I just finished removing all the parts to replace the water pump, tbelt...etc. Much to my surprise I discovered the car has been running with no thermostat! The guy I bought it from has it 8 yrs and put about 10k mile on it. When asked, he told me he had never had the tbelt changed, and seemed puzzled as to why I asked. So, I trailered it home. I'm convinced this car has not had a thermostat in over 8 yrs. It's hard to tell for sure, but it looked like it had not been apart for a while. Though the belts looked good and had proper tension. I just wondered if anyone else might have some thoughts about this since I'm a first time Porsche owner.

 

As with any other car you can leave the thermostat out without failures.
However it takes much longer for the engine is on a normal tempature.
A cold engine uses more fuel than a warm, pollutes more and mean heavy wear on the engine.
So if it was not in there for several years it can mean the engine had a hard time.