986 Tiptronic - A few questions

[Dave200]

I drove a 2001 tiptronic 3.2S yesterday, and absolutely loved it. I'm just waiting on the service history to be sent over by the last garage before deciding whether to commit to it (£7k, 77k miles, lady owner past decade).

However, as with all car purchases, I've done a good amount of homework and am still filled with a little trepidation regarding IMS/RMS failure. The car in question has never had this repaired/replaced, so that bothers me a smidge immediately - combined with 5yr (major) service intervals (no minor services in the history).

My questions, I suppose, are thus:
- How scared should I be realistically? I am benchmarking against a 3.0 Z4, which appears to be the most trouble-free ownership prospect in all of sportscar-ville.
- Tiptronic is absolutely vital, as I live in Central London. The car felt reasonably quick yesterday on a few full throttle bursts, but the figures suggest that the tiptronic is sapping the life out of what is a fairly high power/weight ratio package. Is the manual/auto performance differential really this high, or are the figures deceptive?
- Given that the 986 2.7 is a more logical comparison for the 3.0 Z4, is there any upside to these in reliability terms over the 3.2?

Thanks in advance.

[Dave200]

Thanks very much for that. While I'm a dab hand with a bit of Google, are you able to please point me in the direction of IMS replacement specialists, so that I might get an idea of cost.

[Dave200]

Jeez - Leeds or Bolton. I'm really spoiled for choice. Is it something that can be done in a day or 24hrs, as I would prefer not to have two long train journeys up there.