Wish me luck (I'll probably need it...)

While y'all are watching the challenge feed, the wife & I are going to pick up the latest folly, err, my birthday present/new daily driver that's hopefully not going to cripple me like the Evo likes to do.

I'll be sacrificing some chickens to the gods of IMS and RMS to ensure a safe arrival.

!

I know 996TT was under consideration before. What did you find?

Hopefully the 996tt! I was pulling for that one last time around.

One without the hair dryer strapped to the engine - 996 Carrera 4 convertible with a tiptronic (so my wife can also drive it). And it's not silver/grey/black. At the very minimum, we'll be able to figure out how well a 996 works for us as a DD (well, for me - my wife has a Range Rover as a DD but likes to drive a convertible in summer when I'm commuting by bike) and potential replacement for my wife's '90 500SL which she barely ever drives.

Cotton wrote: Hopefully the 996tt! I was pulling for that one last time around.

One thought is that if finances allow for it, I may try to trade the Evo for a 996TT if the C4 works out. I wasn't going to drop that sort of coin on another car unless I know pain medication isn't part of the package.

I don't mind the 996 as much as some do. It's grown on me over the years. I still wish I could have swung for the '99 Carrera 4 (black/black 6 spd with aero package) the local dealer had on the lot for awhile. The price seemed high at the time ($29K), but after some casual searching the other day, maybe not. I only found a couple near me under $30K.

Good luck! Waiting for pics!

The 996TT is an amazing bargain right now.

Man buys porsche, says wish me luck.. How about a kick in the balls out of jealousy?

Good luck, post pictures!

I like me some Porsche. I am really hoping one day in the distant future SWMBO and I can afford one. Looking forward to seeing pics and hearing feedback.

I did make it back, and it looks like the "good luck" wishes must've worked, because I had to drive it over the passes through the slush thanks to an early winter storm we got. Not that I'm complaining, we need every drop of water we can get. Was a bit sphincter-clenching driving through this on summer tires chanting the mantra "don't berkeley this up, don't berkeley this up...".

What was interesting is that I basically jumped two generations of 911s - the last 911 we had was a C3.2 - and this one felt very different initially, but then I start driving it and about the 100 mile mark things suddenly started feeling familiar and I went "yep, 911 alright".

The original owner must've gone a bit nuts with the options on the car, it's got a lot of expensive options like full electric heated seats, the sat nav system with CD changer, full leather interior (as in, with leather covered dash), 18" wheels and so on.

Anyway, here it is in crappy cellphone photo glory:

It's very clean for its 110k miles generally drives fine but needs a little tweaking. Not exactly complaining given that it was pretty cheap, partially because it's an auction flip by a specialist mechanic/dealer and the only service history available for the car is from Carfax.

Todo list so far is:

• Get paint protection film (re)fitted to the bumper so the stone chips don't get worse
• Source some of the smaller interior covers for the hardtop. I'll have a rummage around the car first, though
• Catch up on some of the service items that I know weren't done like pollen filters, spark plugs and some other small stuff like windshield wipers. It just had new front brakes (disks and pads), a transmission service and an engine oil service so I'm not complaining about the small stuff!
• It needs an alignment. I'm pretty sensitive to the alignment being off and it likes to track ruts if they pull the car to the right.
• A couple of the LCDs are starting to play up so at some point I'll have to hit up ebay

All in all, not bad for a car that's basically 3-4 year old Camry money.

Oh, and the best part is that so far my knees haven't given me a lot of trouble either.

For some reason i never considered the possibility of a 996 convertible + hardtop. Something new to think about.

Congrats!

The buy in on the convertibles can be pretty low, especially if they're the AWD/tiptronic version like this one. Just don't get one with a bad soft top, replacing that costs more than half of what I paid for the car. I guess the hardtop is going to stay on until April, but I am looking forward to driving it with the roof down next summer!

Is that green? I've never seen a green one before. That looks fantastic. Enjoy it.

Are those OEM wheels or replicas?

I haven't pulled them off yet but they look like OEM 18" wheels. Which is good because according to Tire Rack, the only snow tires you can get for this year C4 in the correct size a for the 18" wheels...

And yes, it is dark green with a black interior. I love the color, makes a big difference to the usual black/silver/seal gray ones. I just hope it's not paint to sample.