Kevin

Driving these cars in the winter with snow melt and de-ice will turn every metal plated nut, bold, fitting into rust colored, frozen junk. I have one of these cars stuffed into one of my storage containers.. I'm keeping it as a rainy day project. It took my son DOUBLE the normal time to remove all the suspension and drivetrain. It's sad to see the damage that occurs. Rusted caliper bolts, rusted brake lines, rusted sway bar links and so on...

geetee

I don't know chicago but I imagine it is somewhat similar to philly. We probably get a little bit less snow but lots of salt used....snow can accumulate quite a few inches on the road. I am lowered with aero kit(lower front bumper) but i do drive all year around. I leave mine at home only when I can't clear the roads....either unplowed or plowed but still more than a couple inches of snow on the road. Rust is a concern but I do spray down the underbody quite often. Some bolts are a little rusty but nothing too bad. No issue with handling or control with snow tires. It's more stable/predictable in snow than any other car I have except for the cayenne

rmc1148

I live in Pa and the two cars I drive regularly and get cleaned more than regularly are rusted quite a bit and have had to replace brake lines on my Ford Truck 2004-46k miles.

Last930

My brother has driven a 2000 911c4 year round in Chicago for 11-12 years, accruing 160,000 miles in the process. It looks great; other than the wear and tear of a high mileage car you can't tell it's been winter driven. Sure, there's probably some rusty bolts and parts, but that's about it. I think we worry too much about this - these things aren't made of sugar!!

white out

The previous owner of my '99 C2 used it as a year-round DD for 10 years in Chicago. I don't see why a Turbo would fair any worse.

Get heated seats.

Last930

I wonder how much the additional depreciation would be on a year-round driven car after 5 years? Assuming a 40-50,000 mile car is about $45,000 today, if you were to drive the car 10- 12,000 miles per year the car would have about 100,000 miles on it; value would be maybe $35,000? A car driven half that distance would have 60-70,000 miles and be worth around $40,000 (wild a** guess). So the additional depreciation would be around $5,000 over that time period. You would need some snow tires and a level of additional maintenance so figure an additional 3-4,000 for that, so unless something big broke it would probably cost an additional $9-10,000 over the 5 year period to drive a 996TT year-round.

I suppose you would need to decide if you could lease a car (one that you would actually WANT to drive!) for less than $10k for 5 years - including all costs like taxes, insurance, service, etc (doubtful)., or you could buy a beater and possibly save a couple grand if you were lucky (bought a GOOD beater!), but you'd be driving a beater 1/3 of the year! Plus there is the storage question - how many of us have an extra garage space??

I'm sure someone will have a much more detailed way of calculating the differential costs involved, but at least a quick and dirty view would say that it's cheaper to drive the TT - plus you get to drive a magnificent car all year!