Is a 3.5k Boxster a good idea? - Page 3 - Boxster/Cayman - PistonHeads UK

Hi, I have a hankering for a Boxster but dont really have the funds for anything too special. £3.5k tops really. It would be used only at the weekends. Am I better keeping my money or is it a massive risk to buy a £3.5k Boxster?

Well, without being that person, it's a £3.5k risk. If you can get any car looked at by someone who knows 986s pre purchase you should be able to mitigate much of the risk. It's not a totally crazy idea. I ran a 986 on a shoestring once, was my only car and main transport. Bought the thing cat D, had no idea what I was doing, was my first Porsche, didn't inspect it properly, went about it all wrong. The roof mechanism broke about a month in, but apart from that, over 70k miles it never broke down and the only fairly big expense was a clutch. Can see from online MOT checker that the car is still going 10 years later, albeit the mileage it going up rather more gradually now. It could have blown up, but they mostly don't. They can be a bit finickety re things like the cooling system, but you'd be pretty unlucky to have the engine let go. Have bought several other Porsches for far more money, done all the right due diligence and had much more costly issues down the road. So it goes. 986s for the most part are pretty reliable, despite the horror stories. Good luck.

18-24 months ago you could have bought a useable 986 for £3.5k, that would have needed a little fettling here and there. Those cars are £5k minimum now and £3.5k seems to be buying you something in need of a lot of care and attention

Repeat after me: "There is no such thing as a cheap Porsche". If it's for sale cheap, there's a reason. You can easily end up spending more than the purchase price putting right everything that's wrong with it. If you can do the work yourself, that will bring the price down a little.

These cars gobble money to put right if they have not been kept tip top in the past. Here's a recent thread of someone who thought they had bought well (and newer/better condition than £3.5k will buy) and within a year it wanting £5k of work. https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&... There's other ways to go about it in terms of doing work yourself etc just an example of how it can go

There is no such thing as a cheap Porsche

Reading that other thread, nothing sounded too difficult which a reasonably capable home mechanic couldn't fix themselves. £3.5K will probably not buy you much of any car but if you're lucky and can fix stuff yourself, these are OK cars. I ran mine with no major issues.

If you had a nice pot set aside for repairs/maintenance then go for it, otherwise it's a big risk.

You probably could run it fairly cheaply unless it blows up, then just scrap it. If you are anal about maintenance or take it into a 'specialist' to give you depressing lists of things, it will cost you , but if you don't mind, the odd suspension knock, ac not working, other odd things not working, then you might be able to have some fun in one. Also DVB are great for used spares, eg alternator or starter motor only £23., front wing £80, Even new radiators are £65 each on ebay. When I had a 996 I replaced so much on it, but only to keep it fully up to date, spares weren't expensive, front discs £150 a pair, If you can afford to lose it all, then why not.

Thanks for the input. I know about the suspension knocks and radiators etc but how would I know the roof for example is going to pack up? Would buying one where the roof inst opening electrically be a big issue?

are you able to do moderate jobs yourself ? garage bills would soon destroy you

If the roof breaks, you can disconnect the transmission arms and it works pretty well manually while saving up to repair the mechanism. Due to the geometry of the clamshell, it can't really pop open at speed, so it's all pretty safe. They can make a loud popping noise like a golf ball hitting the metal during operation when the mechanism is out of alignment. That's one precursor to failure.

ATM said: There is no such thing as a cheap Porsche This x 1000. I learned through lots of research before buying my first Porsche to budget for at least £2k in the first year of ownership of any oldish car to get it into a decent condition. Sometimes I’ve been lucky and had to spend slightly less, other times I’ve had to spend much more. You’re buying a car that was a luxury item when new. The spares and service costs will be the same now, except you’ll be visiting the garage a lot more frequently than the first few owners. If you go ahead just check the standard items - condensers, disk and brakes, clutch, signs of excessive oil use, shocks, springs. Some of these things could be financially much more than you pay for the car.

