so, why did porsche decide to go to litigation instead of taking care of its customers?

as i recall, m-b pulled a similar stunt.

is it cheaper to pay attorneys or to take care of customers?

I can't say about Zuffenhausen, but the successful approach that Daimler took with regard to bursting heater cores was that it was an owner maintenance issue. Other makes using the same cores settled, however Daimler did go to trial, at least a couple time, soundly won and seemingly discouraged other suits.

After first reading this thread, I did some research and read that there were some serious (that is, expensive to repair) pattern failures going back to the earliest Boxters and continuing through today with a number of their models.

If I owned one of the affected vehicles, I’d be seriously pissed. This represents a continuing trend of essentially planned failure that more and more manufacturers have gotten into the habit of producing. What is most offensive is that this is a top name brand for "high quality" product, and the failure evidently can ruin the engine.

Records show that that Porsche sales have gone up and up in recent years. While I couldn’t find statistics of how many Porsche cars are bought compared to leased, I bet that Porsche’s refusal to resolve this issue amounts to a calculated solution where it is more profitable for Porsche to essentially state F U to their not so valued customers than to resolve the issues for them. The likleihood that most failures occur outside of the standard warranty is something they probably consider a +. Probably not enough people are bringing these issues to the faces of the dealership personnel or news media to impact sales enough for management to GAS. Bravo for AutoWeek.

That said, even my lowly 1980 928 had some fairly expensive “periodic” maintenance in the name of the world’s longest (at the time) serpentine belt that needed to be replaced proactively at no more than 30K mile intervals to avoid catastrophic failure. And it always worked out that the wrenches recommended a new water pump at the same interval. Of course, in the current cases, there is no maintenance anyone can really do to stop this issue. To me this means that Porsche absolutely loves selling maintenance whores and has loved it for over 30 years. That tendency combined with an army of incompetent wrenches is what drove me away from the Porsche brand after 12 years of ownership.

After reading the article above, i'm glad i didn't buy one of their newer engineered POS vehicles.

well, thank you, but should that defect be on the owners' nickels or on porsche's?

^I have a long answer.....

My ML developed a water leak in the water drain system. Actually it was more than one, as it turned out. Accordingly, water is coming in from the sunroof and ending up on the floor mats, the carpets, and into the electronics behind the dash. Odd things started happening with the electronics…. Very scary. My ML is almost 14 years old and has over 150K miles on the odo.

I took it to the dealer where I bought the ML. They’ve serviced it when needed since new. In honesty, I haven’t done a tune up on the ML for over 110K miles, as it hasn’t needed it(!) They charged me a tad under $300 to clean the drains.

Unfortunately this didn’t solve the problem in any measurable way. I took it back and sent them some notes I found about where typical drain failures are for the 163 series.

They stripped the ML’s interior to expose the sunroof, and every part of the drain system downward. Ran it through the car wash and found several places where the original drain system was either clogged or disconnected. Fixed them. Ran it through the car wash again and found more places where there are leaks in the drains and fixed them as well.

They found enough places where the drain system failed that they couldn’t get the ML back to me by the close of business the day I brought it in (on a friday), so they offered me a nice new C240 with about 80 miles on the odo as a loaner and said to use it through at least next Tuesday, because the SA and tech who was working on the ML were going to be off until then.

I asked what the cost would be, expecting it to be at least a day’s labor (@ $140 per hour) and they said there would be NO COST because I’d already paid them to troubleshoot and resolve the issue.

With that stated, were I running a Porsche dealership, the above approach is exactly what I would do for a known pattern failure for something out of warranty. The customer pays to troubleshoot and if it turns out to be a known issue, just put the fire out for the customer.

I do this kind of thing occasionally for my clients. In fact I’ve just done one, and ended up doing several thousand dollars of work (all labor) for a good customer for no charge because a project didn’t turn out as it should have, through no fault of my own.

In the end, if you value your customers you do everything you can to help them. Period.

Porsche evidently doesn’t believe in this for whatever reasons, and it will cost them a lot by way of dissatisfied clients who not only won’t come back but will tell their friends about the expensive POS they bought, and the horrid service and lack of respect they received. In time, this will bite Porsche hard, and they deserve it.

At a certain point, Porsche 911 owners seemed to become used to poor dealership service, which greatly aided the independents. I've been hearing that the younger generation of owners aren't quite as tolerant.

I have found that taking care of customers is the best in the long run if the problem is something that is really your fault. Honesty is the best policy and most people are not totally stupid. When you are talking about the type of folks that can drop Porsche money for a car you are normally dealing with a more educated person who might not see through you right away but when they do.....

I once ran into a problem where a customer had a situation that was caused by their disregard of some government regulations. They were looking at some pretty big losses, so I worked out a solution that cost my bunch about $50,000. The customer was so happy with the solution they signed a contract for a little over $50,000,000 because they knew that no matter how much they screwed up we could ride in and make it all work.

Porsche could have made customers for life out of those with this problem. I guess they thought they didn't need the business.

And....

My wife's Pontiac G8 GT developed a squeeking noise that I thought was a water pump. Took it to the dealer and they said nope, harmonic balancer, all covered under warranty.

And then they took ten days to fix it. I went to the dealership and asked what was taking so long? (I think most of those here will know that it does not take ten days to replace a harmonic balancer.)

It turns out they heard a ticking noise that sounded like a hydraulic lifter that had not yet pumped up, and since this was known to be tied to a larger problem they replaced all the lifters, the cam, the oil pump and a few other small things. All at no cost.

Note that there was no failure of any of these items, but GM had found that they would fail and when they did the owner would be out some real money. So they are just repairing all of them as owners bring them in for other service.

Now my wife never wants to look at anything but GM products, and they likely will have her as a customer for the next twenty years.

Porsche could have done the same.

That was the case during the time I owned a 928 as well. In total I took my 928 to 5 “highly recommended” indy wrenches and 1 dealer (over 12 years). They all sucked; according to the reports, nothing much has changed since then.

I’ve had mostly great warranty service by the MB dealership and they’ve never failed to make something right if there was something not done right the first time.

My experience is that some dealerships will exploit the warranty for the benefit of themselves (the dealership) and the customer goes along for the ride, to a positive end. The example you cited is along the lines of what I’ve mostly received.