I must admit that I've always been attacted to the air-cooled80's Porsche 911 versions. Sometimes some become available at somewhat reasonable (for a Porsche, that is)prices.

On the off chance that some of our members may have at some time owned one of these vehicles, I thought I'd ask a few questions about them.

Are they anywhere near as reliable as an early nineties Accord?

Do they have any specific, well-knownflaws?

Most importantly, are they an appropriate vechicle for a DIY'r? For example, I understand that it's pretty easy to drop the engine right out of the car. Is that true?

Are parts readily available?

Thanks for any information.

Here's a nice 1989example:

 

I've never owned one but I'm a fan as well.... the air cooled porsche engine is a suped up/modified version of it's VW bug counterpart in most years, so if you've ever worked on an older air cooled bug you've worked on a porsche of the corosponding year.... so for DIY'r's it should be quite easy.... as for reliability I have no idea, and I bet parts would be easy to find, there are entire magazine's dedicated to parts for all sorts of years of porsche's...

 

In my youth I owned a Chev Corvair. Just like the VW and Porsche, it had a 6-cylinder, boxer-style engine in the rear. Talk about a terrible car in snow! Great to grind out of a ditch, but going around a slippery corner was an adventure every time. Because of that, I got rid of it soon.

The original beetles were of course a German creation designed for the"Volk" of Germany. Originally, the engine was designed so that it would last around 40K miles and at that timethe owner would drive into one of the many replacement facilities to get it swapped out for a completely refurbished unit. If I remember right, the whole operation would take about a half an hour, and, because the old"core" would be kept and then sent to a facility dedicated to rebuilding them for re-sale, the cost to the ownerwas surprisingly little.

I just wonder if Porsches are as easyand cheap to maintain as the old beetles.