High-mileage 996
Ticking time bomb or bargain? We drive a 173,000-mile 996 Carrera to find out if the low price tag is worth the gamble
A worthy gamble, or a risk not worth taking? We find out if the £10,000 Porsche 911 really is too good to be true
Scroll down to the Porsche 996 section on any car forum, and for years you wouldn’t find much love. Catastrophic engine failures, water leaks, poor build quality and the underlying notion of ‘if it’s not air-cooled, it’s not a real 911’ prevailed. Admittedly, I’ve been guilty of displaying this attitude on occasion. Buy a sub-£10,000 996, and if anything goes wrong then your car’s a write-off, surely? £7,000 rebuilds and horror stories abound. Stay well clear; buy an Audi TT or M3, we often hear.
Against that aroma of disappointment, the whiff of expelled coolant and that unmistakable smell of hot, dead engines, it would take a little courage to buy a 996. So when you hear of someone who has purchased a 996 Porsche with over 170,000 miles on the clock, eyebrows are bound to rise. A skillful buy, or a hand grenade with the pin removed? You know it’s going to go off; you just don’t know when. It’s worth a drive on a wet Monday morning through the swimming pool that was the M62 to Manchester to find out more, if only to point and laugh.
Michael Pendlebury’s purchase flies in the face of conventional car-buying wisdom. He should know better, as he’s no stranger to buying performance cars, having owned a whole string of vehicles with the potential for big bills. But he did everything wrong – at least in theory. Firstly, he bought the first car he saw, doing so pretty much blind from a seller over 200 miles away in Scotland who didn’t seem to know much about the car. There were no pictures in the advert or a carefully crafted sales pitch from its owner; just the briefest of implausible descriptions, including ‘170,000 miles, full Porsche main dealer service history’. That last phrase was the trigger; somebody must have loved this car. “There was something about talking to the lady selling it that made me do it. Everyone says ‘reluctant sale’, but I believed her. ‘I’ve never sold a car before, I don’t want to sell this one’ was also far more believable than the usual telephone patter,” says Pendlebury. He wired a deposit of £200 and set off a few days later.
In Scotland, he met a lady who loved her Porsche, and indeed she didn’t want to sell it, but circumstances made it necessary. “It was nice to meet such a genuine person, not someone trying an amateur sales pitch, hiding faults and so forth. The service book was there, all stamped with the official ink, and the car drove just fine,” Pendlebury adds. She was also very open about some body repairs to the car, needing a new headlight and some panel beating after an indiscretion on a greasy road. But all was done at OPC Glasgow. There was a minor wobble, however, when Pendlebury asked for any old bills and invoices. “I may have shredded those last year when I had a clear out. Are they important?” came the reply. Nonetheless, the tell-tale stamps of care and attention were there in the book, and a few days later, true to the seller’s word, a complete set of crisp duplicate invoices arrived in the post courtesy of Porsche Centre Glasgow.
The drive home saw Pendlebury watching temperature gauges and listening for any signs of impending doom. Each change in road surface set a
new high in levels of paranoia, but the car survived the trip. This was last September, and as we sit here in the comfort of his living room, the rain lashing hard outside, Pendlebury’s purchase is getting my brain ticking. Over a hot mug of tea, we study the documentation. Just for a moment, suspend the figure of 173,000 miles from your mind and look at the bigger picture. This car has had one owner ever since it was 18 months old – a ten-year span – and has been maintained at the same Porsche main dealer ever since.
Studying the timeline, it has covered a consistent 16,000 miles per year. The lady drove the car in her work, covering lots of motorway miles. This means that the car’s 3.6-litre engine spent most of its mileage sitting on a constant throttle setting of around 3,500rpm, with no track days or city streets, just cruising along, doing its thing. That’s good, as inactivity kills cars, rots exhausts and makes oil seals deteriorate. Short city journeys stop oils fully warming and fills them with petrol contaminants from the warm-up cycle that never get burned away, reducing the oil’s effectiveness.
Additionally, the transmission in this car is a Tiptronic. Whatever your views on the gearbox, you cannot deny that this adds consistency to the gear changes, removing the possibility of a missed shift or roughly handled clutch. Tiptronics tend not to go wrong, and the invoices all show routine maintenance and small items of work. There’s no horror stories though; just the odd bush replaced, an oil seal, brake pads and discs, as well as lots of fluids and lubricant, which is all very predictable and reassuring. The final significant thing is that it’s the 2002 3.6-litre engine, which is generally considered to be fairly trouble-free in relation to the early 996s.
