50 did not have the detail you would have liked, so you throw the shop under the bus. I would have described the areas you showed as bubbled paint and considered it minor. I think of rust as what you find on early 911's were the whole suspension is about to come apart. Obviously your expectation and what was delivered did no match. Not knowing the cost or upfront discussion my guess is you got what you paid for which was a quick look over to check for major problem areas.

john

So you arrived, forked over the money and drove away without even walking around the car?

And you started another thread because?

Airplane, boat, house even a damn horse. If you hire a PPI to take the responsibility because you don’t know yourself or cant be there, this is what they are for. Damn disgrace he trusted someone that said they could handle a PPI and let him down. This is why the professsion exists. He didn’t know what to look for and shouldn’t have to if he hires a PPI. Horrible

+1 Exactly this here. If you are not prepared to do a good job and stand by it then be an adult and say no

I don't see how your posts here are helping you get what you want. What is your goal here, to get the money you paid for the PPI back? If so, take them to small claims court. If you are just out to it to damage their business, you will likely need more. Based on the typical car bought here that didn't live their life in CA, most have significant rust if not a garage queen or restored. Rust that is easily treatable, doesn't perforate the body or create a structural problem may be considered acceptable to a mechanic in this old a car...unless you asked them to do some sort of concours type inspection. What the ad said about the car (or failed to say means nothing)...and the buyer is usually expected to do their own due diligence.

I understand your disappointment as I hate a rusty car and would never buy one (I would pay a premium for a rust free example)...but I don't see you getting anywhere here. I have bought three Porsches via the internet, but flew out to see the cars and close the deal for two of them. Each had flaws that were important to me that the seller did not point out in their ads or show in their photos...but I had an opportunity to not close the deal if i chose to. The worst was the one i just had shipped to me. It was a fabulously good deal, but not totally as represented. I was quite annoyed, but I already had the parts and the ability to make it perfect...although others may not. I did realize that if I/one makes the choice to save the time and airfare to not see a $50K purchase in person, they take a risk that they will not get exactly what they want. Unless there is some sort of outright fraud (collusion between mechanic and seller), it seems that the mechanic can fall back on the subjectivity that is inherent in cosmetic/paint/rust inspection. The checklist did not specify what was acceptable or not and it is not cut and dry like a mechanical issue.