A Porsche for under €25,000. Ticking time bomb or heaven on earth?

It all starts with a dream

It was the summer of 2002. A small kid at the summer house back then, watching Tom Cruise scream into Miramar on a Kawasaki GPZ900R in Top Gun and, without knowing it, catching the flying bug. But there was a second dream too. To drive an open-top Porsche Boxster someday. Years later, the flying dream came true. And at some point, the Boxster arrived too. I still remember the drive to go see it. I remember that unmistakable Porsche smell that only people who've sat inside one can understand. I remember the anxiety before buying it. But I remember the first night even more. I went down to the garage just to look at it once more before going to sleep. And the keys didn't stay by the front door. They slept on my nightstand. It was a Boxster 987 2.7. 245 horsepower. Tiptronic. My first Porsche.

And the start of a relationship that lasted almost three years and around 60,000 kilometres. The car had a fairly patchy history. It didn't have the perfect service book. It wasn't the car that would top the charts with an inspector. And yet. In all the years I had it, it never asked me for a single euro beyond the expected. Service. Pads. Discs. The usual stuff. Nothing more. And somewhere around there I started to wonder if the internet had actually been right about all of it.

And then came the Cayman S

When I sold my first Boxster, I went without a car for a while. Long enough to learn almost every 987 listing in Greece by heart. Until a Cayman S showed up. A few more kilometres on the clock than I'd have liked. A much better price than I expected. And exactly the car I wanted. I saw it. I drove it. I bought it. Just like that.

That same afternoon I took it out for its first drive with my girlfriend. A few kilometres later, the check engine light came on. That's where a completely different story began. After a few phone calls I found myself talking to someone who knew the M97 engines very well. His first line was: - What did you get? - Cayman S 987. - How many kilometres? - 150,000. Silence. - That's a ticking time bomb. And right after that came a word I'd never heard before. Bore scoring.

I was the problem

The words "bore scoring" meant absolutely nothing to me that afternoon. Until that moment, all I knew was that I'd just bought the Cayman I wanted. Now, suddenly, I had a brand new obsession. I opened the laptop. And started searching. One video. Then another. Then another. At some point I found myself watching an American Porsche specialist spend two hours breaking down what bore scoring is, which engines it affects, and how you can spot it. And somehow I started noticing things I'd never noticed before. Does it sound a bit louder than it should? Is it burning oil? Am I hearing that famous "tick-tick-tick"? Does it have that too, maybe? Maybe? Maybe? Maybe? Suddenly I wasn't driving a Porsche anymore. I was driving a potential failure. Every drive came with doubt. Every sound became a reason to worry. Every kilometre felt like it was inching towards a bill worth thousands of euros. Until I did something I probably wouldn't do today. I stopped using it. I locked it in the garage. I listed it for sale. And I decided I'd rather never find out whether it actually had bore scoring or not. The car sold. And to be honest, to this day I don't know if it ever actually had the problem I was so afraid of. But I know something else. For several months, I was the problem. Not the engine.

IMS and bore scoring: the truth is somewhere in the middle

Let's get one thing straight. These problems are real. They're not a myth. But not every Porsche of that era is doomed either. The famous IMS bearing mainly concerns the 986 Boxster, the 996 Carrera, and some early 987.1s. The internet often presents it as a certain disaster. The reality is more nuanced. There are cars that covered hundreds of thousands of kilometres and never showed a single problem. But there are also cars that needed repairs. That's why a pre-purchase inspection is essential. The same goes for bore scoring. In fact, if there's one issue I'd personally put higher up my own list, it would be bore scoring. It mainly shows up on the bigger M96 and M97 engines - in other words, the S versions. That's why, whenever someone asks me which Porsche I'd buy on a limited budget, my answer tends to surprise them. A simple 2.7. Not because it's the fastest. Not because it has the most prestige. But because it delivers almost all of the platform's magic with far fewer reasons to keep you up at night. If you're looking for signs of bore scoring, there are a few things worth watching for. Excessive oil consumption. White or blue smoke from the exhaust. And a distinctive metallic "tick-tick-tick" at idle once the wear has progressed far enough. None of these are a diagnosis on their own. But they are a good reason for a proper borescope inspection. And trust me. An hour of inspection costs a lot less than an engine rebuild.