Pistom said: Reading that other thread, nothing sounded too difficult which a reasonably capable home mechanic couldn't fix themselves. £3.5K will probably not buy you much of any car but if you're lucky and can fix stuff yourself, these are OK cars. I ran mine with no major issues. That was my thread, and I think you're right. The work that needed doing on my car was way beyond my capabilities. I did try fixing the roof mechanism, because the ball joint popping out seemed like quite a popular problem with an easy fix. I bought the part and followed the advice, but each time I put the roof down it would pop out right as it was almost fully open. I just couldn't work out why. I did other bits and pieces, but things like driveshafts, corroded coolant pipes, brake disks etc. are not for me. The reality is that my car needed a lot of work doing, but I'd have probably got away with doing it gradually to spread the cost. Or not do it at all, and just wait for things to absolutely need doing without question. I think it depends on your nature whether you'd be happy doing that, or whether like me, you can't enjoy the car knowing stuff is failing.

ajap1979 said: I think it depends on your nature whether you'd be happy doing that, or whether like me, you can't enjoy the car knowing stuff is failing. I am posting this again as it seems relevant.... ATM said: If you have strong OCD like tendencies and don't like DIY then do not buy a 20 year old Porsche. It will be financial suicide. If you are handy with a spanner and are willing to flex a little on wanting Y our car to be right then yes fun can be had for reasonable money.

If you have strong OCD like tendencies and don't like DIY then do not buy a 20 year old Porsche. It will be financial suicide. If you are handy with a spanner and are willing to flex a little on wanting Y our car to be right then yes fun can be had for reasonable money. Edited by ATM on Wednesday 6th July 12:10

I bought a 928s 10 years ago for £3.5k when there were cheaper ones available and i spent twice that getting it in very good condition but a friend of mine also bought one for £2k and drove it for a year before having to do some work,he still has it but has now spent a fortune over many years. Luck played a part and being an engineer i love tinkering.....even expensive tinkering. Nowadays £3.5k doesnt buy you that much,a Boxster for that price seems a world of headache or you could get lucky..I am cautious now but in my 30s i would of given it a go... Whats the worse that can happen..

You might get lucky and have a year’s driving out of it but go into it being prepared to lose the purchase price. If the car needs new radiators, brakes and a suspension refresh you’ll easily be looking at forking out the purchase price again. As ATM quite rightly points out, there’s no such thing as a cheap Porsche. It’s not just Porsche though. If you bought a cheap Ferrari or Lamborghini you’d be looking at stratospheric bills to keep the car on the road. Porsche come under a lot of flack often on these pages for costing a fortune to run. It drives me mad. They’re no more expensive than any other premium sports car. In fact they’re probably a lot cheaper than an Italian car with the same performance. The usual problem seems to be that old water cooled Porsches tend to be picked up at relatively low prices these days and the buyers don’t do their research, thinking that cheap cars are cheap to run. Big mistake. They then rant on here about how expensive and unreliable they are. The cars I’ve bought over the years have never let me down but I have had to pay a small fortune to keep them that way.

I bought one in Jan with a decent service history and IMS and RMS replaced by a main dealer in the last 10'000 miles, new roof and a lot of other expensive jobs already done, since then i've spent £1000 on work on it and I anticipate spending another 2-3k this winter to really get it up to scratch, full suspension refresh amongst other smaller jobs. I'll be 10k into it by next summer I imagine. I've seen cars for breaking getting sold at 3k plus recently.

At this price point, why not consider say a BMW Z4 but I guess probably because it isn't a Boxster. If you start looking at other cars at this price point, you'll probably end up with an MX5.

I bought a 986 S for £5,100 in summer of 2019. It's been my only car since the day I bought it. Outside of routine servicing (oil/filters/etc) it owes me £40 for a passenger side door lock (2nd hand) and about £17 for a set of struts for the back boot (brand new). That's it. No thousands of pounds spent ... no wallet drained. The car isn't perfect - but I can live with it. My car has no record of any maintenance to deal with the IMS/RMS issues, and so far (108k miles and counting) it's steadfastly refused to grenade its engine. It has, however, developed a low speed clunk from the front suspension that needs investigating. So my smugness at not having my wallet drained will be temporarily suspended until that's sorted. As mentioned above, I am handy enough with the spanners, and absolutely don't have any form of car related OCD. I'm fairly sure if I drew up a full niggle list and dropped it off at a specialist to have every item ticked off, I'd quickly be relieved of more than the car owes me. But none of the niggles impact my enjoyment of the car, or leave me worried that it won't get me from A to B, so I work through them slowly - trying to tick off a couple every summer. As my car is 'high' miles and has no record of work done on either the IMS or RMS, then it's never going to be a top dollar car ... so I'm not worried about it not being perfect. I have no idea what a £3.5k 986 looks like in today's market ... back in 2019 you were fishing in the "rough but usable" pool for that amount ... and I can't see things being any better now. So you'll be absolutely at the bottom end of the market. There may well be a very occasional rough diamond, but there will also be one hell of a lot of turds rolled in glitter. But provided you don't expect your £3.5k Porsche to be like a £50k Porsche (i.e. be realistic about what 'needs' to be fixed, and what is just a niggle) and you buy well, then there's no reason for it to be inherently any more risky than any £3.5k second hand car. The proviso being that if something big does go, it's likely to make the car uneconomical to repair. If you do decide to go for it, then I'd completely ignore how shiny the car looks in photos ... or how the advert talks about how it had thousands spent on maintenance some 15 years ago. Every car in your price bracket will be there for a reason, and if you can't see the reason, it's likely something expensive! So I'd look for a car that's been used, isn't cosmetically perfect (stone chips everywhere, a bit of wear on the seat, that sort of thing) and has a 6 figure mileage ... but has a decent wedge of recent invoices for things like the suspension. That's your rough diamond - it might not look great, but you know why it's cheap, and it's been looked after recently. That's your best chance of getting a decent car at your budget. All that said ... if £3.5k was stretching myself ... I probably wouldn't be so blasé about it! So if that really is a hard limit for your finances, then maybe don't take the gamble and buy something a little lower down the food chain. But if it's a self-imposed limit of all you wish to spend, and it wouldn't absolutely ruin you if you had to walk away, then crack on sir!

