2000 Boxster need help?

[Steve Tinker]

Ha, JTP beat me to it - but here goes anyway......

Art - you are still only seeng the top of the iceberg.
Have you factored in the upcoming maintenance and insurance costs? If you are good with the spanners, you can save heaps of $$, but if you have to take the car to a shop, you had best be prepared for some significant bills. Its a certain fact that ALL cars need maintenance, repairs and the replacement of mundane parts like brake pads, rotors, air / cabin filters, spark plugs etc etc.
Boxsters are no exception, with known weaknesses like AOS failure, MAF replacement and plug coils high on the list - and these can bite without any prior warning to the owner. The other problem to consider is that some these parts can be expensive to buy and doubly so if you have to get a shop to install them....
As a general rule of thumb, I always put aside 10% of the purchase price for unknowns......

[ART07154]

Thank you everybody for your input.It came down between 2 cars both are from daeler and same color that I like.
1.2003 base model with sport package 25k miles. I talked them down to $16800.Tires have 60% left.
2.2000 base model with sport package 27kmiles (crack rear window and need new tires)$12000.
I've been approved from Navy fcu for $18000.
This will be my weekend car.I have 2007 Honda Accord EX for daily commute and I am selling my 97 Miata with 145k.
The 2003 is at the top on my. budget but I it's better deal and better standard equipped car I can do it.

[jmatta]

Still difficult to swallow that these cars (which many of us paid big $ for) are almost give-a-ways in our present climate. I think my return on investment is much like the tech portfolio I bought around the same time!

Drive it and enjoy the moment...mine's put away for the winter and I can hardly wait until spring already...20 degrees today, with more snow coming in tomorrow.

[KevinH1990]

Originally Posted by jmatta

Still difficult to swallow that these cars (which many of us paid big $ for) are almost give-a-ways in our present climate. I think my return on investment is much like the tech portfolio I bought around the same time!

I had a similar thought. I bought my car 5 years ago and it was similar to the one ART0715 is considering, but without the top issue. I paid $21,250. At least I'm better off than the first owner. He paid close to $50,000 and drove it only 30,000 miles - or about a dollar a mile.

That said, my car was garage kept and had all the service records. It looked like a new car after I shined it up. If the depreciation cost for driving it 30,000 miles and almost five years is $10,000 I guess that is not too bad.

[thstone]

Originally Posted by KevinH1990

I had a similar thought. I bought my car 5 years ago and it was similar to the one ART0715 is considering, but without the top issue. I paid $21,250. At least I'm better off than the first owner. He paid close to $50,000 and drove it only 30,000 miles - or about a dollar a mile.

That said, my car was garage kept and had all the service records. It looked like a new car after I shined it up. If the depreciation cost for driving it 30,000 miles and almost five years is $10,000 I guess that is not too bad.

I read a lot of posts from owners bemoaning the value of their Boxster today versus what they paid for it new. This really shouldn't come as any surprise. Any new $50K vehicle is going to be worth about half its value in 5-6 years regardless of make or model.

And in the Boxster's case, they were manufactured in relatively high volumes and there isn't anything particularly collectable about them to keep the residual value higher than comparable vehicles from BMW or MB.

As a comparison, I just sold my 2002 BMW X5 for just slightly more than I paid for my used 1999 Boxster. Both were base models without tons of options and both vehicles sold for just under $50K new. The Boxster had 30K fewer miles than my X5 but that was mostly negated by the X5 being 3 years newer. So, at the end of the day, they were within $2,500 of each other which really isn't any big deal at all (its in the noise).