The rescue

After selling the Cayman S, I got to a point where I didn't want to see another Porsche in front of me for a while. A BMW Z4 passed through my hands. A mistake we'll talk about another time. Then came a Range Rover. A great car. But not what I was looking for. None of them managed to fill the gap left by that mid-engined setup from Zuffenhausen. I missed the simplicity. I missed that hydraulic steering that never stops talking to you. I missed the balance. The feedback. The way the car rotates around you. The way it makes everything feel easier than it actually is. Because that's the great talent of a Boxster or a Cayman. It doesn't necessarily make you a better driver. But it makes you feel like a better driver. It makes you feel like Tom Cruise on the coastal road one moment and Ayrton Senna on an empty back road the next. And somewhere in there I realised it wasn't just a Porsche I was missing. It was the way a Porsche makes you connect with driving. So the 987.2 Cayman PDK came along. And that's when I understood just how big a leap Porsche had made. The 9A1 engines left the well-known IMS and bore scoring issues behind. The PDK was years ahead of its time. The interior details had improved. The lights were refreshed. And suddenly you had a car that stayed analogue, but felt modern at the same time. Even today, I think the 987.2 might be the best value-for-money Porsche I've ever driven.

What does 20-25 grand actually buy you today?

And this is where the real point is. Not IMS. Not bore scoring. But what you actually get for your money. For 20-25 thousand euros today, you can buy a naturally aspirated flat-six. A mid-engined chassis. Hydraulic steering. Around 1,300 kilos. And a Porsche designed before screens, filters and algorithms started coming between the driver and the road.

On the other side of the market, the same money can buy you something much newer. More efficient. With a bigger screen. With CarPlay. With cameras. With sensors. With all the conveniences you'd expect from a modern car. And there's nothing wrong with that. Most of the time, it'll simply be a car that does its job perfectly: getting you from A to B. Nothing more. It won't make you seek out the long way home. It won't make you drop a gear just to hear the engine. It won't make you stop at a petrol station, turn around, and look at it one more time before you leave. It'll do everything right. But it will rarely give you stories worth remembering. The 986 and 987 are exactly the opposite. They're not the most sensible choices. They're not the most practical. By today's standards, they're not even the fastest. But every time you turn the key, they remind you that driving used to be something more than a journey. It used to be the reason you set off in the first place.

The question I always ask

If I gave you two choices today: A brand-new SUV worth 50,000 euros. Or a clean Boxster or Cayman 987 for half that money. Which one do you think you'll remember in ten years? Which one will get you down to the garage late at night just to look at it? Which one will get you up on a Sunday morning with nowhere in particular to go? For me, the answer is easy.

And if you can stretch the budget a little further...

If your budget stops at 20-25 thousand euros, I'd seriously look at a good 986 or a clean 987.1 2.7 with a proper history. But if you can stretch a little higher, the 987.2 is probably the most complete package Porsche ever built for the driver. The 9A1 engines are noticeably quieter when it comes to reliability worries. The PDK still holds up brilliantly even today. And the most important part? It never lost its character.

Epilogue

Maybe someday the 986 and 987 will be worth more money. Maybe not. Honestly, I don't particularly care. Because nobody remembers what their car was worth ten years later. They remember the drives. The petrol stations. The early mornings. The Sundays they woke up early for no reason other than to drive. They remember the first night the keys slept on the nightstand. And if I were looking for the most honest way into the world of Porsche today, I wouldn't start with a 911. I'd start by opening the listings for a 986. Then for a 987. And somewhere between the six-cylinder soundtrack, the empty country roads, and the kilometres racked up for no reason at all, I'd understand why these cars earned such a loyal following. Because sometimes the best Porsche isn't the most expensive one. It's the one you can actually get today.