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Hello. New member looking for a Cayman

N

norwichphoto

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5 Aug 2024
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Hello. Recently joined the site as I'm looking to buy my first Porsche, a car to replace my 2003 Audi RS6. My budget, once the Audi has sold is going be around the £ 17k region, with the possibility of adding finance on top, so I'm looking in the 987.2 / 981 catchment area. I work in the classic car restoration industry, so I'll be looking to do quite a lot of routine and not so routine work myself. I'm ruling out 987's and earlier, mostly due to worries about bore scoring, as I have enough projects without adding another.

I'm not ruling out a Boxster, though - if the right car came along. Before the Audi, I ran a TVR Chimaera as an everyday car for several years. The hood on those was wonderfully simple with nothing to really go wrong.

I've signed up for this forum, and Boxa.net, as they seem to be more active than anything Cayman specific.

I've been out and test driven a Boxster S and a Cayman 2.9. Both were manuals. I need to try out a PDK version soon.
 
Last edited:
Welcome to the forum, I'm currently a 997 owner but have previously owned a 987 Boxster and would say that they're certainly a lot of car for the money, 70% of the fun of a 911 for 30% of the price.

There is a lot of love for the 987.2 for it's improvements over the 987.1 in reliability and a slightly more modern appearance but if I'm honest I think that in most cases they're overpriced.

I would be looking at 981 now as I've seen a few sneaking into the sub £20K bracket and it's a buyers market, if you don't mind a few miles there are a couple on Autotrader in budget without finance.
 
Many do seem to be overpriced. I went to look at a Cayman 2.9 last weekend - a lovely low mileage car, up for £ 21,500 at a dealer. Inside the folder of paperwork I found the receipt that the dealer gave to the previous owner, showing the purchase price a fortnight earlier to be £ 16,600.. Thats a big markup for the benefit of a dubious aftermarket warranty.

The RS6 has probably spoilt me in terms of power and torque, but its a big, heavy car, and despite the clever engineering, Audi are still constrained by the laws of physics!

I'm deciding what options are necessary and what would be nice to have.
- Lighting; My Audi has HID lights wihch are good, especially on unlit Norfolk B roads. I read about people complaining about the standard headlights, but it depends what they're comparing it to... The TVR lights were pretty rubbish.
- Heated seats - I occassionally suffer from back pain and heated seats helps sooth this.
- Cruise control is useful as there are a couple of popular Scamera van locations on my regular route to work.
- Park Assist - could be useful.

I'm not a huge listener of music, so I don't need the uprated speakers, but I do listen to podcasts and audio books, so being able to stream from a phone is useful - currently use a bluetooth to FM transmitter in the Audi. Sat Nav - the Audi has ancient sat nav built in, but I use Waze in a car cradle. Whilst I'm not against fitting a different head unit, I'm fairly fussy over appearance, and most aftermarket stereos don't look quite OEM enough for me.

The rear wiper looks as if it could possibly be useful.

PSE / PASM / Chrono etc., - nice if they were there.

Colour - not fussed. They all look good. Went to look at a Boxster in Macadamia, and that looked lovely in the sunlight, but a little dull in the shade.

I know some options can be retrofitted, some easily, some less so.

Part of me says buy a cheap 987.1 Cayman and if bore scoring is an issue, get rid of it and take the hit on value.
 
Hello and welcome

We ran a base 981 2.7 and I highly recommend, it felt really solid and looked and sounded fantastic. It only lacked a bit of low down torque but made up for it on the bends.
Good luck
 
I think a base 981 for around £20k is a bargain at the moment.
 
Tyremanrob said:
I think a base 981 for around £20k is a bargain at the moment.
Click to expand...
Where are you seeing these cars?

The only 981s I've seen around for anything like £20k are mega miles (120k+) or Cat Cars.
 
T8 said:
Where are you seeing these cars?

The only 981s I've seen around for anything like £20k are mega miles (120k+) or Cat Cars.
Click to expand...
Well there are two high mileage cars on Autotrader which are both one owner cars and claim to have good history, both have been for sale for a few weeks and are well under £20K and yes they've done a few miles but that wouldn't put me off if the price is right.

We then have another dozen or so under £25K on Autotrader which in some cases have been for sale for weeks so there has to be some flexibility on price with some of those.

A couple on Ebay, about four or five on Pistonheads and a similar amount on various 981 Facebook pages so they're out there and I always filter the cat cars out.
 
cars without the right spec can be an issue
you can get a cheap 981 with the 2.7 or the 987.2 with the 2.9 base engine
but you always want the larger 3.2 litre that comes with a 6 speed

and i speak from experience, when you can easily spend £5k on basics to get a cheap car up to a necessary standard
 
Nice spec on this, I think I remember seeing it being sold from a dealer just after I bought mine. Was around the £30k mark if I remember correctly. Things have dropped a bit since then but we'll specified 987.2 cars seem hard to find.

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Welcome to the world of Porsche, enjoy the search and learning about these cars. The choices and options are an art form Porsche have perfected to make the deliberations over what to look for mind boggling at first. As you have started to do drive as many as you can, boxster v cayman, PDK v Manual and 987.2 v 981, S v none S, those are your biggies and thats enough to make you mind boggle before you even get into PSE, PASM, sport chrono and even heated seats etc……. Lol

Personally:
- if is its going to be a daily I would get PDK.
- if you used to high torque I would get an S (but this mid engine platform is a different ball game than just numbers)
- boxster v cayman only you can decide but generally like for like a boxster will be cheaper / you will get more for your money
- 987.2 v 981 again only you can decide, I’ve had both and enjoyed both but for slightly different reasons. As a pure drivers car I preferred the 987.2 but it was not really a like for like comparison (and mine where not dailies) ie manual 987 v PDK 981 nb the steering feel is one of the biggest differences, the 987 has more feel but the 981 is more comfortable……
 
Thanks. Its intending to be a daily driver. My usual commute is around 15 miles each way, but its in the opposite direction to most people, so its not ususally too bad, and the TVR Chimaera was a daily driver for several years.

I'm keeping an open mind, but I need to try a PDK PDQ.
 
Don't discount the 987.1 S too quickly. Finding a bore scored example and paying for a rebuild and upgrade to 3.9 from Hartech may well sneak into your budget..... just a left field thought I entertained before going completely off-piste and buying a 718.
 
Hartech rebuild to 3.9 is the thick end of £20k these days, so the bore scored 3.4 would need to be nigh on free for it to really make sense. I thought about doing it a few years ago, but it's hard to find a scored car at the right price (plenty of scored cars, but just not cheap enough).

You then have the problem of resale value, which is questionable. And also Insurance valuation. Can you get the car insured at full replacement value? How much extra is the Insurance going to be with a displacement change? Anyway, in the end I felt it was just too complicated and was probably going to end up costing a fortune if I ever sold the car compared to buying a 987.2 3.4 for a bit more.

I don't really plan to sell, and even on the gen 2 I'll take a hit if a do because I've put a lot of miles on it. But nothing like as bad as if I'd bought a scored gen 1, paid nigh on £20k for a 3.9 rebuild, put loads of miles on it and tried to sell it on over 100,000 miles. Not hard to imagine losing the vast majroity of the rebuild cost in that scenario.
 
I quickly looked into the idea of a borescored engine and a proper rebuild / upgrade and I couldn’t get the manmaths to work. Still looking for the right Cayman (or Boxster).
 
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