I think enough Franziskaner should be an appropriate payment for this.

Back in my early Porsche days, a couple decades ago (jeez!), I had an 1983 911SC which had the factory alarm. That consisted of a little key on the inside of the door jamb. You would turn the key, shut the door, and the alarm would be armed. Then you lock the door (by hand, remember that?). To unarm it, you unlock the door by hand, open it just enough to slip the alarm key in to the jamb, and shut it off.

After a few months of doing that, arming it evolved into one continuous motion ... put the key in, turn it, remove it, close the door. Did it a hundred times. Until one night I had to go in to work at the newspaper to fix a press issue at midnight, whereupon I put the key in, my hand slipped off it, I still shut the door and broke the alarm key off into the lock, with the alarm on. Parked right in front of the St. Petersburg Times.

Went and fixed the press problem, borrowed flashlight, came out, opened the door enough to see the key ... it had broken off perfectly even with the slot, I mean surgically, no way to get it out, no way to turn the slot itself. I wind up leaving the car (parked in the visitor's lot, no less), taking a cab back home, getting some tools, and cabbing back to the paper. Warn security in the lobby what's going to happen, take deep breath, open door, alarm starts honking, open front lid, fumble around with my ears splitting to disconnect the ground on the battery. Pull my head out of the trunk, ears ringing, to find a real Gomer of a security guard standing by the car. He says to me, "Them foreign cars is crap." It's 2:30 in the morning now. Resist urge to hit him with the flashlight.

Get the needle nose pliers, remove the offending cylinder from the door jamb, disconnect it, lock the car, take another cab home. Rent car for $35 next morning, drive to work. Fortunately, there was a Porsche parts supply house in St. Petersburg (Europarts), and they had the alarm cylinder in stock, which cost about $100. Pick it up at lunch; after work, install new cylinder, take deep breath, reconnect battery ... sumbitch starts honking again. Cylinder came out of box in the "armed" position. Thank you, Hans at the factory. Ears ringing, return rental car, cab it back to the paper, pick up the 911. Now out about $200 between all the cabs, rental and the parts.

Drive Porsche home to apartment, proceed to break off the goddamn alarm key in the door AGAIN.

Ah yes.. Porsche security systems... not even the owner can defeat them.

Vic, Hans at the factory is probably reading this, shrugging his shoulders and going: "Ah, zee operator error!". And that's the issue, really. Nobody at the factory seems to think that problems might actually happen. And they turn into a giant cluster.

Vic, but the car was never stolen right? Shows the genius of the design, lol. I remember some American cars that had factory alams with those locks on the front bumper. Can't imagime there were ever any problems with those - especially this time of year.

God, I remember St. Pete in the 70's and 80's...Lived on Pinellas Point for a while and loved every minute of it...And the St. Pete Times is still one of the best newspapers ever published.

Well, I've only set mine off once inadvertantly about five years ago when I just bought the car, and after a few minutes of random flailing, I was able to turn it off. I just feel the cost/benefit ratio of having an incident like this hanging over your head may not justify the immobilizer's benefits.