Porsche Experience Centre Cars

[Hamperman]

Hi, can anyone tell me if there is anyway of telling if a car started its life at the PEC? I'm on the look out for a Cayman R and this would be my first ever Porsche at anything like this sort of money so want to ensure I do my homework.

Thanks

[GT3cs]

The registration will always start with an R that's for sure . If it doesn't then your clear , if it does it has potential to be BUT lots of other none PEC Porsches also start with an R so don't rule out based on that criteria alone.

[anonymous-user]

Hamperman said:

Hi, can anyone tell me if there is anyway of telling if a car started its life at the PEC? I'm on the look out for a Cayman R and this would be my first ever Porsche at anything like this sort of money so want to ensure I do my homework.

Thanks

I know there was a black car with red leather interior and PDK that would have been on a Reading plate if that helps.

[Hamperman]

Hi, is that 100% guaranteed regarding the R plate? What is the reason for this?

[Magic919]

All bats are animals.
Some wooden objects are bats.
Therefore, some wooden objects are animals.

R* is the regional identifier for Reading, which is home of Porsche HQ.

[Fokker]

Odd animals bats...

R on the reg plate is a good excuse to look into the history if you dont want a PEC car. Swindon recently had a 991 4 GTS manual in blue which was ex PEC. I asked them and they told me it was an ex Porsche management car.
It had done 4900 miles and the brakes were completely shot and rusted, probably from the continuous navigation of the water slide section so it makes you wonder what else was corroding under there.

Also PEC cars will often be spec'd with a leather steering wheel if the original option was alcantara such as on Spyders and GTS' due to leather wearing better.
PEC have to run one of each car so there are a lot of ex PEC cars out there. Its not to say that they're all bad but Swindon were selling the car with what looked like knackered brakes so you have to question how well they're maintained given that they've almost certainly had a hard year to 18 months on track. If you're only keeping as long as the 2 year warranty then I think you're fine but they could suffer longer terms especially in terms of suspension components for obvious reasons.

If it starts with an R and the first owner was Porsche then you need to start negotiating!

[rob.kellock]

Rusted brake discs simply mean that the car has got wet since it was last driven?

I would not treat that as an indicator of whether or not a car had suffered a hard life.

When I wash my 997, the discs start corroding before I have finished caressing it with microfibre cloths. A good excuse for a trip round the block to dry them out properly before putting it away in the garage...

When looking at approved used Porsches in the past, the Centres have been completely open with me when asked if a car is ex-experience centre which, rightly or wrongly, does rather put me off psychologically.

[rob.kellock]

Apologies, that was rather ambiguous.

Porsche Centres have always been completely open with me if I have asked if a car is ex-experience centre.

I was rather clumsily trying to say that from an entirely personal point of view, I would prefer to not buy such a car. Given that they are well prepared and often very high spec, that is probably my loss - purely a personal opinion.

[breadvan]

When last at PEC, they said all cars get new discs/pads/tyres plus anything else needed before going into the dealer network, except GT cars which stay with Porsche.

[Fokker]

breadvan said:

When last at PEC, they said all cars get new discs/pads/tyres plus anything else needed before going into the dealer network, except GT cars which stay with Porsche.

Not in my experience.

[Fokker]

rob.kellock said:

Rusted brake discs simply mean that the car has got wet since it was last driven?

I would not treat that as an indicator of whether or not a car had suffered a hard life.

When I wash my 997, the discs start corroding before I have finished caressing it with microfibre cloths. A good excuse for a trip round the block to dry them out properly before putting it away in the garage...

When looking at approved used Porsches in the past, the Centres have been completely open with me when asked if a car is ex-experience centre which, rightly or wrongly, does rather put me off psychologically.

The discs were shot, grooved, lipped, knackered after 5k miles. It was a PEC car and the sales guy wasnt up front with me just saying that first owner was Porsche. It had the R plate for Reading and also the leather on the steering wheel and gear lever.

My expert detective / common sense skills deduced that it was an ex PEC car. At £85k someone got a nice car as long as they changed the brakes!

[boxsey]

Fokker said:

My expert detective / common sense skills deduced that it was an ex PEC car. At £85k someone got a nice car as long as they changed the brakes!

I guess you decided you were not interested in the car when you found it was ex PEC but out of interest, did you ask if they would change the brakes as part of the deal if you had decided to buy it?

[Fokker]

boxsey said:

I guess you decided you were not interested in the car when you found it was ex PEC but out of interest, did you ask if they would change the brakes as part of the deal if you had decided to buy it?

Yes and they said that they would enquire about changing them.

[boxsey]

hmmm only enquire..that was very good of them!

[Buster73]

Many moons ago I was invited to the Audi driving experience at Silverstone.

Amongst the cars we drove were Metallic blue S3's

White S5's

And a few other Audi models.

Fast forward to a few months later and my son wanted to buy a nearly new S3 , checked on the Audi website and virtually everyone that was for sale with low mileage was a metallic blue one , Audi management cars apparently ....

Let the buyer beware.