2001 vs 2002 MY
 

I was thumbing through the Consumer Reports 2012 Car Guide, and looked up the reliability history for Boxsters. They go back to 2001. What I noticed was that 2001 had very high marks (lots of little red dots), but for 2002 the reliability went down significantly (lots of black dots), but then went back to good for 2004. And it was just not a few items, but pretty much a across the board for everything from engine to tranny to electrical. The question is, what happened in 2002 that affected the reliability of the car?

My '02 Box S with 21k miles has been nothing but reliable; it's a summer driver, but driven mildly hard when out of the garage, with several student track exhibitions per summer. Same with my friend's '02...no problems thus far.

Nothing really changed from model year, so I cannot comment on why the ratings were poor?

Yes, the 02 models were indeed somewhat lower than the 01 and then they come back up for 03. The obvious categories were Engine Major and Transmission Minor problems. Not sure what might have happened there as the engines and transmissions were the same all three years.

Conversely, its worth mentioning that Engine Minor, Engine Cooling, Transmission Major, and Squeaks and Rattles all improved from 01 to 03.

Probably just a low number of survey results. I don't think Consumers needs too many to report for a particular year. With a low number of surveys provided there can be a greater range of results. I've got consumers all my life, I can double check how many results they need to post data.

I have a 2001 with over 220,000 miles on it and it's going strong, it has been one solid car. You would think after that many miles there would be noises somewhere but there are none, no squeaks or rattles anywhere. In fact I gave someone a ride the other day and they commented on how tight and quiet the ride was. So if Porsche improved the Boxster from MY 2001 to MY 2003 I am impressed.

There could be any number of reasons beyond what first comes to mind for people. Porsche could have changed who supplied some of their materials, or maybe what countries they came from, and thereby affecting the quality control of their parts and vehicles that they went into. It could have been an attempt to further save money on the cars, and seeing that it wasn't working out, they may have gone back to what they were doing before that was working fine. That's just speculation, I've got no way of knowing that that is the case, but I know it's a possibility that's not very far-fetched.

Perhaps the 2002s that have had no issues are those that were built before the speculated transition to different suppliers, or vehicles could have had a mix of parts from better suppliers and poor suppliers.

My guess is there is no actual difference in reliability in the MY01 to MY02, just a lack of reliability in the credibility of CR reporting due to relying on too small a sample size to generate accurate results.