I dont mind doing a bit of maintenance myself. I could tackle brakes etc. Could it still be ruinous if I was spannering the basics myself?

Rotary Potato said: The car isn't perfect - but I can live with it. Lots of great advice from RP in his post.. I once had a Porsche 968 owner tell me i couldn't run a 928s on a shoestring and more interestingly shouldn't. Did i prove him wrong....No but i had some great times with that car.

Chubbyross said: You might get lucky and have a year’s driving out of it but go into it being prepared to lose the purchase price. If the car needs new radiators, brakes and a suspension refresh you’ll easily be looking at forking out the purchase price again. As ATM quite rightly points out, there’s no such thing as a cheap Porsche. It’s not just Porsche though. If you bought a cheap Ferrari or Lamborghini you’d be looking at stratospheric bills to keep the car on the road. Porsche come under a lot of flack often on these pages for costing a fortune to run. It drives me mad. They’re no more expensive than any other premium sports car. In fact they’re probably a lot cheaper than an Italian car with the same performance. The usual problem seems to be that old water cooled Porsches tend to be picked up at relatively low prices these days and the buyers don’t do their research, thinking that cheap cars are cheap to run. Big mistake. They then rant on here about how expensive and unreliable they are. The cars I’ve bought over the years have never let me down but I have had to pay a small fortune to keep them that way. this , what you pay/paid is irrelevant running/repair cost will be in the same ball park as the new version and if you dont want to spend that sort of money dont buy it

alan36 said: I dont mind doing a bit of maintenance myself. I could tackle brakes etc. Could it still be ruinous if I was spannering the basics myself? Basic servicing isn't too bad I.e brake discs and pads, filters and spark plugs that kind of stuff but if you need to buy more Porsche specific stuff the prices are pretty high compared to similarly priced cars such as a Z4 or MX-5. Places like Euro Car Parts dint cater too well for these cars outside of standard service stuff. I run mine as a second car and I've previously had an MX-5 and an R53 Mini Cooper S as my previous toys and the Porsche prices are a big level up for parts. I still love it but the prices were a surprise at first.

If you're happy getting your hands dirty it'll be fine. Parts are a lot more expensive, obviously, but they're pretty good to work on. Treat it like a rolling project is the right idea, it's not going to be 'new car' like but if you keep on top of the basics it'll be a reliable companion. Just be aware it might blow up and you'll need to sell as spares or repairs or throw tons of money at it.

You can run a Boxster cheaply if you are happy to defer maintenance. It's not a car that's likely to leave you stranded but jobs needing to be done start to accumulate, stiff clutch pedal, leaking IMS, suspension bushes, A/C rads, etc. All this stuff can be ignored, the issue on a 3.5k example is that's probably the way the last few owners have approached their ownership also. Every 3.5k Boxster you look at would probably need that list doing to it.

Escy said: You can run a Boxster cheaply if you are happy to defer maintenance. It's not a car that's likely to leave you stranded but jobs needing to be done start to accumulate, stiff clutch pedal, leaking IMS, suspension bushes, A/C rads, etc. All this stuff can be ignored, the issue on a 3.5k example is that's probably the way the last few owners have approached their ownership also. Every 3.5k Boxster you look at would probably need that list doing to it. So would a fair amount of 7k boxsters! Just depends on how shiny the paint is...

That's true.

Ultimately it all depends on what you’re prepared to put up with. Personally, I like my cars to be relatively risk free (is that ever possible with a Porsche from this era?), so for a 986/987 Boxster I’d be paying £10k+. Obviously it’s more than you’re looking to spend but buying at a higher price means lots of the red flag stuff has already been sorted out. A £3.5k Boxster may well limp on for a bit, but I prefer my cars to run well and not stress me out from the start. That’s why I’ll pay more up front. If you like a gamble then go for it. Personally, if I were you and my funds were limited, I’d go for something like an MX5.

