Ducati made some 996s that are now affordable!

Noah,
Yes, stop in and see jason. Tell him your a friend of Mike Holloway. I will be there next Monday. If this is what I think it may be, I just might fly up again (one way) and drive it back to Tejas as an early Christmas prez to myself...;)

opps, sorry Noah - I meant this one 2002 Porsche 911 Turbo, $31,777 - Cars.com

but I am still very interested in the one you are going to be near...so yes, if its not too much trouble.

Yes, for clarification I'll be near the silver car in Glendale, CA. Not so close to the red car in IL.

But I'll look for Jason and tell him Mike sent me as a scout before his visit next Monday!

Ya, if he's a sales guy he will prolly thank you and make up some story about how we went out and got lit!

But in all seriousness, if its not too much trouble...in CA not IL :)

Good looking car. Little stuff I see:

Small paint mismatch between bumper cover and hood. Could be lighting or paintwork.
Carbon fiber clear coat is cracked on the steering wheel, very common.
Carbon fiber side vent tops are peeling, carbon fiber dash wings are peeling up. Very common.
Small curbing on RF wheel.
Wear to LH interior rocker trim, very common.

None of it more than a few hundred to get fixed.

What should I look for mechanically?

Reminds me of that saying . . . You get what you pay for. My gut tells me it was rode hard and put away wet. But who knows? May be a barn find.

Salt water stains mid-way up the door panels.

Porsche 911 911 | eBay

High mileage. $17k. Looks like the interior is in nice shape.

What is the highest mileage 996 that you have heard of? I've seen quite a few with 120-130 ish, but wondering how far they can go if they don't shed their chains, or crack a head , or chunk a block, or crack their cam follower bores, or drop a valve , or.......

Speeders had over 200k I'm pretty sure.

Thought a lot about a Ducati 996 before getting my Agusta instead. Tamburini knew what he was doing.

Unless you're dead set on that V-twin rumble, the MV is more special. Good choice.

Mine's at 158,000 and counting. Runs excellent.

I don't think there's any one thing that fails regularly on the turbo, the term "bulletproof" gets used a lot in regards to those cars. So check for the usual stuff on a 70k mile car.

Mine had 205k on it when I sold it in 2009. I've never seen one with higher.

It was absolutely rock solid and everything worked as it was supposed to, but it was on at least its second motor.

I think there are a few guys on the Rennlist 996 forums with over 200k on the original motor, and quite a few with well over 100k. There's not a big population of 996s here, so it's not a very good sample size.

The more I think about it the more I really want to pop on the 996 twin turbo - it shall happen...I just don't see thos cars going any lower than 20K as they age. I could be wrong.

It's bad to use Pelican to judge the entire population of any of these cars... Just by looking at these forums, one would deduce that 98% of all 944's are non-running with trashed cylinder heads from broken timing belts, 99.8% of all pre-2000 boxsters had cylinder walls collapse, every M96 car has had an IMS failure twice, etc etc etc.