The best time to buy a Porsche 997 for £20k ...NOW

The best time to buy a Porsche 997 for £20k ...NOW

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YoungMD

Original Poster:

326 posts

119 months

Saturday 6th June 2015
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So i have been looking at buying a 997 for the past year or two, I kind of have a rule that £20k should buy you a decent porsche 911 whatever the model if you get your timing right, and surely the time for a 997 purchase is now !

Last year you need £25k to get a decent 997, but now i have bought one and there are a fair few around for £20k, sure not easy to find good ones and because of the Porsche leased finance scheme for this model, never has there been more used and abused young 911's and then theres the engine issues, but if you look around a nice fully inspected and carefully owned one can be had for £20kish

And surely given how much people love this shape and the fact that it still kind of feels like a proper 911, i.e. no LED's - whats that about? and i even noticed the new 911 have stop/start in traffic, a 911 with stop/start what is going onnn. the values got to go up in a while, i recon a few years for the abused ones to die and the good ones to reduce in number and prices will stabilise.

After two weeks of owning it and thinking any second the engine will blow up due to all the internet stuff, i am not more relaxed and it's a fab car, feels similar to my last 993 in some ways which is nice.......


JasonRIx

69 posts

119 months

Saturday 6th June 2015
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I wouldn't buy a gen1 997 that hadn't had the Hartech treatment. If it had then I'd expect it to be closer to £30k than £20k.


Adam B

27,142 posts

253 months

Saturday 6th June 2015
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JasonRIx said:
I wouldn't buy a gen1 997 that hadn't had the Hartech treatment. If it had then I'd expect it to be closer to £30k than £20k.
apart from turbo and GT cars

g7jhp

6,958 posts

237 months

Saturday 6th June 2015
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I think these has still got room to drop.

The 997.1 ran from 2004 to 2009 so the early cars are 12 years old, so plenty now out of warranty. The engine is still the concern.

I'd either:

1) Buy a 997.1 with OPC warranty

2) Buy a cheap 997.1 which required an engine rebuild

3) Buy a 997.2 with the DFI engine

Of the 3 the 997.2 still makes longer term sense as they're rarer (due to the financial crisis) and will retain it's value better before moving up longer term (if right spec - manual, C2S coupe/ GTS).

JasonRIx

69 posts

119 months

Saturday 6th June 2015
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Adam B said:
JasonRIx said:
I wouldn't buy a gen1 997 that hadn't had the Hartech treatment. If it had then I'd expect it to be closer to £30k than £20k.
apart from turbo and GT cars
For £20k?

bigunit00

890 posts

146 months

Saturday 6th June 2015
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I would save a bit more and get something like this

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/p...

rubystone

11,252 posts

258 months

Saturday 6th June 2015
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JasonRIx said:
I wouldn't buy a gen1 997 that hadn't had the Hartech treatment. If it had then I'd expect it to be closer to £30k than £20k.
What percentage of 997s of this era have engine problems? From your comment it sounds like the majority do. Is that a fair estimation? 70% maybe? They seem such good value, after all.

YoungMD

Original Poster:

326 posts

119 months

Saturday 6th June 2015
quotequote all
I think a lot of people believe a lot of things they read, firstly if you are going to keep any 911 for any length of time and do any amount of mile you will probably have to do something to the engine, my 3.2 it was values I think, my 964 top end rebuild, so yes 997 engines can go but if you are going to keep a high performance car for a good while engine expense is probably on the cards......

A 996 turbo instead, yes great car, shame about the headlights but great car, BUT you think you will save money because no engine rebuild....... Really ....really... You can spend £10k on a turbo without even thinking about the engine.

A gen 2 for a little over £30 makes more sense, but from the ones I drove they seemed very much like new cars, for me the gen 1 seemed much more like a 911 should be, only shuttle differences but LED's etc do make a difference......but then my option B was a 996 3.4 with the proper yellow lights around £10k that again has got to be a bargain !!!

bigunit00

890 posts

146 months

Saturday 6th June 2015
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YoungMD said:
but then my option B was a 996 3.4 with the proper yellow lights around £10k that again has got to be a bargain !!!
This looked spot on

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PORSCHE-911-996-Carrera-...

JasonRIx

69 posts

119 months

Saturday 6th June 2015
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rubystone said:
JasonRIx said:
I wouldn't buy a gen1 997 that hadn't had the Hartech treatment. If it had then I'd expect it to be closer to £30k than £20k.
What percentage of 997s of this era have engine problems? From your comment it sounds like the majority do. Is that a fair estimation? 70% maybe? They seem such good value, after all.
Sorry, I don't want to be a doom-monger. Nobody really knows what the failure rates of these are.

I actually agree with the above post. If you keep any car for a long period of time eventually there will be some engine work to do. The best thing if you plan on keeping a car is to firstly, buy from someone reputable, get it checked, and finally, self-insure so when something goes wrong you are prepared. If it doesn't then you've got a load of money in the bank instead of paying the OPC's lighting bills.

On a more positive note, if these cars were as unreliable as everyone said then the obvious question is, why would quality independent sellers, who are normally so quick to reject a car that isn't immaculate, be willing to sell these cars all the time? If they were that unreliable then they simply wouldn't buy them.


