Porsche Enthusiasts Club Forum

There's an interesting little article in Practical Classics mag this month debating 944 S2 vs 2.7 Boxster as they can now be had for about the same price and are similar performance... I'd have a 944 any day as there is less to go wrong and they are nicer in all aspects IMO. Unfortunately for Mr. Average the Boxster is newer and therefore better, and the 944 is 'just an old car'.

I has this very debate with a work colleague early last year (ok I have a 924S, but the sentiment is the same). There was no persuading him as in his mind a newer car will be better / faster / more reliable
He bought a Boxster 2.7

And back on topic, I have spent £4k+ on maintaining my 924S in the last 4 years, and I guess it has gone up in value a little, but it's not an investment, I'll never make anything on it!

Not sure that the 944 is easier to keep. The Boxster is 12K services with very little to do. A 944 is 6K services & has a very expensive belt change required at 36-45K so 3-4 years. On an 16V there will be a cam chain & tensioners to worry about.
Less to go wrong is an interesting debate yes people talk of the M96 engine issues but a lot of cars never have these issues.
Also the 944 lump gets issues with cam chains & tensioners, possible bore scoring etc.
One problem with the newer cars is the complexity. My Boxster seems to have had a succession of minor issues, such things as switches & sensors. A lot of this though is because the Boxster is more sophisticated & newer rules mean more complexity.

The jury is still out on a 944 being "Nicer"
I enjoyed my 944 & I enjoy the Box but not sure one is "Better" than the other.

I too have owned both and in my opinion they are somewhat different so cannot really be classified as 'better' or 'worse', they are just different....

The '44 is a good GT car, very comfortable and has sublime handling in the bends. As mine is a 16V S, it is a bit 'ploddy' below 4K, but springs into life after that. Most of the repair/maintenance work required I can do myself, and spares are not to difficult to obtain or costly. The Boxster had a nice turn of acceleration and a lovely exhaust note. However, I found the ride too hard, especially where the roads were bad (most of the UK!) and getting in and out of the cabin in tight car parking spaces was a real bind. The cable operated gearchange was a pain and sometimes changing up just when you needed too was eventful! The electric roof switch kept rolling the windows down (even a new one), and the remote central-locking was problematic too. I lasted 6 months, then we parted company. I would not get another Boxster, but I certainly would get another 944, or 968...

Even with my experience of the Boxster, I cannot say it was 'worse' than the 944, it just didn't suit me, and I may have just had a poor example.

These threads do make me chuckle

No amount of tripe written on here (my own included) will push the values up. A few years ago the 944 was pretty much the bottom of the market. Now you have early 996's and Boxsters under £8k competing with the 944 as the entry level car.
With an endless supply of Boxsters and 996/997s to come, I do not see how the 944 will become sought after, other than for the connoisseur who likes to spanner. Just like 928's, I do not think that this is a bad thing as it will keep them out of collections and on the road.

Is a 944S2 Cab better than a Boxster? I haven't owned a Boxster but I could make a compelling argument for both. I do know that at some point in the not too distant future I will buy another S2 Cab, not as an investment but as a fun car to drive

I have been called many things regarding my 944 ownership: 'enthusiast', 'old-fashioned', 'glutton for punishment', 'stupid', 'spanner-turning grease monkey' and even 'suffering a mid-life crisis', but I have never been called a 'connoisseur' - but I like it. Now when asked - that is what I shall say... Thanks Sean!

Is this in the January or February edition? I've looked through both and cannot find it...Old age and poor eyesight I guess...I'd appreciate if you could point me in the right direction.

Thanks

Jon

IMO alot of the 986 badmouthing is scaremongering. Yes the engines can have IM bearing issues but many of these are few and far between affecting a very small number of cars.

