Alan '79 928

People who buy a $70K supercar do not expect to constantly have problems with it. I have spoken with several people who bought a 928 new and had nothing but problems during their ownership. This is a big reason for their bad reputation and low price. Problems that we find acceptable in an aging sports car were not acceptable to the wealthy owner when the car was new.

Jessa

The objective build quality and reliability do factor into this, but so does the drivers' expectations.

If you buy a Mazda sedan or truck, you expect decent, reliable transportation. A simple motoring appliance. If it does that, then you're satisfied. Even the people buying the "sport" package for thier Mazda economy car either don't expect it to be like a real sports car, or don't understand performance driving enough to know the difference when they drive it. All of these people will have their expectations fully satisfied with a basic, lackluster car.

When you buy a BMW, you expect it to have a rich, quality interior, look stylish and be an "ulimate driving machine". Realistically, even if its a very good car, its easy to fall short of those kinds of expectations. Buyers of that segment of cars are far pickier, and are more likely to scrutinize their car's faults.

For example, my parents purchased a used Mercury Sable about 10 years ago. Brian's parents purchased a slightly used BMW 740i around the same time. The Sable had to have its engine replaced, and transmission rebuilt, along with numerous other small problems. The handling is lousy. My dad still has the Sable, loves it, claims its a great car. He is, however, reluctant to take it places now, because it interrmitantly fails to turn over. If you ignore it for 10 to 15 minutes, the problem usually goes away. Overall, he is very satisfied with the car.

The BMW had a collection of little annoyances with failing gadgets, the worst of which was the failure of the power adjustment in the driver's seat. They also crashed it three times, adding up to more nagging repairs and broken drive shaft, but I can't fault the car's design for that. It handled great for such a large and heavy vehicle, had lots of power, and was very comfortable even with five people in it. They have since sold it, having grown dissapointed with its problems.

Flint

A cousin of mine going to that big auto repair school in Chicago was telling me the differences of cars by their...region of build, I guess you'd call it. This is all their generalization, obviously one specific car or smaller company may go the other way. American cars weakest point is in the drivetrain, accessories like water pumps and stuff will last a long time, but the engines and transmissions will wear down. Japanese cars are the opposite, you might have to change four or five water pumps or starters before anything goes wrong with the engine. German cars--on the whole, mind you--have their weakest point in things like the interior and luxury items. I didn't ask about British.

As I said, generalization. But as we all know there can be standouts; I have had a BMW that was pretty much bulletproof and a toyota (lexus but same thing) that threw a rod (and a toyota van that never had its oil changed in 18 years and still ran like you know what off a shovel--seriously).

Z

Maybe one indication would be how confident the the manufacturers themselves are in their own products:

Powertrain warranties:

Mitsubishi....10-year/100,000 miles
Kia.............10-year/100,000-miles
Hyundai.......10-year/100,000 miles
Suzuki..........7-year/100,000 miles
Isuzu............7-year/75,000 miles
Infinity..........6-year/70,000 miles
Lexus...........6-year/70,000 miles
Porsche........4 year/50,000 miles.
BMW:...........4-year/50,000 miles

I thought this one was kind of interesting.

Daimler/Chrysler:

Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep...7-year/70,000-miles
Mercedes..........................4-year/50,000-miles

Jim bailey - 928 International

The longer warranty is primarily for marketing /sales not any validation of actual quality plus power train leaves much which is NOT covered. The 928 design using the timing belt to turn the water pump and subjecting the pump to the loads required to tension the belt probably was NOT such a good idea. The typical GM water pump has it's own belt or shares an accessory drive belt.

Bill51sdr

Z,

The first 5 manufacturers on your list make some of the biggest POS's known to humankind, and you WILL use those warranties. What's the point? Flat out best car I ever owned was a '90 Miata (3 yrs. 50K mi.) and the car was never in for any kind of repair, in or out of warranty. Using your logic, I would look for a car with the shortest warranty...

Malibu310

Forget the "engine" reliability. You are looking at engines that were first designed over 1/4 century ago with materials and manufactuing that are older technologies. The real strength of the 928 is its tank like stength and construction (the car outside the engine). We are driving cars almost 30 years old that most still look great, the doors close just as good as new, and the chassis is as solid as a brand new car from virtualy any otther manufacturer. The fact that we can take cars that already have a 100 thousand mile on them and THEN supercharge them, or put a high torque american engine in them and they still are bullet proof is simply amazing!

That is why the 928 shines above all other cars... at least that's my opinion.

michaelathome

OK, I am going to have to be the one that throws gas on the fire. I know that I have posted it before but I will post it again.

