I have a couple of friends who bought used Boxers and they love them. They both got older but nice low mileage examples for under 20k and they will probably hold their value or go up in value. As far as the I.M.S. Bearing problem it can be replaced with a different one that should last the life of the car. But for me anyways David I have always found the best thing is to get out and drive some cars and see what you like.

 

Drive a Boxster, Dave/Scooter.

When we thought about upgrading the S, Rick just wasn't willing to pay more for the car than when it was originally sold. The prices then were crazy, more so now. The car is older, parts availability "could" have become a concern. I was not opposed to a little more room and some technology. Rick's criteria was two seats, a stick and a convertible. That's when he started looking at the Boxsters. Our first Boxster was a 2012. Rick thoroughly enjoyed it on the Dragon. I think it had about 11K on it when we bought it. Sold it with around 40K miles. The model was not one that had one of the more common problems, but when the shift linkage or something like that gave out when the car had 35K miles on it I was not happy. As it happens, we should have been on a road trip at that time, were it not for Covid.

Still not sure how he talked me into upgrading the 2012. He said something about time to change the cabin filter or something..... The engine on the 2016 was one that wasn't going to be available down the line...the automatics are becoming more popular than the sticks. This one had the engine he wanted, the stick shift he wanted, was a "special edition" of some kind...and creature comforts, seat and steering column memory which if a short person drives a stick after a tall person, is a neat gadget to have.... It's a damn fine car for a road trip.....Two trunks, Dave/Scooter, lots of room for camera equipment.

We are fortunate that we still have the S, it's still a lot of fun on a summer day. It stays closer to home these days. Top down is fun, back roads the best, top up on highway, lots of rattles.....it's getting old, like it's passengers.

 

I’ve sort of put my camera equipment away. Just cant get in the mod to take pretty pictures.

 

WInter isn't very pretty for the most part.

 

Come see my backyard, you will pull that stuff out. I am guessing I had 60 birds at the same time today back there today. I tried a couple times with my iPhone to take a picture but there was so much movement nothing came out good. It did bring a hawk out to hang out for a while.

 

I think that Lainey and Dave (and probably others) have taken lots of pretty pictures in the winter.

 

It's hard finding interesting photo subjects in winter with all the drab surroundings. I can do one or two trips out for snow pics, but certainly not my favorite time of year. Hope the spring brings a renewed interest in your hobby.

 

Have to agree with Lainey on this. It's worth test driving a Boxster rather than listening to others advice imho. My dad had a '17 Boxster that I drove a bit, it was a PDK and base model, '17 was the turbo flat four. Very good car, enough oomph and the PDK was sublime. He offered it to me but I declined since I felt it was too similar to the S2000 and the idea of having two black roadsters was silly to me, plus my plan was a 911. He sold it back to the dealer after having it for about a year.

I've tried a few manual 911's and the shifter isn't as good as the S2000, closest manual was in the T model (same as what I have now) but I wanted a PDK. I've not tried a manual Boxster, but there are certain trims that have different shifter feel, not sure exactly which ones as I didn't pursue a Boxster or Cayman.

 

Sam, you and many others got the smooth shifters. I did not. I always read reporters raving about the S2000 gearbox but mine was always notch'y shifting between 2nd & 3rd.

 

Mine can be notchy as well but that was usually after sitting a while, once warmed up it was nice. Only car that has a better shifter that I've driven is the Miata (I had a 93) and I believe it's the one thing Mazda hasn't messed with in 30 years, quite smart of them. The Porsche manual would be benefit from a short throw kit, if that exists the Porsche manual would be much better.