Faults:
Was hit by 17-year old driver on driver side rear quarter panel. While friends with similar problems in Germany got their car repaired in three weeks, the original estimate at IRA Porsche was two months.
The Boxster has now been at IRA (Danvers, MA USA) body shop for FOUR months.
Damage was not severe, however delivery times for some replacement parts over 1.5 months. Some due to bad design, others due to unknown reasons.
Example #1: The inner door panel and the side impact airbag are integrated. Thus, if the airbag deploys, the door panel has to be replaced too (hence, your interior will no longer match). Since the airbag contains explosives, it has to be shipped via sea-mail. With the time required to make and ship it, your door panel/side impact airbag will take at least 8 weeks.
Example #2: Air box and snorkel for engine. This part was not available in the USA for over 1.5 months by Porsches own admission. For some reason they were able to continue building cars...
These examples are simply not acceptable for a car that is currently in production, particularly when the factory is making twice-weekly deliveries to the USA.
Furthermore, the part delays do not account for the four month wait period alone. The body shop at the dealership evidently took a cavalier attitude towards the repair of the car.
All in all, I am terribly disapointed. Porsche let me down by not delivering current parts to the USA, the dealership has done the same by drawing out the repairs as long as possible. That the dealerships is now trying to cover its tracks is a further aggravation.
Thus, I would stay away from Porsche in North America. Evidently, the parts distribution network is a utter joke and if it is this bad for current parts, I don't even want to know what it will be like in five years. The IRA dealership also has a bad reputation in Boston (which I found about too late). I would steer a wide course around them.
General Comments:
However, when the car ran, it fulfilled almost all my wishes.
The PCM (traction control) helped a lot during cold slushy drives to work (I live in New England).
The engine is a lot of fun to drive hard and listen to. More power would be fun but in the US, what is the point unless you want to race on a course? (in which case you wouldn't use a Boxster as a basis anyway).
Shifting is smooth and short, don't really understand the point of shift kits.
The hard-top is a great idea in New England and other places where glass rear windows with defrost are a must in the winter. It's also very quiet with the hard top.
The Litronic (HID) headlights are a dream, really light up everything on the road for a long way out.
The Becker audio package is outdated. The DSP controls are a joke, the CD player does not accept CD's with MP3s, and the CD-changer is in the front luggage compartment. The indoor radio/controller unit has a cassette mechanism (how quaint!).
The folding roof has a PVC rear window in it, which requires a lot of tender loving care. Otherwise, it will split in no time, requiring expensive rework. A glass panel with defrost would have been appropriate in this price class.
27th Sep 2001, 03:15
I found the seats to be quite comfy - the car wraps around you like a clamshell. However, the standard seats could have better support - a lot of people have been retrofitting lumbar support. Also, if your upper body is long it is quite possible to hit the roll-bar during collisions because the seats are so flexible.