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Pin the cams, pin the coolant pipes, replace every piece of rubber in the cooling system, change the oil faithfully and be prepared for a clutch every 40K or so (depending on how driven) and I don't see why you can't keep these cars running for 200K plus.
I think whether the up-keep has been done is more important than miles, whether it be a Porsche or a Toyota. I'd rather buy one that was driven than spent most of its life just sitting.
These cars are flatout awesome. Any "issues" really just come from age as opposed to mechanical design and flaw...that is aside from the somewhat rare camshaft pinning issue and coolant pipe popping out issue.
Pin the cams, pin the coolant pipes, replace every piece of rubber in the cooling system, change the oil faithfully and be prepared for a clutch every 40K or so (depending on how driven) and I don't see why you can't keep these cars running for 200K plus.
Ed
Don't know about the cams. Regarding the coolant pipes I never bothered with these in my 996 Turbo (which was a street car only, no tracking).
The cooling system hoses were fine at 14 years and 161K miles. The hoses in my 2002 Boxster were fine at 15 years and 317K miles. A 4 year coolant drain/refill really helps prolong cooling system component life including the hoses.
A clutch every 40K miles is insane or the sign one doesn't know how to drive a manual. The clutch in my Boxster was original at 317K miles although I admit it was time to replace it. The clue was the amount of effort to work the clutch pedal but the clutch still engaged smoothly and there was no problem with the shifting.
The Turbo clutch was fine at 161K miles. At around 120K miles I had the RMS done and with the transmission out of the car I had a chance to look at the Turbo clutch. There was no measurable wear of the clutch disc. I expected the Turbo clutch to go to at least 300K miles like the Boxster.
There are a couple of 996 Turbos that have surpassed 500K miles and I see no reason a 997 Turbo couldn't do the same or even better.
I was told the pressure plates are what have trouble after a while even if there is good material still on the friction plate. This was from my P-Car dealer when I introduced the car to them and from others on various forums. Since I have only driven mine 10K (and when I did some recent work I saw the clutch was already replaced at 30K - which seemed very early to me) I have no personal experience. My clutches typically last forever (300K on an Audi CQ, 175K on a 16v Scirocco, 250K on an Audi UrS6) so maybe my personal Porsche experience will be different. I was also told (no personal experience) that upgrading the tune will place even more wear on the PP and would be better served by a beefier pressure plate when I decide to do a tune.
So... time will tell for me for the clutch. Doing my own work I took care of cams, coolant pipes, metal elbows and cooling system rubber just recently, as well as verified the clutch was good, among other things. This was on a 2007 .1 with 40K on the clock.So I am looking forward to many years of enjoyment and performance.
I've got just under 62,000 mi on the clock and the water pump went out. I'll have coolant lines pinned and replace elbows while replacing pump.
With any car it won't get to big miles without some things needing attention. Just a taste: water pump: Boxster 172K miles; Turbo ~110K miles; fuel pump: Boxster 200K miles; Turbo ~125K miles; coolant tank: Boxster: 220K miles; Turbo: didn't need replacement.
All 3 Turbo radiators developed a leak while I was in the mid west on personal business and the car exposed to very cold temperatures: 0F to 1F for a day and a night; with me then of course subjecting the radiators to extreme (relatively) speaking high temperature by driving the car around. This was at 130K miles. Springfield MO Porsche service manager told me it was rather common for Porsche radiators to fail at around 120K/130k miles. My Boxster went 317K miles on its original radiators.
I can't recall with any confidence the mileage at which I had to replace O2 sensors in the Boxster. The last time though was at 305K miles. Perked up the engine some. Recalled I replaced the O2 sensors in the Turbo at 132K miles. There was a CEL -- bad sensor heater -- but the engine was not manifesting any signs of trouble. But after new sensors installed the engine perked up some. Turbo engines I think can benefit from new O2 sensors even if the sensors are not manifesting any errors.
Never replaced the coils on the Boxster but I had the coils done at ~140K miles on the Turbo. There were no signs the coils needed to be replaced but I was remembering how the engine perked up with new O2 sensors and I was curious so I had the coils replaced. A bit of a suprise that the engine perked up with new coils. Sure it got new plugs at the same time but the plugs were around 10K miles from the replacement mileage and even though I had run previous sets of plugs to the full mileage upon replacement the engine never reacted one way or the other. I credit all the "perked up" on the new coils.
I don't consider the need to replace essentially wear items like the water pump, fuel pump, clutch even to be a sign the car won't go big miles. As the miles add up things wear out. What I look for is even at 160K miles, 317K miles or more the car is still basically a good car. I will have kept things up to date so the car is not manifesting any issues but I expect it to perform pretty much as it did when new.
And with both my Boxster and Turbo that was the case. There was no measurable/noticeable increase in oil consumption even with big miles. Fuel mileage remained consistent. No change in the noise emission from the engine. Really except for the odometer there was no real sign the cars had the amount of miles on them they had.
How long these cars last as actually related to how well one has kept up with maintenance. There is no magical number.
Certainly keeping up with the servicing is critical. No engine is going to reach big miles by being neglected.
But there are other risks. As a car ages an accident can have the car off the road. Insurance won't fix the car because of the big miles (and likely age) and the cost to repair -- especially a Turbo -- is high and if too high the car is just declared a total loss.
In the case of my Boxster what took it off the road is a CEL that 2 dealers tried 3 times to find the cause of and fix. With the CEL I could not register the car thus could not insure it or drive it.
The last dealer after keeping the car nearly a month told me it would take a blank check from me as the engine may have to come out of the possibly even be torn down. (The CEL was related to secondary air injection system.)
Given the miles and the age of the car and the fact it just happened the clutch needed doing -- which given the miles would almost certainly have required a new flywheel just to avoid the risk of having to drop the transmission again to replace this later -- I decided it was no longer economically a good idea to keep the car.
