Sold the 996

Sorry to see it go. Sold the car last week after owning the car for over two years. I have owned a Pcar for over 20 years and with this sale and selling the track car, I am without a Porsche. Had to move and will not have a personal shop to care for them. Really enjoyed the car, no real problems and drove it on long trips and to the office every chance I could and never left me stranded. Always reliable, absolutely no problems outside of normal 15 years old car maintenance issues. Always took it up in revs on every on ramp with a clear road and really enjoyed the sound of the flat 6 above 4K rpms. I think this forum is stuck on resale value and not on the joy of owning a really good machine that could cost almost the value of the car to rebuild the engine. This is the faith of most older sports cars so get over it. I found it to be a really amazing sports car and by definition not a good investment...but what sweet car it was.

Sorry to hear that you sold it. I hope you'll be back!

None of us bought our 996 to make money on a resale. WE did not take a gamble. We weighed up what we were buying for the price and all came to the same conclusion. We just made the 'deal of the Century'. Plus we are not likely to get rid of that deal until some better deal comes our way. THAT fact is very unlikely.

"I think this forum is stuck on resale value and not on the joy of owning a really good machine" I haven't got that impression (yet). Parting shot much?

these cars should be selling for more, not that much more but at least right under the 997 car price, while right now there is a 25% discount that is not justified as most of the cars are trouble free. forums is always the place to read horror stories and even here, you don't see that many broken engine, I mean nothing more than on the BMW or mercedes forums.

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Value by definition is what someone is willing to pay for something. Your post appears to prove the OP's point. These cars are worth what they are worth. The enjoyment they provide is an altogether different matter.

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Seriously? You should visit more forums because NONE of the BMW or MB forums I have ever been on have near as many engine failures as this one. I have owned half a dozen each MB and BMW cars and not one single model I can think of has as many reported failures as the M96. I have hosted an MB forum for over a decade with participants from all over the world driving MB's with all kinds of different engines, none have the failure rate of the M96, NONE. OK maybe MB's 350 diesel, those rarely make 100k miles without an issue, that is the only one I can think of... Sugar coat it all you want, this engine has multiple modes of catastrophic engine failure. Two have failed on this forum alone in the last month... I have an owner on the MB site with 240k miles on his engine and all it really needs is a top end job. The m96 engines with those kind of miles are like hens teeth. None of this is going to stop me from buying one because I do see a lot of value, even with the risks. To try and portrait the M96 as reliable as it peers, is an argument you just can not support with facts.

Peeps have to remember this is a relatively high strung engine for its time and when putting it in perspective among other Marques of the same caliber, it's actually pretty good. I mean how many other Ferrari, Lamborghini, and such cars do you know that is as reliable as a Porsche. For those that wanna feel better, visit Ferrari Chat forums sometime and look in the forums that discuss cars of the same period. And once again there have been over 130k examples out there vs a handful of complaints, part of those being from idiotic owners with questionable maintenance history.

I haven't picked up on this forum being hung up on resale value. I think it comes up from time to time that we can't believe how inexpensive these cars are, but in all honesty that works in our favor. Quite honestly, if they were priced at what I think they're worth, I wouldn't be able to afford one! With resale value being what it is, unless you bought this car new, it's practically a zero sum game. You bought it cheap, you sold it cheap. The only real threat to that is an engine failure. While I realize two failed in the last month or so, I still don't feel like my car is the ticking time-bomb that some do. Perhaps that will come back to bite me, perhaps not. Either way I'm simply going to maintain it, enjoy it, and DRIVE THE **** OUT OF IT! Almost daily while driving this car I get a grin that I can't suppress and that has value to me!

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If you hosted a Honda forum, I might understand your point. But this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I personally won't buy BMWs anyore because I find them to be overpriced, incredibly poorly built, terrible to work on, and unreliable in a number of different ways. Lets talk about the E36 interior quality, falling headliners before 100k, **** poor leather quality in all of them, interior plastics that crumble, E46 M3 carbon build-up, exploding cooling systems, suspension bushings that don't last 80k, VANOS failure on the E39 M5 and E46 M3, M5 oil consumption, SMG maintenance and failure, E46 subframe tears, E39 M5s that eat cam sensors and MAFs, high pressure fuel pump failure, etc etc etc.

