996 Buying advice

Hi guys - soon-to-be 996 owner and new member here. I'm looking for advice on buying a used 996 coupe in the low-mid £30ks (the previous post about model years has already been useful). My specific question is about getting an inspection done - obviously this should be done if buying privately or from a very small dealer - who should you use? An OPC to do a Porsche 74 point check? An independent Porsche specialist? Peter Morgan or classic inspections or someone like that? Part 2 of the question: if buying from a reputable dealer like Autobahn or someone like that, where you get a warranty anyway, is it worth doing an inspection or is the extra money on dealership prices effectively covering this? I'd appreciate your help and experiences. Thanks Tim

Bought my (v late) 98 clear lense model C4 privately and took it to OPC Reading and they came up with about £3k's worth of 'problems'...( and that was with a 'full OPC service history!!!!) Very useful when negotiating a price...... Your warranty will not cover rear main seal without a big argument nor brake pads, discs, clutches and a host of other other consumables so it might be nice to get a view on their current life expectancy. (those items alone would probably set you back £1800ish ). I wouldn't have a preference for OPC or specialist - I was going to use Camtune for the check but I was in a rush and Reading OPC had a spare slot at short notice. Depends where you are located of course - someone on here will know the right people in your neck of the woods.... Good luck

I used Automotive Buyer Surveys who advertise in the Porsche Post - my advice is Don't use them. Not wishing to be involved in litigation here but they charged me £230 which is more than an OPC and more than a specialist. I then found out from the vendor that they did very little for the money. They did it on site and there were so many qualifiactions and reasons to not have checked things that I wondered what they had checked. My advice is take (underlined in bold) it to some one who really knows Porsche (OPC or specialist) The benefit of a third party does help prevent you "looking through rose tinted spectacles though". But trust your intuition - if it doesn't feel right then it probably isn't. Fortunately my car has been a good girl - so far!

There's a great deal that a warranty would not cover.

I guess its all down to your appetite for risk. I started off with a similar plan to yourself - and viewed a 98 C2 cab at a dealer I know well who was offering his own six month warranty to cover all major components. However, as the car had a full OPC service history he said he would give me a £500 discount in lieu of his warranty and suggested I take the car to an OPC, have the 74point inspection done and they could then offer me a Porsche 12 month warranty for around £1000. I duly went along to my OPC to find out more and indeed they would do this but anything found in the OPC 74point check would need to be fixed ahead of their endorsing a Porsche warranty - my independant dealer was willing to go so far with this but was concerned that they may find "cosmetic" problems - as one would with any six year old car. Whilst at the OPC I got somewhat seduced by their (more expensive) stock and "bit the bullet" spending about £14k more than my initial budget on an '01 model car. My experience with that is documented elsewhere, however suffice to say I did suffer a major fault only a few days into my ownership which in the end resulted in my getting a full refund and then spending yet a larger wedge of cash on an '03 car. So I imagine there is a moral somewhere in all of this - and I guess spending that much more with an OPC does give you some comfort. However incompetent or troublesome they can be they do represent the manufacturer and you always have some form of re-course to them if it all goes pear-shaped. I wonder what would have happened had I gone for the first car and had a similar problem - although as I said at the beginning I knew that independant dealer well - I'm not sure that had the same thing happened to a car purchased from him, I would not now have a very expensive piece of parked artwork on my driveway!!

I suppose I have been lucky up now owning 8 models from the humble 924 through to my current 996 C4, because I have never used an OPC or had a survey done. My last purchase was with a well known independent 'Shirley's Garage' and after 3 cars from them (964C4, 993 TARGA, and 996 C4) they seem to source very good cars. The last 2 being fairly high mileage and the last was owned by PORSCHE CARS GB, probably why I bought it ! I will probablt by my fourth from them to !! Mark

Thanks to everyone for the advice. I will definitely get an OPC check before buying. The car I am interested in has an OPC check and 1 year Porsche warranty built into the price, which seems like a good plan. Tim

See the boxster forum for some info about after-market warranties.....the OPC one is rubbish and much better can be had elsewhere, this can severely reduce the risk associated with a 2nd hand buy, without the need for Porsche prices. http://www.porscheclubgbforum.com/tm.asp?m=50564