But 173,000 miles is still a large distance, and even with the best will in the world, they don’t make them like they used to. The 996 doesn’t have that solid, machined ‘click’ to the handle as you open the doors that makes you smile like the early cars. Moreover, plastic handles don’t make that noise; as the door swings shut, there’s no ‘thunk’ that makes you think you’d have lost your fingers entirely had they been there. This is something that did indeed change with the end of the 993. I’ve driven a lot of 996 Porsches, and that machined-from-solid feeling just isn’t there.
So as we splash through puddles over to the garage and the door rolls up and over, what am I expecting? Well, it’s certainly shiny. Pendlebury spent a Sunday afternoon at work, and that coat of wax polish is about to be tested. It’s gleaming black with no swirls in the paint under the fluorescent lights of the garage. The Carrera alloys show a little weathering and heat discolouration, along with the odd scuff, but nothing serious. Opening the door,
I’m pleasantly surprised at what I find. That Savanna interior is easier on the eye than I recall, the ruffled leather showing very little sign of wear, even on the side bolsters. The usual suspects for displaying wear, such as the steering wheel and pedals, are in remarkably good shape too. In fact, the primary evidence of age is around the centre console and areas surrounding the navigation system and cigar lighter, where bunches of keys, iphone chargers and other items tend to have an impact. There are chips on the finish here that Pendlebury is in the process of sorting out, but certainly nothing especially bad. I
take a moment to peer underneath at the engine and gearbox, which is bone-dry and clean as a whistle.
At the front, the main issue is the face-lifted Turbo headlights. The previous owner’s accident repair bill included a new headlight, meaning it now has the rather odd look of a brand-new headlight on one side, with the opposite one being 18 years old and cloudy. An indication here of the car’s original cost, the unit is £1,600, so Pendlebury is looking at alternatives.
The paintwork had a few light scratches that were polished out, with the only other defect I can spot being a small area of corrosion at the bottom of the left front wing. We head for the local petrol station and fuel up. From the passenger seat, there are no squeaks, rattles, looseness or that general tiredness you often get in a car nearing the twilight of its life. We swap places and head out to a more rural spot for photos, and what can I say? Everything works. It doesn’t feel down on power, with soggy, tired suspension and a clunky steering rack. In fact, it feels on the button, and I’m beginning to enjoy the drive.
We arrive at the location for Chris’ photos. Cracking open the door, you can hear a slight chuffing from the left-hand exhaust bank. “That started on Friday, I’ve already had it looked at,” says Pendlebury. It doesn’t sound serious, but it is the beginning of an exhaust repair that’s inevitably going to be needed. So what else has he spent money on since September? “The most expensive things have been two rear tyres at £254 for the pair, and a faulty ABS sensor that was £100. It uses a small amount of oil and a tiny bit of coolant sometimes, but the only other things have been bits like some new alloy wheel crests at £20, plus I had the suspension geometry checked for £68.”
Pendlebury is methodical in his costs, as he has now developed a cunning plan. He’s running his 996 for three years, the objective being to see if it’s possible to run this car for the cost of the depreciation of a small family car. He’s taken a figure of £3,000 based on a Dacia Sandero, which gives him £83 per month, excluding fuel and insurance on a car that’s to be his regular daily driver. A brave plan or a risk-taking fool? In my view, this car has a lot going for it, mainly the care lavished by its previous owner and its pattern of regular use.
Like any older prestige car, you must remember that you’re inheriting the running costs of a car that was originally in excess of £55,000, so do what Pendlebury has done and have a plan B in the form of a biscuit tin to fund any issues that come along, and whatever you do, don’t put all of your budget into your initial outlay. Major failures? Well yes, they’re certainly possible, and as the financial investment industry is fond of telling us, it all depends on your attitude to risk.
Take a good look at this car: it’s the future of Porsche ownership for the enthusiast on a budget who wants to be driving a 911. There was a time not long ago when up to £10,000 would get you a fairly nice 964 – not a superstar, but a perfectly usable car with a verifiable history and a shoebox full of bills. The same was true of the Impact Bumper G Series. It may not have been in Guards red with black Fuchs and a whaletail, but it was achievable. The activities of various movers and shakers in the air-cooled Porsche world have pushed prices upwards in both the UK and US. The 964, 993 and G Series are all far north of £50,000 now. It’s something I have views on, but that’s another story.
So if, like me, you’re frustrated with getting within range of a budget Porsche 911, only to see them leap away from you, what’s the plan? This will sound odd, but a 996 like this one is the future.