[thstone]

Unfortunately, there isn't any practical way to find the service records unless they come with the car. Even if you check at local dealerships where the car might have been serviced, many will not release the service records because they are "private" to the person who owned the car at that time. And finding a local indie repair shop who worked on the car is a needle in a haystack. Plus, there is always the chance that the previous owner did his own maintanence and there are no records anywhere.

I just bought my '99 Box in Nov without any service records and here is what I did to mitigate the situation:

(1) Get a PPI from a Porsche dealer. The dealer can tell you everything about the current state of the car. Mine cost $175 and included the readout of any fault codes (be sure to get this even if you have to pay more).

(2) Assume oil was changed regularly but that nothing else was done so you'll need to have the most recent major service done when you buy it (my car had 84K miles so I had the 60K major service done just to be sure and so I had a clean starting point). Then just follow the recommended service internvals from there but change mineral-based oil at 3,000 miles and synthetic at 5,000-7,500 miles.

The Boxster is really easy to work on and you can save a lot of money by doing most of the maintanence yourself. That is what I have been doing. There are lots of online guides with pics to walk you through the steps.

The reality is that most Boxsters are pretty well taken care of and if the car is generally in very good to excellent shape then that is probably indicative of the maintanence as well (even if its not documented).

By the way, I love this car! It puts a big wide grin on my face everyday.