The inflation calculator: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

Look at the prices of yesterdays cars in todays $'s:
- '83 944 @ MSRP of 18,500.00 = $33,6360.6 in 2003
- '83 928 @ MSRP of 40,000.00 = $72,726.62 in 2003

Now how many of us have cash to purchase these cars, we might be able to cover the 34K required for the 944 in todays dollars but lets say that we couldn't and finance it.

Monthly payment on $34,000 = $ 651.00 per mo w/ Zero down for 5 years
Monthly payment on $72,000 = $ 1,380.00 per mo w/ Zero down for 5 years

Today look at what you could have for the same $. A Dodge Neon with some options is about 18K and you should be able to pick up a BMW 330 for about 40K

In todays market our $ is worth A LOT less than it was 20 years ago. Technology and manufacturing changes have put a LOT of goodies in our cars but at what cost? Well it looks like about 20 to 30K.

The prices of our parts have generally speaking declined as well at a rate similiar to the depretiation of the car.

I know that my P-car will not ever realistically outrun or out perform an 2004 RSX but that isn't why I bought it.

I would though be willing to bet on a small wager that if one of us were to dump 30K into our P-cars they would give most of the new blood a run for their $.

My .02

T_MaX

This thread has the potential to get very ugly. I’m glad it hasn’t

Normy

The long and short on this one is that Porsche is a company in business to build cars to make a profit.

general motors is a car company in business to build a profit by making cars.

There is a subtle but important difference!

-WATERpumps employ something known as a "ceramic bearing" Ceramics are ultra-hard, which is why they are used in this place. Are there better components? Sure. I'm certain that it is possible for a water pump to be built that would last 750,000 or more miles. But it hasn't been done because there is no "profit-pressure" for this to happen. Even at Porsche.

NOW. Let me tell you, about this time last year me and my favorite mechanic in Orlando changed my timing belt and replaced my water pump. For once, I felt like sending some business to my friends in North Carolina, 928 Specialists, and I procured all the necessary parts from them [sorry Jim~]. When the water pump came off, my mechanic had to tug and tug, finally hitting the pully with a mallet to remove it. He looked at it, and it appeared in perfect condition- he told me that he was certain from looking at the gasket that this was the ORIGINAL pump- 18 years old with nearly 130,000 screaming miles!!

-Dad's '87 VW Golf is now the property of my truck-driver Aunt. It has nearly 400,000 miles, is on its second head gasket, its SECOND WATER PUMP, its ORIGINAL radiator, and original automatic transmission. It's beat to hell, courtesy of her son and my brother [well, I accidently smoked a mail box with it once, but it didn't do any damage], but if you fixed the scratches and sucked out the tons of cigarette ashes from Aunt Donna...you'd find that this 18 year old car will still probably reliably do 100 mph.

And my mom's Pontiac Bonneville? The famous 3800 engine is a winner, but the car constanly warns you about an open door, handles vaguely, steers vaguely, has vague brakes, is vaguely fast, has a vague 160,000 miles, since the odometer isn't accurate, has vaguely poor resale value, has vague looks, and has a vague piece of windshield trim that catches the wind at any speed over 50 miles per and peels up over the roof.

[We just push it down after each drive; It can't be fixed cheap and dad is too cheap to buy a decent car-!]

The guy that owned the place that I stayed at in Indianapolis when I was based there in 2001 had a 2000 Cadillac Eldorado and let me drive it all the time. It was FAST off the line, but its suspension wallowed alarmingly under hard acceleration. But I don't think it could keep up with my '85 S2 beyond about the first 100 yards....

No car is perfect, especially not 20 year old Porsches.

N!

Ispeed

With the 928 all the big engineering is right: balance, stability, handling, feel, engineering, driver experience. You can't add those things to a car that has been designed to look good first, be cheap to build second, and be easy to service third.
Examples that come to mind: an '05 mustang has a solid rear axle and poor weight bias, and vettes are still using a transverse leaf spring when all the track guys upgrade to coil overs if they have the $$$ to spend. It is no secret that coil over suspension, independent rear suspension, and 50/50 weight bias is good. Why dont those two cars have the best engineering there is??? Good question.
Another thing is the sheer numbers of GM or Fords produced every year. With high numbers, everything gets ironed out on the small items.

Jim 944S

Eric... You are questioning the very core of our belief system. This is a very disturbing situation and suggests a visit from the PCA "re-programming" team.

Jim 1987 944S (I'd come up and help them readjust your "confusion", but I have to stay home on work on the car!!!)

