[onewhippedpuppy]

Wow. I'm glad that the internet has lowered the journalistic bar such that totally biased crap like this article can be published as fact. Can't wait to see the air cooled fanboys jump on this one.....

I'd be curious how many 986/996 cars the author has owned. My guess is zero. Let's look at a few of his criticisms......

Frameless doors - since when is this a negative attribute? Many modern cars have frameless doors. My '88 911 Targa has frameless doors, so he needs to move his insults back a few generations of 911.

Horrifying interior trim quality - I've owned 5 986/996 cars. Not one has rattled, not one has shown significant wear inside. The interior, while not feeling luxurious in the pre-2002 models, actually holds up very well.

Failure prone engines - GTFO. If the guy had any legitimacy, he blew it with that statement. RMS issues is a freaking oil leak people, big deal. Of my 5 only one had a small seep, slight enough that it never dripped. "Universal" my ass. IMS issue is real but also rare. If it keeps you up, replace the bearing with an improved one for $600-ish (which he fails to mention). There were porous block and "D-chunk" issues with early Boxsters that were quickly remedied, and I doubt there's many out there today in the used market. BTW he doesn't appear to like the air cooled cars either, as I'm not aware of a glut of "previous failures in air cooled cars".

Fragile interior - I've replaced two headlight switches in my cars ranging from 50-80k. Also had one ignition switch replaced just prior to my purchase. That's it, and those are the two most common failures. His statement about intermittent and untraceable electrical failure is flat out wrong, I've never seen any such comment to that effect regarding these cars. Why would you need to replace a Litronic assembly, short of accident damage? Just like any headlights you replace the bulbs. Cracked leather is also flat out wrong, it wears like any Porsche which is pretty darn well.


Much like a Jeremy Clarkson Porsche interview, this entire thing is dripping with bias and lacking any real factual support for his claims. To me this reeks of someone that just doesn't like Porsche, or has an axe to grind. I didn't frequent this website, but this guarantees that I won't in the future.