cmitch

Good friends of ours just purchased a 23 Macan 6 weeks ago. It just turned over 1000 miles. They visited North Georgia this past weekend and on the way there, the car began to slow and a low power warning came up on dash and car slowed on its own to about 40 mph. She called dealer in Nashville and they told her to clean a sensor on front of the car which she did. Cranked it back up and all was well for about twenty minutes. Then it happened again. This was outside of Blairsville, GA so she decided to take it to the Atlanta dealer. The warning went away after each restart. She limped it in, they checked it out and could find nothing wrong and basically shooed her away. It did it once more when they got to Cleveland, GA. They stayed the weekend at a friends in Sautée and didn’t drive the car until they left on way back to Nashville this past Monday. It gave them the low power warning several times but managed to get it to Nashville dealer. This is where things go south. They diagnose it as a bad sensor and replaced it, told them car was ready to go and they handed them the fob. That’s when her father spoke up. “Did you drive this car, like really hard, since the problem seemed to occur on acceleration? That’s when the problem seems to occur is when you get on it.” They said no but they would so they left with it. They were waiting a really long while in waiting area and service manager came in with an unpleasant look on his face. “Well, what did you find out?” my buddy asked.
”It’s not good. Not good at all. Your car is broke down further down the road and we are getting it towed back. We were driving it back and we noticed engine getting louder and then it quit. Complete engine failure. Locked up.”
So they waited until it was towed back in and got a loaner Cheyenne to drive. They called them later that evening. They took the head off and piston walls are scored. Engine is destroyed. The warranty estimate is $35,000 for engine and labor. That’s half what they paid for it. They said they were ordering a new engine and it was supposed to be in Wednesday. Apparently, today, per my conversation with my friend, he said they have put a hold on repairing his daughter’s car from the big wigs at corporate. Apparently Porsche isn’t too keen on repairing this car. Something along the lines they may want the whole car back and just put her in a new one. Don’t know yet what that decision will be but will keep everyone posted.

manifold danger

Interesting anecdote, but I wouldn't look too far into it. I'm sure it isn't the first engine to fail nor will be the last. These things do still happen, even with Porsches.

Hopefully it gets resolved relatively quickly, and obviously she should be in a solid loaner while it's being taken care of. That's what warranties are for after all!

Petza914

Boy, that sucks, and all the time associated with the multiple dealer visits. I assume the engine had oil in it?

​​​​​​It's the failure bathtub curve - high failures once something is out into service, then over time those decrease until thing start to wear out, then failures start rising again.

Great that it will be repaired or replaced for her though.

Nickshu

Sorry to hear this. Sounds like Porsche will take care of you.

cmitch

He said last night that they suspect oil pump failed. It will be interesting to find out what it was if they will even tell them.

ByByBMW

Since I just bought a Macan base, will be following this story.

jbx2

If Porsche wants it back that's a good thing. The EA888 isn't bullet proof, but it's pretty close to it.

Marv

Don't let things like this worry you. There are far, far more vehicles with this engine that are running fine than those that fail.

No one starts a thread telling the world that their engine is running fine, but one thread with a blown engine tends to create a bias of worry.

Porsche has a long reputation of standing by their cars. This will get fixed.

ByByBMW

Not real worried, have been on auto related forums long enough to understand that dynamic. But it still warrants me keeping an eye on the story. Fingers crossed that this is the odd ball.

cmitch

We say basically the same thing at benzworld. Main purpose of this thread is to fish for any info that this has happened before. So far, I’ve found one other incident and the vehicle had over 100,000 miles. She just got unlucky with this one it seems. I’m glad it blew on them after they said it was fixed. I should know next week what they intend to do.

VAGfan

The dealer will pull the engine out, and install a new one. They typically won't bother opening the old engine to look for root-cause. The old engine might be sent back to Porsche, if they want to determine root-cause.

If it was the oil pump, why was there no "Low Oil Pressure" warning on the dash. I suspect something else.

The 2.0 engine is made in 2 places, Hungary and Mexico. As far as I know, the Macan only uses the Hungarian engines, but the Mexican built engines (Audi Q5) had a recent recall for a manufacturing issue with the connecting rod bearings, which results in catastrophic engine failure within the first couple of thousand miles.

Microsoft Word - 13i5_Safety_Recall_Circular_INSPECT_DRAFT_FINAL.docx (nhtsa.gov)

Recall for 2022 Audi Q5 (Recent news) - AudiWorld Forums

DBH

This is not unusual for a manufacture to do when there's been a significant failure of one of their vehicles. I'd prefer this outcome rather than have a dealer replace an entire engine and other ancillary systems.

cmitch

So my buddy called and said his daughter's car gets a new engine. It is ordered and is supposed to be in Saturday. Porsche of Nashville said they are shooting for returning car to them next Thursday.

Quadcammer

Huh? Since when. They have a long history of ignoring boneheaded engineering mistakes they made.

cmitch

Update: a delay in receiving all the parts. Porsche insisted on replacing the oil filter tray assembly. New engine didn’t come with it for some reason. Since metal was in it, they didn’t want it swapped over even though procedures were in place to clean it up. So that is their delay. Car is disassembled at Porsche in Nashville. My friend said the oil pan was full of pieces and parts. They are saying now it appears a rod bearing was improperly torqued when installed. Say, wasn’t this the issue with the Mexican made versions of this engine?