Approximate annual running costs

[Guest]

Hi,

I'm considering buying my first Porsche but am wary of the potential costs of keeping one on the road. I'm willing to spend between £5000 and £7000 so am hoping to get a 944S2 with about 100,000 miles on the clock.

My question is - how much am I likely to spend on annual maintenance? I'll probably cover about 8,000 miles a year

Cheers,
Briggy

 

[Diver944]

£7k 'should' get you a good S2. Really special ones will be up to £9k max. I've done about 10,000 miles a year in mine over five years and I budget around £1k a year in maintenance and tyres and MOT.

If you can find one that has very recently had new belts and camchain and maybe a clutch then its worth spending a little more. If you find one needing these things then you need to budget for the belts and camchain immediately for piece of mind. The biggest common wear and tear expenses I can think of are ( garage prices guesstimate)

Clutch - £800 - £1000
Shocks - £600 all round
Brakes - £500 all round
Waterpump £400 (cheaper if done at same time as belts)
Belts - £250
Camchain - £250

 

[John Sims]

I'm generaly with Paul on his figures but you have to realise that you are buying a 10-15 year old car that may have cost £35K new or £50K at todays prices. Don't be fooled, these are very special cars and things can go wrong.

There are significant sources of second hand parts available in the UK and Europe and equaly significant numbers of tuning goodies available, mainly from the US.

As an older car there is always the temptation to upgrade sad looking parts to get the car as good as new and this is where the costs can sneak in:-

Seals from £20 - £50
New switch £15-£50
Refurbish seats £700+
Tyres £120+ each
Over carpets £90.00
Clock £50 second hand
Clutch flexible hose £60.00
Brake master cylinder £200.00
Exhaust rear section £300.00

Whilst you might get away with £1K per year I think it would be safer to double or treble that (particularly if you aren't doing the work yourself) and that wouldn't give much in the way of bringing the car back to its former glory.

On the plus side - although you could spend £3K on the car per year, assuming you keep it in good condition, you could sell it for the same, or more, than you paid for it. A lot of cars will loose more than £3K per year in depreciation and will require maintainance on top of that.

 

[Fen]

I have yet to buy a 944 that hasn't needed a couple of grand spending on it to get it the way I want it just after I've bought it. I DO tend to buy decent cars but with higher mileages (because I rack them up so why pay extra to take a low miler and ruin it?) that cost a good £2-£3k less than the top whack cars but with my S2's I have replaced the cams on both, and I would be prepared to bet I'd have had to do that with most of the top-money cars available too.

As far as running costs go, I have done 25k in my cab in the year I've owned it. It was laid up for around 4 months of that time but I think driving it would have done it more good. When I bought it I had the cams and suspension replaced for £2k, including a 48k belt service with all new rollers. I have a friendly ex-OPC guy who does excellent work for £25/hr which helps that figure immensley. I also replaced the gear lever gaiter and some odds and sods of plastic trim that was broken.

Over the year I have spent maybe £400 on servicing, £350 on tyres (a pair of rears in 265/35 18 size, standard ones are much cheaper), £150 on having the cams removed again because a bit of valve spring turned up in the sump plug magnet, but it turned out to be a leftover from an old repair (nice, I really like the idea of valve spring bits in my sump...) and that's it. I have a weeping clutch flexi hose (£60 John?! Jeez, need to see what we can do with Goodridge...) and my oil level warning light comes on most mornings despite the level being fine, so that needs replacing. Also my clock display failed (they just do) but I took the one from my Turbo rather than buy another for now. I needed a new brake light bulb for the MoT at 70p. Probably a grand is about right for my 25k year then, but add £2k for post-purchase stuff (brakes, cams and steering racks have been my problems here).

Of course you'll always have a list amounting to several £k that you 'want' for the car...

 

[Guest]

ORIGINAL: Fen

Of course you'll always have a list amounting to several £k that you 'want' for the car...

how true was that statement? []

 

[richthomas]

I have a weeping clutch flexi hose (£60 John?! Jeez, need to see what we can do with Goodridge...)

Incedentally, I had a weeping flexi hose and had it replaced while the car was in at Autofarm in Jan. They originally quoted me about £60 but got the price down to more than half that as the list price they had was out of date. Nice to see some prices do come down sometimes[]