Doug Hillary

Hi,
to add another dimension there really is a lot more to this aspect of Euro vehicles and those from Germany in particular than first meets the mind

Interstate Trucking is an Industry that is very hard on its technology and I believe Australia has the harshest "high speed" version anywhere. Our roads are a great mixture of truly excellent Motorways and many secondary roads that in an overall sense leave much to be desired. Some of our long distance interlinking roads are gravel - some excellent and some in very poor condition. Our maximum speed limit is 110kmh (68mph) for cars and 100kmh (62 mph) for heavy trucks

This Country has been used as a testing base for prototype vehicles - cars (including Porsche) and trucks - from Europe and Japan for at least 40 years. This is done primarily in the one State without a maximum speed limit and in other States with overall durability aspects in their geography

Euro Truck technology simply does not survive very well here at all!

North American technology is the user's popular choice and has been for the last several decades. Much of it has been refined/developed in Australia.
Without going into detail this was/is simply due to less complexity in design, execution and production - primarily a measured design philosophy issue
Part of this philosophy relates to spare part's prices and equipment standardisation and commonality

American technology 500hp heavy trucks here usually have a "first engine life to rebuild" (FELTR) of around 1.3m kms
Most Euro heavy trucks (MB, MANN, Volvo, Scania) would be lucky to get 900k kms without some major failure. The perceived over-complexity required to meet ECE operating/safety standards, poor quality components (sometimes) and assembly all play a very real role in their lack of durability. Their weakest points are typically cooling systems, drive-line components, braking systems and suspension-chassis - as they have been for the last 30 years or so
This makes them difficult to work on and almost ties them to the Dealer - an unacceptable burden in Trucking circles

In the early 1980's I was involved in a tri-axle trailer parabolic spring suspension project. A great and innovative design, the initial German suspension system simply "fell to pieces" here. It had worked well in Europe for about three years or so beforehand. We quickly designed and carried out some modifications that made them much more reliable. The German Company's Chief Engineer came out to Australia (starting a long term personal friendship) and we jointly surveyed the operating application. He could simply not believe the harsh operating environment and their design philosophy had not truly encompassed such export applications. Of the eleven modifications I had designed and implemented here seven were in production (suitably refined) in Germany within 12 months
Over the years I have found the likes of MB (heavy trucks) and VW (cars) to be much less responsive than this!!

The Japanese (cars and heavy/light trucks) and Koreans (cars and light trucks) are just exactly the opposite!!!

In recent years American Truck technology has become less reliable too and this is mainly due to the importation here of CBU trucks from NA. These vehicles are proving to be significantly less durable than before and the American Manufacturers are now much less responsive too. Previously they were all manufactured and/or assembled here.

Sometimes the "Euro quality" aura exceeds reality and as one MB Engineer put to me one day at Wurth (the worlds largest truck making facility) - "....production here is ???? vehicles per day - we don't sell that number each year in Australia so why change our design philosophy to sell another ?? vehicles...". So in the scheme of things of course the Manufacturer's overall design philosophy and Country specific cultural issues play a huge role as well

IMHO the same applies to most "Exotic" cars that are made in Europe. I recently spoke to a 928GTS buyer in NZ. The car sat unsold at the Porsche Dealer showroom for nine months (in 1993) before he took delivery buying it heavily discounted at about $NZ220k. He owned the car for less than 12 months and had a LOT of problems with the car, mainly electrical, vowing never to buy another Porsche. He said he was even scared to go to the local shops in it in case it had to be towed away.

He has been a new BMW buyer every year since with the odd new Benz as well - he has never considered another Porsche

Of course the once proud British Motor Industry - both car and truck - ceased to exist because of somewhat similar issues

We drive complex and sophisticated cars that were a credit to their Engineers ever since design commenced 30 odd years ago. Very little CAD and CAM then too.
I wonder how many other cars could make us feel the same way

Regards
Doug

Z

Every time I go into one of the local Porsche dealership's service area, there sure seem to be plenty of cars in there being worked on. Sometimes it takes weeks just to get an appointment to bring a car in, and there are at least five dealerships in the metropolitan area. Many of those cars being worked on are having warranty work done on them. Others are already out of warranty, and the owners are being charged $140/hr, plus the cost of some typically pretty expensive parts.

If longer warranties are primarily marketing related as Jim mentioned, it would seem to indicate that those European manufacturers not only have the lower consumer satisfaction ratings reported in those surveys, they also don't handle marketing as well as some of the other manufacturers that did better than them in the surveys. It's no wonder that sales and market share for some of the other manufacturers have been doing relatively well.