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NONE of which render the car essentially worthless though right? NONE of those is a virtually no warning $20k loss correct? I think this is a massive difference that 996 owners are conditioned to ignore, just like race car drivers and fatalities, just don't worry about it right? BMW lost me as a customer a long time ago, I refuse to argue against any of the valid points you made. My '98 750iL had 25 shop visits by 50k miles, none of it major but every 2000 miles for something...

I have to say that I have been a long time Audi owner and have heard of so few engine failures in over ten years I could count them on my one hand. And I'm a forum *****. If they did have big issues, they were the turbos on the V6's or because they were over boosted. But the NA engines live on and on. However, the ZF transmissions fail, but they can be easily rebuilt. But I must say, 300 HP out of a NA 3.4 liter engine is somewhat highly strung in my book.

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Actually, the responses in this thread alone support your observation. Number two focus of this forum is on engine failure... boobies third.

Onewhippedpuppy- I completely agree with your assessment of the BMW's of the period in question. All of the things you mentioned are catastrophic, and extremely expensive failures that keep me from buying something like an M3. (plus the 911 is just a better car all around) Prosled8- Granted the engine failure of a 996 os more expensive than the SMG or Vanos failure in a BMW, but less than 5-7% of Porsches suffer this fate, and A TON of BMW's suffer the fate of a bad SMG or Vanos.

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Which was the gist of my post. Even if the IMS failure rate is 8%, that's still better than the thousands stranded by HPFP failure in N55 equipped cars. A local BMWCCA member was stranded three times by 20k miles, eventually turning the car back in as a lemon. This is COMMON. As are many of the issues mentioned. IMS failure is a slight possibility, many of the aforementioned BMW issues are not if, but when.

Meanwhile, on Acura forum someone just happily purchased a car with 413k miles on original engine and 2nd transmission. 3.2 liter 260 HP, 7k redline high strung motor..... Area of country: Michigan Brief description of TL (Color, TL-P or TL-S, current miles): Silver, TL-S, 413,500 Original transmission?: #2 Purchased new or used? When?: Used, last week. Current Mods: None, just maintenance. And in here, 80k miles is considered high mileage for the $80k car with almost identical motor. 3.4/296 3.2/260, 7k redline. Irony.

Hondas are reliable and boring. Want a Honda? Go buy one. If you want a Porsche (or other European car) you gotta pay to play. It's always been that way. The biggest problem with this forum is that it's full of people that have no Porsche context. EVERY 911 has had potentially expensive issues, this is nothing new.

I'm not sure I buy the "reliability and Porsche are by definition mutually exclusive, live with it" argument. That kind of lets Porsche off the hook for not being able to squeeze the same HP/L reliably from a flat six than Honda can from a V6/I4. Yes, it's a fact; no, it shouldn't be considered normal or acceptable. Coming at this from the other end of the spectrum - my other car makes just over 300HP from 5.7 liters @ a paltry 5,000HP. The LT-1 in my 'Vette is essentially an antique, but it's a rock-solid antique. There are various ways to make an engine reliable - try to wring fewer HP/L from it, make it spin more slowly, and more. While I believe Porsche could have found a more reliable engine, Porsche isn't exactly known for starting over from scratch with everything. The 996 was about as close to a total do-over - and still Porsche wanted to keep the flat six heritage. Would it be nice to have a rock-solid engine in the 996? Absolutely. Would a 911 still be a 911 if it had a turbocharged 4-banger by Subaru instead of the flat six? I don't know. I suspect that EVERYONE here wishes the M96 was a rock-solid, 500,000 mile powerplant. It isn't, and most of us knew that going in. You pays your money, and you takes your chances.

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Right. Because 2.7s had no design flaws like head bolts or case fatigue. 3.0s never overheated or had engine case issues 3.2s never had exploding flywheels and expensive valve adjustments 964 3.6s never have issues with valve adjustment or (lack of) head gasket issues 993s never have SAI issues or overheating. Like you wrote, the 996 motor isn't perfect, but it was designed to deal with a mess of issues that had been problematic in the oil cooled cars. I love the aircooled 911s, but the power density HP/L and torque is peaky and heat soak has a new definition when you're sitting in traffic with the engine about to meltdown.

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Ok then buddy, you keep driving that jumped up honda accord, and I will drive my Porsche 911

One last comment, I forgot the thanks all the people who posted repair information that saved me a ton of time. The air bag light caused by a seat belt switch, digging to the secondary air pump to replace vacuum line you can't even see, how to get into the car with a dead battery, how to bleed the cooling system, where to get factory repair manuals and on and on. Been fun and I always enjoyed the car...hate to see it go.