To put it into perspective my S2 engine had to be binned (well, sold and then resleeved) due to it suffering from knackered bores (OK, that may have been down to a serious overheating issue but my point remains). Upon changing the cooling system (radiator (corroded, holed and possibly a little blocked inside), hoses (most were swollen, probably due to the car overheating and age) and the heater matrix (This probably did not help matters, it had a very bad leak which had been masked by radweld over the years, getting worse everytime it sprung a leak) it was then fine but it seems the owner previous to me had the engine changed as well, meaning that car had two engines (3 engines over its life) in the space of 5 years or so.

Saying that, my Turbo has been fine, but as others have said I did spend more getting a good car in the first place, and overall probably spent less than I did on the S2 as a result despite the initially high price (comparatively speaking).

I have been considering a 986 purely from a VFM perspective. But then another thread makes me wonder about a 968 Tiptronic (and they have flexplate issues which are not particularly cheap to rectify).

2 or 3 years ago I was thinking of changing my turbo for an E46 M3, but they were more money and you could buy them all day. I still think the M3 is a better car than a standard turbo but you can still buy them all day, and they have lost money. Really good turbo's are hard to buy because the market undervalues them by 30-50% and most owners just keep them rather than giving them away. Maybe the turbo will be appreciated more in the future but the rest will just fade away I think.

I'm not an expert on this but I do have recent experience of buying a 944 and spent 6 months looking for one and still look at prices. I think the prices of S2's have gone up in the last year. When I started there were a number of S2's which needed a bit of TLC but limited rust problems and these were going for around £1,800 to £2,000 but these have now vanished from the market (the owners said they had been purchased by restorers for improvement and resale). I almost purchased a very nicely kept S2 for 3k but it went before I could see it. I rarely see an S2 for less than 6k now so I am a little disappointed I didn't get one. In my experience S2 values have therefore gone up a fair amount in the last year.

I can't see my LUX gaining any value but I didn't buy it to make money. I bought with the aim of it being a hobby car and one to learn track driving in. Yes it will cost me money to keep but not as much as an S2. I couldn't afford a turbo or a boxter or an M3 and couldn't afford to run one.

Without digressing too much into pub banter I saw an S2 recently sell for £2k. People were swarming around that car like anything (I bought my first S2 (albeit with a tired engine) for less than that with 12 months MOT and desirable extras (working clock (not a cheap fix), leather seats, Cup Mirrors and wheels, new brakes all round etc.). Whilst I remember the car being a good runner, I could see that would also need a minimum of £1-2k to get the bodywork right again (rusting sills and wings, bent nose panel and a cracked nosecone) before I even get to other issues (albeit some were very small: Knackered clock, new tyres needed, rusting brake lines, and rusting rear arches, and that is before you get to it being a Cat C). It sold within a week.

My old S2 came up for sale recently (similar mileage to the aforementioned car) and he had people making him offers on it below £3k! That was with it having repainted sills and if I am honest, in a better state than when I sold it!

There is a wide range of values for all the 924's, 944's and 968's all dependent on which model it is and what condition it is in, from scrap money to five digit prices, without even getting into the rare models such as the turbo cab, carrera GT, turbo cup and ClubSports.

I have bought 944 S2's for as little as £400 with severe rot which needed to be scrapped recently, and to be honest, I would not have paid any more for them, as half the time the engine needs money throwing at it to be something that could be fitted to another car half the time, such as completely regasketing it, waterpump, rollers, seals, etc etc, just to re-use the engine.

On the flip side, a nice S2 is in my opinion worth every bit of £7k or more if the mileage is low.

Turbo's follow the same vein, with a scrapper not being worth much more than £1500, but a mint one is worth every bit of £9k, or if the mileage is low and the history is good, then it is worth anything that someone wants to pay for it.

In particular, Australians are paying good money for 944 Turbo's in right hand drive, but they want the cream, no rust, low mileage and clean clean clean cars... But for the right cars, they will pay the earth, but they also need to be pre 89 cars.. it is the same story with 911's.

