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Old 12-15-2008, 05:26 AM   #45
Bobiam
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Unionville, CT
Posts: 442
Quote:
Originally Posted by johnsimion
Take a look at Consumer Reports guide, "Best and Worst of 2009 Cars", now on newstands. They rate reliability of cars in numerous categories based on owner surveys of their membership. If they don't receive enough surveys, they simply won't give a rating. Their major engine repairs category is the one that would apply if there was a blown engine. The Boxster has ratings for almost all years from 1999 to 2008. It is rated "Much Better Than Average" reliability for major engine repairs for 1999 and 2001, and "Better Than Average" for 2000. I forgot the other years' ratings but none were worse than average. Overall the Boxster is rated as highly reliable across all categories in all years.

I do think that if the readers of Consumers Reports were having a statistically significant problem with blown engines, the magazine would be raising a huge outcry about it.

If I understand things right, there have been something like 200,000 Boxsters produced. If 3% of them had a blown engine, that would be 6000 blown engines. It seems like there are a lot of reports of blown engines in these pages and in other forums -- but nothing remotely approaching even a couple of hundred.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that there are 200 reports of blown engines on the various forums here and elsewhere (which is probably an exaggeration). Let's also assume that that number represents only 10% of the actual number of blown engines (which is also an exaggeration, because most likely anyone who has a Boxster is an enthusiast who reads these forums and will raise h3ll about it). Nevertheless, using those assumptions we can hazard a guess that there have been no more than about 2000 blown engines. That figure would then represent about 1% of the total production.

Most of us would be prepared to accept a 99% reliable car that is rated "Much Better Than Average" in the Major Engine category from Consumer Reports.

God, I hope I'm right . . .
But, as you and CU stated, these ratings are based on recent model years. Most of the major complaints are for late 90s and early 2000s cars.......which make up a lot of this forun's readership. And for those folks with a recent model failure, most have a warrantee........so they are inconvenienced but get a new engine paid for by Porsche.
I'm sure that Porsche has corrected the deficiencies that cause blown engines, but we'd like to have them accept responsibility for the massive failures that older Porsche owners are experiencing at almost any milage. We can't afford to spend $10K or so on the low milage creampuff that we have cared for that is now only worth $20-30K.
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2001 Boxster, GT3 console delete, lower stress bar, RoW M030 suspension package, painted bumperettes.
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