I bought my 997.1 nearly two years ago. I thought I'd keep it for a while and then move on but I'm more in love with it now than when I bought it. Porsches do that to you. I suspect that would happen to many people out there so expect to have it for the long haul if you do buy one. Then self insure. But above all, enjoy it.


Edited by JasonRIx on Sunday 7th June 09:04

g7jhp

6,958 posts

237 months

Sunday 7th June 2015
quotequote all
YoungMD said:
I think a lot of people believe a lot of things they read, firstly if you are going to keep any 911 for any length of time and do any amount of mile you will probably have to do something to the engine, my 3.2 it was values I think, my 964 top end rebuild, so yes 997 engines can go but if you are going to keep a high performance car for a good while engine expense is probably on the cards......

A 996 turbo instead, yes great car, shame about the headlights but great car, BUT you think you will save money because no engine rebuild....... Really ....really... You can spend £10k on a turbo without even thinking about the engine.

A gen 2 for a little over £30 makes more sense, but from the ones I drove they seemed very much like new cars, for me the gen 1 seemed much more like a 911 should be, only shuttle differences but LED's etc do make a difference......but then my option B was a 996 3.4 with the proper yellow lights around £10k that again has got to be a bargain !!!
I agree on the long term ownership and engine requirement. This is why 964s values were poor early on, but that was for oil leaks.

The issue with the 997.1 is it's an expensive repair on the engine and we don't have longer term view on the longevity of repaired engines.

As far as your comments on 997.2 feeling very much like new cars, I don't think they're too far removed from a 997.1.

ex1

2,727 posts

235 months

Sunday 7th June 2015
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JasonRIx said:
I wouldn't buy a gen1 997 that hadn't had the Hartech treatment. If it had then I'd expect it to be closer to £30k than £20k.
Sounds pretty good to me. Buy £20k car with risk of engine failure. It cost £10k to repair if it does fail but is worth £10k more.

JasonRIx

69 posts

119 months

Sunday 7th June 2015
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g7jhp said:
The issue with the 997.1 is it's an expensive repair on the engine and we don't have longer term view on the longevity of repaired engines.
We do have a pretty good idea that the Nikasil liners are reliable. You can trawl the forums but I don't ever recall seeing reports of failure. This would make sense as this never used to happen when Nikasil was standard.

Bore scoring is a feature with these particular engines only. When they are fixed properly, they are fixed.

ras62

1,086 posts

155 months

Sunday 7th June 2015
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ex1 said:
JasonRIx said:
I wouldn't buy a gen1 997 that hadn't had the Hartech treatment. If it had then I'd expect it to be closer to £30k than £20k.
Sounds pretty good to me. Buy £20k car with risk of engine failure. It cost £10k to repair if it does fail but is worth £10k more.
Sounds perfect! So there is actually zero risk in buying one even if the engine does go banglaugh

g7jhp

6,958 posts

237 months

Sunday 7th June 2015
quotequote all
JasonRIx said:
g7jhp said:
The issue with the 997.1 is it's an expensive repair on the engine and we don't have longer term view on the longevity of repaired engines.
We do have a pretty good idea that the Nikasil liners are reliable. You can trawl the forums but I don't ever recall seeing reports of failure. This would make sense as this never used to happen when Nikasil was standard.

Bore scoring is a feature with these particular engines only. When they are fixed properly, they are fixed.
That's encouraging and longer term I'm sure good 997.1 C2S's will follow a similar pattern to the 964 C2. If it's a keeper it's worth finding a good one.

Short term it still has an image issue and if not a keeper an OPC warranty or 997.2 is the way to go (all IMO).

Fl0pp3r

859 posts

202 months

Sunday 7th June 2015
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Baz from Hartech was on here not so long ago explaining that they do a preventive maintenance plan for the susceptible M97 engines that you can stagger the payments for - this is what i would build into my budget if i was buying another 997.1 2S

rubystone

11,252 posts

258 months

Sunday 7th June 2015
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So 2.4s had weak crankcases, 2.7s suffered from borewash, 3 litres and 3.2s broke head studs, 964s were leaky, 996s had RMS issues, Boxsters IMS, 997 bore scoring.

Guess I've been lucky with the 911s I've owned then?

Isn't the Internet a wonderful thing. If I followed advice on here, I'd tool around in a diesel Golf...oh hang on a mo, doesn't the injection pump fail on them too?


belfry

930 posts

181 months

Sunday 7th June 2015
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OP, how about one like this? C4S with Porsche warranty just over your budget

http://www.pistonheads.com/classifieds/used-cars/p...

Ger-lkhgm

6 posts

105 months

Monday 8th June 2015
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The 996 always gets bad press for having a chocolate engine, but it seems as thought he 997 is worse, am I right?

- ie same block, but now bored out to 3.8 so its even more prone to the issues which arise.

Yet, the 997 seems to get favourable write ups in the motoring press.

Or am I missing something?

Ger

roygarth

2,673 posts

247 months

Monday 8th June 2015
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rubystone said:
So 2.4s had weak crankcases, 2.7s suffered from borewash, 3 litres and 3.2s broke head studs, 964s were leaky, 996s had RMS issues, Boxsters IMS, 997 bore scoring.

Guess I've been lucky with the 911s I've owned then?

Isn't the Internet a wonderful thing. If I followed advice on here, I'd tool around in a diesel Golf...oh hang on a mo, doesn't the injection pump fail on them too?
Good point well made.