Was it Toyota that Porsche consulted a while back, resulting in Porsche becoming more profitable and becoming financially stronger?

worf928

Bingo! and in summary: the 928 did not live up to the expectations of its original owners. During the 928 era Initial Quality was not Job One at Porsche and unlike Porsche's die-hard air-head customers, 928 buyers were not willing to put up with the 'eccentricities' of a hand-built sports car. 928 buyers did not want a 911.

I have looked at full from-new service histories for a number of 928s - my '91 included. That and anecdotal evidence from speaking with original owners along with 8+ years of daily participation in the progenitors of this forum have led me to conclude that 928s in general suffered a rate of early failure far in excess of what one not familiar with with the 'eccentricities' of hand-built cars would expect. My '91 suffered from a leaking oil cooler, dead climate control ECU, leaky door gasket, leaking tires due to poor mounting, bad shifter ball cup - all in the first 24,000 miles.

If I had paid the $82,613 sticker for the car I too would have labeled it a POS after 24,000 miles and thinking ahead to the next 24,000 miles worth of out-of-warranty repairs - I might have dumped it.

But I didn't pay sticker.

I got the '91 with 28,000 miles on it. The water pump started leaking a week after that.

But, once that was done I enjoyed 6 years and almost 40,000 miles of near-perfect operation. During that time it never stranded me. The only problems I had were a broken y-connector to the carbon canister and the flappy going south.

I conclude from my experiences that Porsche had below-industry-average build quality and did a very poor job of quality control with its suppliers. But, once the 'infant mortality' issues were worked out the basic engineering was very well-done.


Interesting figures. But, you are missing the near-50% inflation in Porsche sticker prices that occurred in the 1985-1987 time frame as Porsche retreated 'up-market' in the face of competition from the 300zx, Supra, and - at the 944 end of the scale - from the 16v Volkswagens.

For my '91GT:

- '91 928 @ MSRP of $82,613 = $110,961 in 2003

which would buy a new 996 Twin Turbo (lightly optioned) in 2003.


I'm not sure - from reading the above - if you mean that $33k today will buy more or less car than $18k did in 1983. I think the former. $33k will buy a new RX-8 which will out-perform a 1983 944. $72k will buy a 986S or a Corvette Z06 and leave some change. I know that 'will out-perform' is controversial. Objectively I believe the above statements are correct. But, we wouldn't be driving 928s (or 944s) if objective measures were the end-all be-all (and more on the Z06 below...)


On. The. Nose.

Well, the answer to the transverse leaf spring is 50% packaging and cost and 50% 'tradition' in a manner that is very much like why the 996 incorporates engineering to make the water-cooled flat-six sound like an air-cooled flat-six. And, as far as the 'Stang is concerned, when the rumours of an independent rear-end started circulating a fews years ago the live-axle die-hards went nuts on Ford.

Yup. A buddy of mine graduated from MIT and went to work at Ford. He spend the next 18 months of his life designing an oil pressure sensor. That's all he did. If Porsche could expend the same engineering-time per ounce of product that Ford, GM, Yoyota, etc.... (Aforementioned buddy soon thereafter decided having his soul sucked out designing little niggling parts wasn't for him, quit, and started his own company.)

I hope the following isn't too ugly:

Porsche has a problem. Has anyone sauntered over to the 996, 997 and Cayenne forums? Software problems. RMS problems. Vibration problems. One really, really pissed-off 997 owner. (Skip in Boulder.)

As for the GM thing - you folks probably aren't going to take it too well - the C5 Corvette, especially in Z06 form, is a very serious automobile. CarChick's 2002 Z06 has 14,000 miles on it. 3500 of those are track miles. She has had ZERO problems. Two years ago at Bragg-Smith we tracked end-of-year Z06s. All of them had 12,000+ miles of track time. None of them had issues. No squeaks. No rattles. Just new brake pads and tires every-so-often.

Now.... if GM will just fix the seats. Which they may have in the C6.

And the C6 ZO6 is going to be a BEAST. 7 liter dry sump motor with 500 hp. 6-piston brakes. 3100 pounds. For less than a 997.

They'd better get some software geeks to Zuffenhausen pronto. (I have some that might be available )

Porsche has a problem. I hope they fix it. Not that Porsche's good health will do anything for us - like increasing the availability of 928 parts.

Don't get me wrong - I prefer driving the 928 to the Z06. The extra sixty-thousand 2003 dollars are all geared toward what Carl wrote: "balance, stability, handling, feel, engineering, driver experience."