Maintenance on the Boxster

Originally Posted by Shamu

Do yourself a favor. Go find an old 350z with say 150,000 miles on it and compare it to Porsche with same age and mileage.

Just start looking at quality of materials. Lets start with paint. Paint on Porsche is flawless and will last 20 plus years without chipping and fade we see on our Nissans. Interiors in Porsches age much better than Z's as well. I owned 2007 350z roadster for 6 years and I have to be honest it had more problems with trim, convertible top, interior than my 10 year old Porsche Boxster that I owned at same time. Porsche suspensions are typically made with high quality bilstein dampers that will last nearly a decade while we don't see similar quality with Nissans. Electronics in my 350z were problematic as well - window motors needed replacing at 5 year mark outside warranty (ouch!). Notchy shifter in 350z at 4 year mark, brakes gone at 35k with rotors that always seemed to warp? My first Boxster was at 60k and pads and rotors were still good!
.First clutch in 350z at 40k. Boxster had 101k on its clock before clutch was replaced. To me that sounds like 350z was nightmare to maintain compared to my older Boxster.

Nissan Z's still have very heavy construction and some design elements best reserved for 1980s. Heavy steel sub frame in rear is a joke, poorly insulated tunnel area is nice for sub freezing winter days but heats the car to unbearable temps in summer. Just feel that tunnel sometime on a warm day while your sitting in traffic. I found opposite of you with comfort. boxsters are far more comfortable and offer much more civil and refined ride. 370 and 350 feel like they borrowed suspension from and old ford when you hit bumps.

I m just tired of snarky uneducated Porsche bashing that I often see from likes of people who have very little experience with this marquee. I can light up on some of flaws of Porsche but difficult maintenance isn't one of them. In early Boxsters throw away motors were bigger issue. Porsche had failed attempt to make a motor they thought would be maintenance free. Oops. New motors are much much better.

I have also had luxury of pretty much dissembling a 370z and a Boxster and the way Porsches are put together just shows in every little detail. Z is closer to a Nissan Sentra economy car in many of its design elements while Boxster is much more a kin to its bigger brother the 911 a true high quality sports car.

People who get in trouble with Porsches are those who have no experience. Porsches need to be well maintained or they will kick your butt with high cost parts if you get a dealer to fix the car out of warranty but even there if you know aftermarket there are lots of high quality replacement parts. I can site example after example. I have seen people spend $25 k on same fix an experienced Porsche owner could spend $5k. I changed my own oil and filter for $30 bucks in 15 minutes while a sucker going to dealer might see $250 or even more!

Porsches aren't for everyone, but to say they are hard to maintain is sort of silly.

See problem you're going to have with me is that I have owned Porsches and Z's since the 1970s. I have owned 6 nissans/Datsuns and 5 porsches. I'm not biased to one brand like some. And I can talk same $hit with Porsche owners who unjustly bash Nissans.