Marc Gelefsky

It will be interesting to see how Porsche responds, short of suing the guy for using "Porsche" in his website.
I'm sure nothing will come of this.

http://www.porscheenginefailure.com

Palting

The site itself is interesting. I agree. I don't think anything will come of it. But, then again, I happen to be one of those who believe this whole thing is blown out of proportion.

Wasn't there someone in this forum who wanted to start a class action lawsuit? Wonder what happened to it, and if this is the same guy?

Bob Rouleau

This should prove interesting indeed. There are a lot of horror stories about the 3.4 engine .... hard to tell if it is blown out of propoprtion or not. Still it is easy to claim that stories are exaggerated, unless you are one of the victims!

Ubermensch

Yes, it should prove interesting to our cars' resale value...

MikeZ

On the other hand, if somthing positive comes from Porsche, it will be meaningfull to all of us who have not yet had a problem and may in the future.
A little peace of mind perhaps.

salayc

Porsche does offer an $8000 (although it may just have gone up) engine for an $80k car. That's probably about the same cost as an average engine in a $20k car. I think like most big companies, it's not in their best interest to admit fault.

cdodkin

I believe that's more like $12k-$14k these days - they have stopped subsidizing the replacement block now that more cars are out of warranty.

cdodkin

I suspect he'll get a couple of calls.

1) A cease and desist notice from Porsche - the last guy to do any form of customer poll had just such a nice chat with Porsche's legal folks

2) A cease and desist on the use of Porsche in the domain name - stupid rookie mistake - makes it way to easy for them to pull the plug on him.

Should of called it flatsixsucks.com or something less copyright!

salayc

$12k still sounds pretty subsidized to me...

kevjandon

Anyone buying a porsche should know the engines can suck big time.

74 to 77 2.7's head stud issues
78 to 83 3.0's have chain tensioner and pop off valve issues
84 to 89 3.2's need top ends
90 to 91 3.6's suck doe to leaks
95 to 98's need top ends
96 to 98's have a hard time passing smog.

It is no suprise the 996 3.4 motors have issues too. Now if Porsche was smart about this they would do something similar to what BMW did for their faulty S54 motors found in M3's and Z3M cars. Provide a simple two year/100K mile warranty extension on the motor. Odds are a small percentage will break. Fix them quietly and move on. Two years from now a 99 996 will be 10 years old. Certainly out of the responsibility of Porsche.

Porsche needs to remember that the 996 has made Porsche many new customers not only on new cars but on resale too. Too keep the resale base up for the 997's Porsche needs to keep whole with the 996 owner base they have created.

If they don't Porsche will have a tough time selling new and used cars.

hwk72

I don't think $12-14k is much subsidized; it just doesn't include the Porsche typical margin for the 911; so the $80k purchase price for the car is inflated by probably $30-40k. This brings the cost for the engine swap back in relation to the price/cost of the car (approx. 25%).

It's like selling a Camry for $60k - unfortunately for Toyota, the Camry is not an icon like the 911 and people don't want to pay a premium for a Toyota.

A similar example is Red Bull: it's more expensive than Coke due to production cost; the price difference is due to clever marketing.

spiderv6

Interesting way to start his story by admitting he was driving home from a bar and speeding.......

So has he retained the law firm linked at the bottom of the page?

Interesting.........

Tippy

I know, I cant wait to pick up an '02 for about $15k and throw a Vortech on it........

JasonAndreas

Porsche doesn't have a leg to stand on...

Palting

I don't get it. What did the 2600 corp win? what did Ford lose? So much double talk on those links.