Excited to Join the Club - Baton Rouge PPI and 996 Advice

Hey everyone - thanks in advance for your time. Excited to join this forum as an owner soon! Looking at early 996s, and budgeting in 2-4k for IMS/RMS/etc immediately. I found this 2000 996 in Baton Rouge, 46k miles for just under $20k, leaving a healthy buffer for servicing it http://www.germanautobr.com/2000-Por...-70819/5821006 Any recommendations for a PPI in the Baton Rouge area? Other threads on this site were a little old. Brian Harris Porsche comes in at $280 - any reviews of the quality of their work? I'm also looking at this 2002 996 ( http://www.californiamotors.com/2002...-94901/5885116 ) - it's newer and the higher mileage makes me feel more comfortable that it was driven (as opposed to sitting and seals drying out), but no hardtop and further away from me. Any thoughts on the two would be greatly appreciated!

That green and tan looks nice if a Cabrio floats your boat. If you get an early 996 with a dual row, you might just want to keep it as-is.

The green and tan one looks lowered. You should ask them if they can look at what suspension it has on it.

My advice is avoid dealerships for older pcars unless you can get a good maintenance history. Even then, be very cautious. The trend seems to be to find out your engine is on its last leg then trade it in so that you don't have to meet the person you are screwing face to face. At least if you buy from an individual, you can get a good idea of their character and typically a lot more maintenance history.

One other thing, you might test drive a coupe with a sunroof just for the fun of it. You are so close to the roof and windows that the sunroof is almost as good. The advantages are that the coupes are lighter and quicker, sunroof and windows roll up and down much quicker, even at speed, and sunroofs are usually cheaper to repair than convertible tops.

Npatel- fellow Louisianaian here, also a brand-spanking new p-car owner (completed the deal last night after 4 months of tireless searching.) I didn't find too many 996s in the area and ended up buying in Colorado where I have a family member who is a '99 owner who was able to do some ground work for me. I don't know of any shops in the BR area aside from Brian Harris (I'm in Mandeville), but from what I've heard from others, Porsche dealers aren't always the best for a thorough PPI, one reason being that they are used to the more current 911s, but I'm not sure if that's necessarily true everywhere. Also, I agree with what was said above about buying from a private seller vs a dealer. I called lots of dealers in other states and the sales people generally knew next to nothing about the car being offered for sale. And good luck asking for a service history at a dealer. I got lucky and found an '03 C4S that's a two-owner car and the last guy has had it for 10 years and has a mountain of service records. Early in my search I went to the local Porsche dealer - which will remain nameless, but you can figure it out- just to see if they ever have any 996s for sale and was basically laughed out of there - "why would you want that car?!" I decided at that point to find a good local independent shop for any of my future needs. Good luck with your search!

Make sure you pay extra attention from cars from states that have been flooded recently. I suspect there's a good amount trading hands these days. A very thorough PPI should uncover most of these.

Another fellow SE Louisiana owner here. For a PPI the only place I would really trust is NOLAsport in New Orleans. I didn't get mine PPI as I was such a noob I just bought it without due diligence. But tracked down the service history and NOLA sport actually knew my Targa really well and had records on it. Crazy to see these cars under 20k with such low miles!! Hope you join the club soon!

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+996, these guys know their stuff and deal with raceteams a lot so they have to be meticulous in a sense. I've seen their cars a lot on eBay last year.