(I shamelessly stole the layout from Princeys Monaro thread - pics to come)
It seems just yesterday I was looking at 986 Boxsters but now having owned one for 6 months it’s time to report back on costs.
Purchase Price – 10k with 44k miles.
Fuel - £1465.66 for 6200 miles based on 24mpg and a cost of 130.0ppl
Tyres - £900 for a full set of Continental SC2’s N2 Rated & nitrogen filled.
Servicing - £500
Insurance- £700
MOT- £30
Road Tax - £260
Misc repairs
Replaced squeaking track rod ends (£50)
Broken roof mechanism (£20 from scrappies and a day of my time).
Wheel refurb and new centre caps - £?
detail of paint - £?
leather refurb - £?
All £? = No Cost to me but a couple of days work and a laptop. (total worth approx. 600 - 1k?)
The running costs in my opinion are fairly high when comparing it to previous cars I have owned and being almost 10 years old there are no doubt more bills to come, the first of which is a suspension refresh for uprated M030 springs and struts. On top of this there is also still a slight crunch from first to second when cold which is probably the syncros in the box so some attention is required here, If the box problem is just the syncros then I can budget about £500 rather than 1.5k for a recon box.
Overall I am budgeting a further 2k of running repairs over the next 6 – 12 months.
Interior
Well most people will tell you that the interior in the 986 is old hat and I would pretty much agree. To me though it has a charming retro Porsche look and feel that I love, build quality wise it is what you would expect from a premium German car brand. It’s a car where form follows function and there are few buttons for the things you need.
Mine has Climate control, cd head unit with 6 cd changer, bose sound system with amp located in the bonnet and a wind break. There is an ocean of grey leather (not my first choice but compromises were made) and that’s about it, it doesn’t have any traction control or such like or any other luxuries such as cup holders etc. Even though there are few creature comforts the cabin is spacious enough and the seats are seriously comfortable and easy on your back over long drives.
Ride and Handling
Lets start off with the ride, mine has a cost option set of wheels called sports classics. These are 17” wheels with the fronts on 205/50/17 rubber and the rears on 255/40/17, being a sports car you would expect it to be pretty hard over the bumps and I’m not going to lie it does tell you when you have hit a pot hole however on any fairly decent bit of road it soaks up smaller bumps pretty well. Cruising on the motorway is a pleasurable experience and it will happily waft along at 70mph in 6th gear doing 1700rpm. Even at 10 years old the cabin is quiet and I don’t have any serious squeaks and rattles.
Handling wise is where this car comes into its own the levels of grip are outstanding in the wet or dry and the feedback is spot on, the way it puts power down amazes me every single time, from a standing start in the dry you need to bring the revs up to 5k rpm and drop the clutch to get any spin on the rears any less and it literally grips and goes. On the turn in the car is precise and well balanced, hit a corner far too hard and you get a small amount of under steer but all the time the car is communicating and egging you on, coming out of the corners it allows you to get on the power early and hard and the back end never seems to lose its grip, put simply it’s a car where on public roads I will run out of talent way before it will begin to show its weaknesses.
Performance
Being the poor mans Porsche this is no 911 but performance figures are more than acceptable. According to the door shut the car has a weight of 1230kg, The engine is a 3.2l N/A Flat 6 24v affair, as found in the 911. Figures in the book state 260bhp and 310 Nm / 228 lb-ft of torque which is enough to carry you from 0-60 in 5.5 seconds and on to a top speed of 164mph. What I really like about the car though is the low end torque and its ability to pull hard in any gear at any rpm.
The soundtrack also just adds to the experience, at low rpm you get a little rumble noise but nothing all that noticeable, it’s as the revs build that the full story comes out, you hit 2k and that rumble becomes a bit louder and throatier from there upwards to about 4k the soundtrack builds in urgency and pitch until eventually it begins screaming with that classic Porsche sound which at just before 5k rmp is in full flow right up until 7k rpm and you are forced to change gear. It’s a sound that is hard to describe but every time I get in the car it does nothing but make me smile.
As for modifications, well to get extra power out of the engine is pretty hard with the boxster unless you go for something like a supercharger which can be done but nobody wants to tell you how much it would cost. Doing things like a full exhaust system with 200 cell sports cats, manifold, remap etc will get you a few bhp and a few extra torques if you are lucky. Serious money would need to change hands for any real improvement.
I guess that leaves us to talk about the brakes, the S model has Brembo callipers all round with drilled and vented disks for stopping and these are probably some of the best brakes I have used, perfect for the track and road with little servo assist, if you press on lightly they will brake lightly and not bite hard, press on hard and they will stop you like you hit a brick wall. Just what you need really.
At the moment I have no real plans for the car, I may get the zeintech hard top which basically makes it look like a caymen for the winter months. Then there are the lights which I would like to facelift but that’s over a grand and not really needed. So I guess the plan is to spend the money getting the gearbox fully sorted and the suspension refreshed. Once that’s done it should happily plod along for the next few years and give me many more miles happy motoring.
