I would not buy any 911 or boxster without first driving. My experience has been the motors are either smooth and powerful, or noisy and sluggish. I've only driven about 7 cars tho so not the greatest amount, but this has been my experience. the best I've driven had 119k on it. I never checked, but I was convinced it was either not the original engine or it had been kept in tip top condition

 

I bought a 2002 C4S in March this year - 100K miles. Tip.

Good, complete service history with Porsche, but needed a little work. It was a silly low price, but most of the little jobs I have now competed (Aircon rads, was the biggest). Its been the best car I have ever bought - covered 15K miles in it (mainly in the Alps, Pyrenees and South of France without the slightest hitch. For me its a keeper - I do my own work whenever possible but keep good documentation of all work.

Enjoy your new (to you) car - don't waste time worrying about repair bills but keep her well looked after and she will give you so much pleasure to drive, to own, to look at, to talk with strangers at the kerbside, to photograph, to take the queue of neighbours young lads out for a ride. They really are the car that just keeps giving, in a way that no other car I have ever owned has done for me (I have had many).

Just my little view from France :-)

 

Buy the car. Life is too short not to have fun driving one of these things. "Lots of options" is a terrific bonus, as it can make the various types of drives all that much more enjoyable and pleasant -- not that even a basic 911 is anything but amazing-- and you avoid the (not insignificant) marginal cost of equipping a new Porsche that way. I have put over 20,000 miles on ours in less.than a year of ownership, and have had an absolute blast doing so.

 

I sold my 02 C4S with 114K for $25K this spring. It did have a new motor from Porsche though.

 

Same boat here. I have an 04 Land Rover Discovery that I do all of my own maintenance on, and sometimes it's a lot of maintenance because I use it for what it was built for here in the Jungle. It's the same with my 04 C4S. I bought it with over 100,000 miles, do most of my maintenance and now have 110,000 on it in a few months. It's a great car. As others have said I did not but it for resale, just for fun, enjoyment, pride of ownership. And it's damn fun to get out of the jungle where I have been driving less than 40 mph all week and then get in my Porsche and drive like I stole it. Go for it.