[acas7i11o]

Porsche maintenance can be expensive. Keep in mind that there is a lot of stuff that only your Porsche dealer is able to handle, therefore you are facing a vendor lock-in situation. Sometimes you can get around this but it usually involves more effort than it should.

In my case, my dealer wanted to charge me US$1600 to replace the tires, which I considered outrageous given the actual price of the tires that I got from a website. I ended up buying them from tirerack.com and delivered to a local installer. This is the funny part, a lot of places like Sears Auto, would not service Porsche cars since it is so different for them it seems. In any case, this local installer (Merchant's tire), did an awful job since they kept telling me that they weren't able to finish on time, that the lift broke somehow because my car had a low profile (???), and finally when I got my car back they even kept the security lock for the wheels (which I had to claim in yet another trip). In the end, the balancing was done by monkeys it seems and I ended up having to go to my Porsche dealer so that they could fix the problem. So the $600 dollars saving that I was receiving wasn't to great since I had to pay my Porsche dealer a couple hundred more.

I also tried once to do something about the stereo, and every local installer wanted to rewire the whole car. 2003 Boxsters have some kind of fiber optic cable to connect audio components. So every time you want to do a job outside the dealer is like modding the car.

So with that in mind, I think that if you are able to set aside around 3000-5000 bucks per year for maintenance, then you shouldn't have a problem. And I say this because when the time comes to change your rotors, a clutch pad, or god forbid, a transmission, you sure as hell are going to wish that you kept saving money for future repairs.

But all truth being said, good things cost good money. I would not change my car for anything other than another Porsche. Once you've driven one, everything else is substandard.