3.5K is bottom of the barrel these days, it will be rough as, lots of it won't work but it probably won't blow up. 2.5L is where it's at in 98 or 99 vintage for low drama (dual row IMS and thick, thick bores) and cheap parts. Mint ones are five figures from specialist dealers, rough as a badgers arse ones are £3250 and up. £4K - £4.5K will get you something with a decent MOT but cosmetically poor with some service history. The difference in bork potential between £4K and £7.5K is minimal if anything. I purchased a rough 2.5L car a few weeks back as a project, mainly because it had extended leather and Litronics and I have a massive amount of Porsche spares from 986/996 generation. It's come together pretty well and certainly is now better than most of the £7K + cars out there - but then if I was paying retail for the work done I'd have spent £3K odd on it! Know what you are getting into and be pragmatic about what needs to be working. Check the front wings carefully as many are now suffering around the front of the sills and rear of the front wings from stone chip damage festering. Brakes should feel strong and the pedal should have very limited slop in it, high pedal pressure requirement compared to modern stuff is normal. The roof will rattle, the wind deflector (if fitted) will rattle, if it smells of coolant around the nose then it needs rads (very common), a good crack tested and refurbed set of 17" Twist wheels are nearly a grand now so make sure they aren't battered and kerbed to pieces. Boxsters are amazing and the fact you can buy a road worthy (just) one for less than four grand is mental and brilliant in equal measures.

Loads of great advice on here. OP, why don’t you go for it and open a thread on how you do? It’d be a great read. You might just get lucky with the car.

The other thing you might want to do, is drive one at the £3.5k mark, and then go drive one at the £8k mark that's had significant amounts of recent suspension refresh work done. In all likelyhood, they will be like chalk and cheese. I bought one for £8k last year that had EVERYTHING done to it, clutch, RMS, IMS, M030 springs and all the mounts and bushes. To drive, it was in a completely different league to the £3.7k and £4.5k ones I'd owned previously. They were good in their own ways, but the £8k was sensational.

KPB1973 said: The other thing you might want to do, is drive one at the £3.5k mark, and then go drive one at the £8k mark that's had significant amounts of recent suspension refresh work done. In all likelyhood, they will be like chalk and cheese. I bought one for £8k last year that had EVERYTHING done to it, clutch, RMS, IMS, M030 springs and all the mounts and bushes. To drive, it was in a completely different league to the £3.7k and £4.5k ones I'd owned previously. They were good in their own ways, but the £8k was sensational. That sounds like sensible advice.

Look for Flat Cap Driver on YouTube, he bought a Boxster for 2.5k. Unsurprisingly it needed a fair bit of work to get it usable, and still needs some work now. I think he's looking to sell imminently but it still needs the timing guides doing. Funniest bit was the AOS going pop in front of a police car and when they stopped him because of the smoke he needed help getting out of the car as he'd stiffened up from playing football

toastyhamster said: Look for Flat Cap Driver on YouTube, he bought a Boxster for 2.5k. Unsurprisingly it needed a fair bit of work to get it usable, and still needs some work now. I think he's looking to sell imminently but it still needs the timing guides doing. Funniest bit was the AOS going pop in front of a police car and when they stopped him because of the smoke he needed help getting out of the car as he'd stiffened up from playing football I think pre pandemic he managed to buy a tatty 996 for £6.5k as well? Which he still has. Whole point was to prove you could buy a cheap 911 and it wouldn't explode the next day. I haven't watched for a while but the 911 had proven relatively cheap to run considering the bargain basement price.

deebs said: toastyhamster said: Look for Flat Cap Driver on YouTube, he bought a Boxster for 2.5k. Unsurprisingly it needed a fair bit of work to get it usable, and still needs some work now. I think he's looking to sell imminently but it still needs the timing guides doing. Funniest bit was the AOS going pop in front of a police car and when they stopped him because of the smoke he needed help getting out of the car as he'd stiffened up from playing football I think pre pandemic he managed to buy a tatty 996 for £6.5k as well? Which he still has. Whole point was to prove you could buy a cheap 911 and it wouldn't explode the next day. I haven't watched for a while but the 911 had proven relatively cheap to run considering the bargain basement price. He did yes, I expect if he actually used it for anything other than an occasional milk run it might break and cost him something. He also picked up a 912 for "only" 30k.

