Is it possible to accurately determine what kind of driving a car has been used for by the amount of hours it has logged in the DME and the miles on the odometer?
the one I just picked up has 33000 miles and 554 hours operating hours = 59 miles per hours - that's seems like a high average speed.

 

I guess its possible. I used to live right next to the interstate that I took to work every morning and would set the CC at 75 for the 25 miles there and 25 miles back. I rarely ever caught traffic so I could see these #s being plausible. It does look weird though.

 

59mph is a pretty high average speed. My info is "30mph" is about average. I have not had an opportunity to have the engine runtime read from my 310K mile 2002 Boxster or my 152K mile 2003 Turbo so I don't know based on my driving what kind of average speed my cars have. I'm thinking above 30mph but I know from my long highway drives how hard it is to keep a high average speed even under near ideal conditions.

Too bad you didn't have the chance to talk to the previous owner to get a feel how he used the car.

Do you have any service records/history? These might shed some light on the high average speed.

Have to point out that the car has relatively low miles and generally someone that drives in such a way to possibly result in a car with a high average speed would tend to put more miles on the car.

I don't know the car's MY but say it is a 2005. The car is then 12 years old and has averaged only 2750 miles per year. Hard to believe the owner took one highway road trip of under 3K mles just once per year.

Or did a 60 mile work commute (using my work commute for example) just 45 days a year. (I use my Turbo for this 2 sometimes 3 days a week.)

Low annual mlles with a high average speed suggests a car used mainly or solely on the track.

 

I guess you're in the states but I would think that cars in Germany would tend to have a higher mph rate just because of the autobahn. Depends on how the car was used.

 

Durametric suggests 35mph as a typical value (see this exciting 2m 42s video). 59mph definitely seems high.

 

No way it's 59mph for a US based car. My car is 99% track and I'm nowhere near 59mph avg. as the car spends a decent amount of time idling during warm up and cool down. I'm at the upper 30s.

If you look at my DME readout and calculate the avg MPH, you will arrive at 159mph avg. This is because I replace the DME a few years ago.

My bet is that the DME was replaced at some point. 30mph give or take is the normal average.

 

This^
just looked at my last read and I'm just over 27mph average.

 

Sounds like a lot of time idling.

Engine hours will always be on the higher end of the spectrum in relation to miles driven.

 

A DME replacement is a good explanation for the high MPH number.

To the OP: My info is Porsche dealer techs (at least the most senior techs or tech) -- but not sales people, not even service management -- can call up some service history on a car with its VIN and if the DME was replaced under some warranty or recall this will be in the "records".

 

Thanks for the tip
I called the dealership that sold the.car new and serviced it for the first 5 years but they told me the dealership had changed owners about ten years ago and they purged a lot of the old service records at that time.
I think I will visit my local delership and see if they can pull up anything with the Vin

 

My understanding is the info I was referring to the tech can access is not kept at the dealer but is kept with Porsche (PCNA or Germany?) and is available only via some kind of access with PCNA or perhaps even further east, with the factory. The tech has to log on to search based on the VIN.

Dealer sales and service department staff are a bit upset at losing access to this -- some sales staff were abusing this access and annoying customers of other dealers -- and the sales staff may try to spin this by claiming the data is no longer available but a tech told me a few months ago he can access this data. This subject came up for back then because of (IIRC) a similar discussion about DME run time and odometer reading producing a very high average speed came up.