I think with any 944 you are on a winner, even if it does not appreciate much in value over the years... Most cars depreciate and typically almost any car can cost you what it costs to keep a 944 on the road, but most cars will also be depreciating every single year, so usually you can double what it costs to run a car when you take how much its value is going down every year.

The main thing is, the market does not tend to set the price of 944's, it seems to be the sellers who set the price, and as long as you all think that your car is only worth X, then that is what they will sell for.

Maybe my view is skewed, but to be honest, most of the new customers I pick up with 944's tend to not be hard up and have bought the car because they have always wanted or used to own a 944, so they may have bought their 944 S2 for £5k, but they probably would have paid £7k, £8k or £9k or more for it without doubt, and most of them are not shy of spending money on their cars and own some more exotic machines in the background.. But these people are not thinking about future value, they are buying what they have decided they want to buy.

Anyway, its just my view, but I think in the future 944 values will continue to rise.. A couple of years ago you would have struggled to get £2k for a clean pre 86 944, now you can get £4k for the same car.. I am not sure many people will argue with this, but that isnt a bad rise in values if you ask me.

A lot of sellers sell cheap because they expect the car to have sold within a month if the price was right, which really is not the case, you get two buyers for these cars, ones who buy because they want to buy "something" and see an add for a bargain 944 and buy it because they think it is cheap and cool.... then you get buyers who want a 944, are looking for a 944 and want to buy the right car with the right colour and the right spec, for these people do not grow on trees and it may take a few months to find the right buyer for the right car... but they will come along... But the panic of it not selling in 6 weeks makes people drop their prices, which makes other sellers think that is what their price should be, and so it is so, the prices are set by these details...

Besides, I am sure from what I see, 80% of the 944's on the market are sheds which look fine in pictures, and these cars are maybe worth what they are being advertised at.. but unfortunately the owners of good examples advertise their cars at the same prices, which really skews up the market.

Just my 2p worth

Jon I couldn't agree more.

I bought my 944 because I wanted one...and it had to be a specific model and condition as it was to be a keeper. It followed a series of other Porsches (even some with the engine in the wrong place!), Alfa's, Lotus, Jaguars and even an Aston....but I wanted a 944.

I keep meticulous (wifey calls them anal!) maintenance and running records and it has cost about £1600 per year over the 7 years and 30, 000 miles of ownership to run/fix the car...I do as much of the work as I can myself...and there lies the other problem and one explanation why there are so many 'sheds' for sale at the moment (no, not me working on it the cost of parts/fuel/insurance).

You wouldn't be advised to run any performance car on a budget and when you do...they end up on E-*** for less than a grand!

Everything on these cars is fixable at a price....they are just nuts and bolts engineering....even the dreaded rusty sill situation that seems to shock a lot of people, crikey back in the seventies and eighties rusty sills were standard on almost every car! The youngest of the 944's is now over 20 years old and my own example is 30 years old...of course the body will need maintenance at this age unless you are very lucky.

So what's it worth? it's worth what the buyer is prepared topay and the seller is prepared to accept! plain and simple....but to me the 944 experience is priceless.

Yep, know what you mean...

Ok new glasses delivered so I found the article - Feb issue page 85...how did I miss it. doh!

i think you're bang on there Jon, I bought my 924S pretty much on the condition of the interior, it had a couple of small mechanical issues, but I couldn't find another one for sale in the 6 months i was looking which didn't have an interior in tatters...

I was lucky that I got it very cheap (under a grand) and took a gamble with the mechanical issues (basically just needed a water pump / cam belt and steering rack to get it on the road), but I would have paid 3, 4 or 5 times as much if I had found one in the spec / condition I was looking for. In fact many I looked at for twice what I paid were complete sheds with unrealistic values put on them by the sellers....

I also have no intention of selling it, so don't really care what it's valued at... I was offered £4k for it a few weeks ago by a chap who was working on the road outside my house, and refused!