[geoff]

Do either of you guys have an opinion on how much of a factor the mass-marketization of Porsche starting with the Boxster has been a contributing factor to all the engine problems? Until the Boxster, there were no water cooled horizontal opposed engines. Relatively few people bought Porsches as fashion statements. When the Boxster came out, a whole new population of Porsche drivers joined the marque. It seems like the traditional air-cooled 911 guys understood Porsches need to be driven reasonably hard and in the higher RPM range fairly often. Newcomers (myself included, my '01 Boxster was my first Porsche) are more accustomed to lower revving engines. Porsche obviously went through a lot of testing with these engines before releasing the first Boxsters and water-cooled Carreras to the public. Do you think if the cars were tested as newcomers drive them, as opposed to the way Porsches were meant to be driven, would have highlighted a lot of the problems appearing sooner, allowing Porsche to redesign the engines to fix problems?

I realize this calls for a bit of speculation on your parts. I was just thinking about this as I was driving yesterday and wondering how Porsche engineers could have missed all these problems (ignoring all the inputs from Porsche's accountants)