All I do is write about things that happen in my life, and I’m always very willing to admit where I make foolish decisions. Which is quite often!

And it’s not because I don’t KNOW they’re foolish, I just have the mindset “Yeah, this could go poorly. And if it does, I’ll fix it.”

Agreed. Torch is not the right person for the job.

Hell, I’d buy it just so I could learn something from doing the IMS repair if and when it blows. There’s $5K worth of education there easily, and a fun car in the meantime. It still needs a PPI for anything *else* that might be lurking in there, but overall, NP.

Think of it as a lease, not a purchase. Even if it lasts a year before it blows up, that’s $400 per month (plus whatever tax Florida charges on cars, which is still likely less than the drive-off fees on many leases).

And really at under $5k for a P car, who cares if it blows it in a year from whatever (it won’t be IMS, as you noted). It would still be a great year with a cheap P car.

a $5k older Porsche is a lot like dating a stripper - a chunk of money, a lot of drama, pretty exciting while you are at it, and fun for a short time but not really a long term plan.

one man’s garbage is another man’s good un-garbage

Literally EVERY single comment about IMS failures. The early model year Porsches had the DUAL-ROW bearing, which hardly fails. It’s the single-row bearings that tend to fail, and the problem as a whole is nowhere near as big as the internet will have you believe. Let the folks whine about “big dollar repairs” and…

I like your style.

These model years don’t have the issue. They have the dual-row radial bearing which doesn’t fail (though there may be isolate cases). The models after ‘99 have the single-row, which may fail. It isn’t a hugely widespread problem, as the internet would have you believe. If it was so bad and folks were blowing engines…

FWIW, I have read in a number of places that a) higher-mileage vehicles are less prone to failures (that said, 115k in 22 years may be considered “low mileage”?), and b) the ‘00-’05 motors were 5-10% more prone to failure than the models up to ‘99.

I’ll be standing on my front Porsche screaming from my soap Boxster about how good of a deal this is

Around $3000.

I would buy it, totally expecting the IMS to go, and then part out the car. An IMS repair can be a solid $2500.

Well. nobody is “forcing” us to buy new cars (the conspiracy theorists next door would say different), but there are some factors that come into play here:

I think the main problem is that your definition of “mud pit” is what the rest of the world calls a pond.

Are you sure you don’t do these things just to have material to write about?

David will just distract him with some old blinkers...

Classic case of Munchausen by Blocksy. Hurt the thing you love in order to get attention for saving it later.