Owner, maintenance history

[Rufcar]

Last month a bought an 03 Boxster S and I only have the last owners history, 1 year. Is there a way to get the owner and Porsche maintenance history? I have been extremely involved with the Rolls and Bentley owners club for many years and we have ways to get complete car histories from day one. I have never had to do a Porsche before because all the ones I have owned always came with complete histories. Thanks Jim F

[JFP in PA]

A lot of dealers would refuse to provide it, citing privacy as the maintence history is the property of the previous owners. Some will do it, but most will not for legal reasons.

[Run]

+1 to what JFP said. Basically it goes like this with most dealers. They won't give you any info at all. Others may share the info if you send in proof of ownership. Short of that all you can do is try and run down the prior owners and see what help they can give or if they will sign off on handing over the service records from the dealership.

[Rufcar]

That is pretty much what I figured. When I spoke about Rolls/Bentley all you need to do is call the Rolls Foundation in Mechanicsburg PA give them I think $35.00 and they will give you every piece of paperwork from the day it was ordered, what ship it came on who did the warranty work and what they did. That goes for almost every car they ever made! Plus we have a lot of records of every owner but not on every car. Then again it took Rolls approx. 100 yrs to make 100,000 cars of which I believe over 65% are still on the road!

[Tcar]

You can get some from CarFax.

If the service was done at a dealer, it 'might' show up.

I discovered that my water pump was changed at a dealer here about 10k miles ago from CarFax. Couple other things, also.

[Deserion]

I'll echo on Carfax. With the mycarfax.com site (free) it does show dealer/shop maintenance entries. Not great but better than nothing.

[Joe B]

Ha! CarFax didn't even show that my car had a new factory replacement engine put in it in 2006! I called the dealer who was doing maintenance to the car at that time and he was happy to give me all pertinent records.

[JFP in PA]

From direct experience, Carfax would be one of the last places I would go for accurate information.

[Timco]

Originally Posted by JFP in PA

From direct experience, Carfax would be one of the last places I would go for accurate information.

+986

The ten character minimum sucks!!

[Tcar]

Originally Posted by JFP in PA

From direct experience, Carfax would be one of the last places I would go for accurate information.

Wow...

I called the dealers who confirmed that the all the work had been done.

Carfax can only report what's been reported by a dealer, garage, government agency, insurance company, etc.

Therefore, not everything is listed.

Porsche often did not report replacing engines, but would confirm if you asked.
So Carfax would not have that info.

All I suggested was using it as one of several ways to find out what's been done to your car. Not the only source.

It was valuable to me.

Could not find the info any other way.

[JFP in PA]

We had a new family car totaled (hit by a drunk while it was parked); two and a half years later, Carfax lists it as a one owner car with no reported problems and current maintenance. We didn't even own the car long enough to do an oil change, and it was hit so bad the insurance company totaled it on sight without discussion.

[Deserion]

I didn't mean the Carfax one pays for - that is often wrong, as is Autocheck. Only meant that in some cases you can get an idea what was done. When my mom bought her 987 I was able to see (via mycarfax.com) that it had been normally taken to a dealer, and that the A/C compressor had been changed.

It's just one tool among many to help document, not an end-all-be-all.

[Rufcar]

I never used that carfax before as I said in an earlier post as I always got full records. with purchase. That said I did as you guys suggested and I received a complete service history from day one. It does not always spell out exactly what was done but the good news is all work over its entire life was done at a Porsche service center and all scheduled work was always done. I believe I have a way of getting the exact work. I will let you know how it all pans out. I was also surprised to get the records on all my cars 1990 and newer. Cool Thanks to all for your suggestions.
Jim F

[DWBOX2000]

I was able to track down some work done at some shops using car fax. From the invoices I called the owner. Never called me back. Carfax did help though.