Three things: One, your maximum downside isn't the purchase price. It's that, plus any extraordinary expenditure, less what you get for selling it. Second, run it for a month and don't spend anything on it. Get to know the ca and what it needs, then decide whether to get rid of it or spend money. Third, don't make the mistake of trying to make an old car new. That way lies ruin unless the car is particularly valuable.

Don't let the nay sayers put you off. It might be the best thing you do

KPB1973 said: The other thing you might want to do, is drive one at the £3.5k mark, and then go drive one at the £8k mark that's had significant amounts of recent suspension refresh work done. In all likelyhood, they will be like chalk and cheese. I bought one for £8k last year that had EVERYTHING done to it, clutch, RMS, IMS, M030 springs and all the mounts and bushes. To drive, it was in a completely different league to the £3.7k and £4.5k ones I'd owned previously. They were good in their own ways, but the £8k was sensational. When you say suspension work is this something a home mechanic could carry out relatively cheaply? Also is it better to look for something with as low miles as possible or higher miles with better service history?

New shocks, wishbones, top mounts, etc. It can be done by a home mechanic, but unlikely to be plain sailing, expect the drop links to be stuck in the struts and the alignment bolts to be seized and need cutting out of the front subframe. Cost wise, it depends on the quality of the parts you use, I spent a fortune doing mine but I fitted upgraded parts like coilovers, adjustable toe arms and Powerflex wishbones. With decent quality standard parts, maybe £1500? I'd probably look at service history over mileage.

alan36 said: Also is it better to look for something with as low miles as possible or higher miles with better service history? Brilliant Question The Porsche nerds love a low mileage example. Me included. But the reality is these can be a money pit. I recently bought a 20,000 mile Boxster. Its lovely in that it all feels and looks new because it has basically been dry stored for 20 years. It doesn't drive amazingly well so I will guess that all the suspension components on it are original and therefore way past their best. Just in parts you can spend 1000 - 2000 buying new suspension components and then these will need fitting. Brakes are another 500. Clutch and flywheel is another 1500. So most Porsche nerds will tell you to buy a car with all of the above recently completed and other stuff if you're lucky enough to find one. Otherwise you will probably end up doing some or all of that work yourself. Let me give you an example car for sale. This car looks cheap to Me. It has slowly been dropping in price. It is higher mileage but the description reads very well in that it has had an engine rebuild and a gearbox rebuild and all sorts of other stuff. But it has been for sale and unsold for months. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275375656850

alan36 said: KPB1973 said: The other thing you might want to do, is drive one at the £3.5k mark, and then go drive one at the £8k mark that's had significant amounts of recent suspension refresh work done. In all likelyhood, they will be like chalk and cheese. I bought one for £8k last year that had EVERYTHING done to it, clutch, RMS, IMS, M030 springs and all the mounts and bushes. To drive, it was in a completely different league to the £3.7k and £4.5k ones I'd owned previously. They were good in their own ways, but the £8k was sensational. When you say suspension work is this something a home mechanic could carry out relatively cheaply? Also is it better to look for something with as low miles as possible or higher miles with better service history? Reasonably cheaply, yes. Simply...probably not. As others have said, sometimes the simplest jobs can be a nightmare. It just took me 5 days on and off to remove a drop link due to the steel and aluminium corroding together. Gas axe, dremel, lump hammer, gallons of WD and eventually drilling out the collar of the nut. And this is on a low miles pampered 987.2!

shalmaneser said: Escy said: You can run a Boxster cheaply if you are happy to defer maintenance. It's not a car that's likely to leave you stranded but jobs needing to be done start to accumulate, stiff clutch pedal, leaking IMS, suspension bushes, A/C rads, etc. All this stuff can be ignored, the issue on a 3.5k example is that's probably the way the last few owners have approached their ownership also. Every 3.5k Boxster you look at would probably need that list doing to it. So would a fair amount of 7k boxsters! Just depends on how shiny the paint is... So true! When I was looking, not much in it between the £3.5k snotters and the £8k ones. I went for a £5.5k 3.2s that had the right spec and then sorted everything. This is her now: Edited by tracer.smart on Friday 8th July 20:13

I bought a cheap Boxster just over a year ago, a little more than you’re talking about, but not much. https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&... Financially I should have just broken it and bought a better example. Now around 16 months and 10k miles later and it stands me well into 5 figures, oh and it needs tyres (£500) and an exhaust (£850), along with rear dampers and the springs are probably past their best. I’ve done very little cosmetically, and I’ve done most of the labour myself. Most parts are good quality aftermarket rather than Porsche. It does drive well, it does make me smile, I have made some mistakes. There’s no such thing as a cheap Porsche though.