Customer Reviews

Porsche 911 Buyer's Guide

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Get off the web sites and get yourself a copy of this book if you are considering buying a 911. It two hours you will learn more than if you read 25 magazines. There is a year-by-year review of each model year. It points out the pros and cons, what to look for, what is should cost. This puppy is jam packed with helpful color photos (e.g. where rust spots might develop), but the spec charts are what really help. Check it out and you will end up in the right 911 for you.

The author gives a thorough review of the 911 models, with a chapter devoted to each year. Idiosyncrasies and problems with each year are noted. An excellent tool for the first time buyer or someone moving up to newer model of 911. This is a good companion to Patrick Paternie's Porsche Redbook.

I'm glad I started to read this book after I bought my 911, otherwise I would never have bought the car. The book's approach to buying is "If the car has problem x, then thank the seller and walk away". The car I bought had many of the problems which the book mentioned, but my local garage solved most of them in a day and for less than 1000 euros/600 pounds/1000 dollars. I found the book to be an excellent guide to the different models and their differences, but the buying recommendations seem too stringent.

Compared to other 911 Buyer's guides on the shelf this one looks the nicest. The pictures are very good but about half way through reading the book, the happy feeling disappears:

- The model year descriptions in the 80s and 90s are too repetitive. Once you get this far into the book, there is very little new to learn and reading the same text again and again becomes tiresome. You get the feeling that this writer is perhaps not a true Porschefile.

- As was said by another reviewer, because of the repetition picking out the good points from the bad for a particular model year is difficult because of the layout.

- Many obvious cut-and-paste errors that have not been fixed with later printings.

- Inaccuracies. Even for the model years that use LE-Jetronic, the author continues to mention K-Jetronic engine improvements that were already mentioned with previous models.

- No body color information by model year

- The cost of ownership section for each model year fails to provide any prices for common ignition parts.

- There is only one photo of each car. Some pages only show photos of the 911 speedster so if you aren't interested in that body style there is essential no body photo for that year. This is also a problem if you have no interest in the turbo for that year or vice versa.

In the end I found it difficult to decide which model year within a given generation was better than the rest (why I would refer to a buyer's guide in the first place).

This book is an ok introduction to Porsches but your research will have to continue with a better book.

Great pictures, but not much else good to say about this book. I believe this book is in its 4th edition, seems like the author had plenty of time to beef up and point out differences between years. It seems he wrote a section, and then copied and pasted for future years. I was dissapointed, and suggest you keep looking.

Much good information here. Cost of repair information is excellent, but lack of frequency of repair information limits the value of said information. Way too much copy-and-pasting, and therefore not enough new information on each year and model. Also, enough editing mistakes and self-contradictions to call the whole enterprise into question. Two examples : Performance data in the article contradicts performance data in the data tables in more than one place. The parts list for the 1996 model has a great big label "Parts List for 1975 911s." Jarring.

The annual ratings are only somewhat useful, as they compare that year's Porsche with other contemporary cars, rather than comparing 911s of different years to one another. If I'm trying to pick between two generations of 911, the ratings are not comparable between them.

Again, much useful information that needs to be better organized and better edited. I look forward to the next edition.

This book is pretty much as the author describes it. He's set it up so that you can pick any model year 911, go to that section and read everything about that year including any information that was true about the previous years which carries over to the year of interest. In other words, there is a lot of information repeated (because the cars were the same from come years to the next). On one hand you might say it's a lot of redundant information, but to be fair to the author he explicitly said it would appear this way because he wanted it laid out such that you can go to a section on any specific model year car and find everything you need right there.

The book has some very useful information in the first chapters about test driving cars in general. He gives great tips on how to check out specific subsystems by doing certain tests. For example, the braking subsystem, the clutch, etc. Much of it is common sense to us "car guys", but there area a lot of specifics for the 911. At times the author's advice will be "....if the car does [this-or-that], thank the seller and leave..." Good advice, but in my opinion some of this needs to be taken with a grain of salt. That said, any savvy buyer will learn from his tips and examples!

I would say this makes a great companion to more thorough books like "The Used 911 Story". There are great hi-res pictures, which are helpful (and fun to look at!) as well as lots of tips and hints. As a companion to some of the other buyer's guides out there, I would certainly recommend this one!

Very informative and useful. It provided just what I needed to zero in on the right used Porsche for me.

But don't stop there. This book is only the start. You must still do much more research before plunking down your hard-earned cash on your dream machine. Visit technical forums on the net such as Pelican Parts and Rennlist and pick the minds of other Porsche enthusiasts. Many of them have owned several Porsches and are a great resource.

I'd suggest this is a must read if your going to be buying a used 911. It gives you everything you need to look for in each model year and a reasonable amount of history on the marque to boot. It could probably go into a little more detail on the faults and how they are rectified/managed so that you have a little more info if your actually buying a model that has a known fault. But a very good book that I would recommend.