It seems just yesterday I was looking at 986 Boxsters but now having owned one for 6 months it’s time to report back on costs.
Purchase Price – 10k with 44k miles.
Fuel - £1465.66 for 6200 miles based on 24mpg and a cost of 130.0ppl
Tyres - £900 for a full set of Continental SC2’s N2 Rated & nitrogen filled.
Servicing - £500
Insurance- £700
MOT- £30
Road Tax - £260
Misc repairs
Replaced squeaking track rod ends (£50)
Broken roof mechanism (£20 from scrappies and a day of my time).
Wheel refurb and new centre caps - £?
detail of paint - £?
leather refurb - £?
All £? = No Cost to me but a couple of days work and a laptop. (total worth approx. 600 - 1k?)
The running costs in my opinion are fairly high when comparing it to previous cars I have owned and being almost 10 years old there are no doubt more bills to come, the first of which is a suspension refresh for uprated M030 springs and struts. On top of this there is also still a slight crunch from first to second when cold which is probably the syncros in the box so some attention is required here, If the box problem is just the syncros then I can budget about £500 rather than 1.5k for a recon box.
Overall I am budgeting a further 2k of running repairs over the next 6 – 12 months.
Interior
Well most people will tell you that the interior in the 986 is old hat and I would pretty much agree. To me though it has a charming retro Porsche look and feel that I love, build quality wise it is what you would expect from a premium German car brand. It’s a car where form follows function and there are few buttons for the things you need.
Mine has Climate control, cd head unit with 6 cd changer, bose sound system with amp located in the bonnet and a wind break. There is an ocean of grey leather (not my first choice but compromises were made) and that’s about it, it doesn’t have any traction control or such like or any other luxuries such as cup holders etc. Even though there are few creature comforts the cabin is spacious enough and the seats are seriously comfortable and easy on your back over long drives.
Ride and Handling
Lets start off with the ride, mine has a cost option set of wheels called sports classics. These are 17” wheels with the fronts on 205/50/17 rubber and the rears on 255/40/17, being a sports car you would expect it to be pretty hard over the bumps and I’m not going to lie it does tell you when you have hit a pot hole however on any fairly decent bit of road it soaks up smaller bumps pretty well. Cruising on the motorway is a pleasurable experience and it will happily waft along at 70mph in 6th gear doing 1700rpm. Even at 10 years old the cabin is quiet and I don’t have any serious squeaks and rattles.
Handling wise is where this car comes into its own the levels of grip are outstanding in the wet or dry and the feedback is spot on, the way it puts power down amazes me every single time, from a standing start in the dry you need to bring the revs up to 5k rpm and drop the clutch to get any spin on the rears any less and it literally grips and goes. On the turn in the car is precise and well balanced, hit a corner far too hard and you get a small amount of under steer but all the time the car is communicating and egging you on, coming out of the corners it allows you to get on the power early and hard and the back end never seems to lose its grip, put simply it’s a car where on public roads I will run out of talent way before it will begin to show its weaknesses.
Performance
Being the poor mans Porsche this is no 911 but performance figures are more than acceptable. According to the door shut the car has a weight of 1230kg, The engine is a 3.2l N/A Flat 6 24v affair, as found in the 911. Figures in the book state 260bhp and 310 Nm / 228 lb-ft of torque which is enough to carry you from 0-60 in 5.5 seconds and on to a top speed of 164mph. What I really like about the car though is the low end torque and its ability to pull hard in any gear at any rpm.
The soundtrack also just adds to the experience, at low rpm you get a little rumble noise but nothing all that noticeable, it’s as the revs build that the full story comes out, you hit 2k and that rumble becomes a bit louder and throatier from there upwards to about 4k the soundtrack builds in urgency and pitch until eventually it begins screaming with that classic Porsche sound which at just before 5k rmp is in full flow right up until 7k rpm and you are forced to change gear. It’s a sound that is hard to describe but every time I get in the car it does nothing but make me smile.
As for modifications, well to get extra power out of the engine is pretty hard with the boxster unless you go for something like a supercharger which can be done but nobody wants to tell you how much it would cost. Doing things like a full exhaust system with 200 cell sports cats, manifold, remap etc will get you a few bhp and a few extra torques if you are lucky. Serious money would need to change hands for any real improvement.
I guess that leaves us to talk about the brakes, the S model has Brembo callipers all round with drilled and vented disks for stopping and these are probably some of the best brakes I have used, perfect for the track and road with little servo assist, if you press on lightly they will brake lightly and not bite hard, press on hard and they will stop you like you hit a brick wall. Just what you need really.
At the moment I have no real plans for the car, I may get the zeintech hard top which basically makes it look like a caymen for the winter months. Then there are the lights which I would like to facelift but that’s over a grand and not really needed. So I guess the plan is to spend the money getting the gearbox fully sorted and the suspension refreshed. Once that’s done it should happily plod along for the next few years and give me many more miles happy motoring.
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thnx
