[CJFusco]

People tried to warn me about the maintenance costs of a used 951, but I didn't listen.

For over a year, the 951 ran great with only minor problems. A blown BOV? No biggie. A loose ignition rotor? Child's play. I take relish in doing jobs like this. Makes me feel like I'm connected to the car. After a little over the year of things like this, I am thinking, "man, these cars aren't so bad... I don't know what everybody is always whining about..."

November rolls around. Blown head gasket. I garage the car for the winter and don't get around to working on it until around February. The job goes fairly well, but slowly, and I get the car back on the road in early April. It runs great for a little while. After a couple months, I start to hear a whirring sound when I put any pressure on the clutch pedal (I am thinking bad TOB). Not long after, I lose the clutch.

Like I said, I can deal with little, niggling problems here and there. But a blown head gasket and a blown clutch one right after another? This is overwhelming. I am just starting a career (two, actually - professional writer and teacher), so my priorities are not on fixing Porsches right now.

I know I have to fix the damn Porsche before I do anything, and I won't be able to make any big decisions soon, but suddenly the idea of owning a newer car is very attractive. A two-year old Cayman might look really good parked in my garage. They are fast, too - Road & Track got a 5.3 second 0-60 time out of the BASE Cayman, and 4.9 sec. out of the Cayman S. The base Cayman numbers are comparable to my 951 in stock form. The Cayman S would be considerably faster.

Like I said, I won't be doing anything soon (probably for about a year), and I would have to fix the 951 (I am guessing that selling a 951 with a bad clutch, I would get not much more than half its value), but by then there will be a number of Caymans on the used car market, with low mileage, for decent prices.

I don't know, I'm just weighing my options here.