[unclebilly]

Based on what I see, all pre 2010 cars are painted with a bad brush because of the nonrepairable engine problems of SOME of the Cayenne S cars.

The V6 had no engine problems.
The Cayenne S and Cayenne Turbo were plagued with the same plastic cooling pipes that cost under $300 in parts to fix and 6 hours labor. Most of these have already been sorted out.

The early cars had a driveshaft bearing issue that is fixable.

The early cars had a $600 transmission problem as well.

Everyone is scared of them because of a problem with a subset of them. Uninformed buyers seem to get hurt the worst. There are some real nice ones for sale with an engine that runs fine but is ticking or knocking. The one I got is in the other end of the spectrum, the engine seems OK but the body is far from perfect.

If I like it, I may buy a nice one with a bad engine and do a swap… time will tell.