The new 911SC that got crushed...

We recently had a thread on the recall of the 991 GT3 cars with the bad engines.

I said there that Porsche should buy back every single one of these cars and crush them. I got about 50% support on this, but another 50% or so thought it was too radical. This thread is not exactly about that, but it is about the feasibility of such a radical correction. There is sort of a precedent, and it directly involved me as a Porsche customer.

In 1982, I ordered a 911SC Targa to replace my 1975 911S Targa. In those days, it took quite a fair amount of time (3 months +) to get a real factory order Porsche. When the car came in, I saw it as soon as it came in (they were coated in a cosmoline-like waxy stuff back then).

They started prepping it for delivery.

The dealer called me a day later and said they had some bad news --- that car was rejected by their service department as undeliverable and Porsche of NA was buying it back and it would have to be scrapped. The story was that the shipboard container it was in had broken open at sea and there was a lot of corrosion on the exposed metal engine components...of course, it was driveable etc - it just had external corrosion on the light alloy engine pieces. The external paint, etc. was still OK because of the wax coating.

Porsche did indeed scrap it, and also hunted down all the other cars in that container (I don't know how many) and got rid of them too. They expedited my special order, in fact finding a matching car in the dealer supply line and diverted it to my dealer so I got my car about 2 weeks later. It was metallic silver over black leather instead of champagne silver over dark brown, but that was OK by me as I actually liked it better after seeing the original car that was crushed.

I was greatly impressed by this effort - and remained a Porsche customer for a good 30+ years after that.

My point is that if they used to do this (and they were beginning to have business issues in 1982) back then they should well be able to NOW on one of their most exclusive cars.

 

The 993 immobilizer is not exactly trouble-free either, Andrew.

My point with this is that Porsche seems to be squandering their sterling reputation for quality - and I think that it will take some very extreme measures to get it back.

It used to be that the only way to blow a Porsche engine - even when racing it - was to do something like shifting it into second from fifth at about 100 mph. Otherwise, they were bullet proof.

To have their most premier tuner car (the GT3) blowing engines with lower end catastrophic failures is just simply beyond the pale.

And I don't think that just saying - oh too bad, here is an after factory new engine - now go play in traffic - is going anywhere near getting the job done.

 

We shall see - but I never - EVER - thought that I would see Porsche (of all manufacturers) send out a factory engine in one of their premiere cars which started coming apart with lower end failures while being driven ON THE STREET.

Unbelievable.

This is why I think that desperate times call for desperate measures.

 

They don't TEST this stuff?

EDIT - Porsche has always been essentially an assembled car, made from parts supplied by subcontractors.

But those suppliers always had to be first line on a world basis, and their parts were always subjected to rigorous quality control checks.

Presumably, these parts had to have been in the test program engines that Porsche used to validate the GT3 - if not, major foulup on Porsch's part.

Let me repeat again - this was a LOWER END ENGINE MALFUNCTION that essentially blew apart the engine bad enough to catch fire. Not excusable. Not fixable with questionable new engines being replaced on the dealer level.

Buy the cars back, scrap them, and start over after an extensive review, retest, and redesign.

 

Actually, that was sort of my first opinion and reaction on the lost 911SC when I first leaned the problem. I would almost have taken it as it was even with the corrosion - but then, the head technician at the dealer straightened me out on that and they did everything to get me into a new car that met Porsche standards.

Later, after careful consideration - I appreciated the fact that Porsche went all the way to the wire and did the right thing to supply me with a completely intact new car...and remember - it was obviously not their fault that the shipping container broke open.

Look - making up a batch of new motors, and then installing them on a dealer level (no offense, but how many nuts and bolts will go missing in that process) is NOT going to make those innocent new owners whole again.

 

The "bad mechanical component" is in the very heart of the engine. It is the connecting rod bolts, for crying out loud. The cars simply cannot be made back into new factory production machinery.

The question of it being "wasteful" or not is beside the point...these customers have been sold a defective product which cannot be put back into their expected purchase condition by an after the fact engine re-do.

Perhaps it is moot that we judge it here - this will likely be settled in civil damages court. There is already a class action lawsuit started.

 

Here is my argument: No, it is not "necessary" to scrap all these cars in the sense that they can be made to run with new engines.

It is not "necessary" to scrap the cars so long as Porsche does the right thing and offers a full refund plus loss of service allowances to all the owners.

It would be possible for Porsche to dump these cars back onto the market at reduced price after they rebuild the engines.

There would be several problems with that:

Inevitably, the question will always arise - is this particular GT3 an "engine replacement" car, or is it true production?

What will dumping lower cost "fixed" GT3 cars onto the market do to the resale value of the further "really new" GT3 cars they hope to sell?

Finally, (and every bit as important as making the owners cost replaced with either money to match or a later new car) - is - WHAT WOULD THIS DO TO THE PORSCHE REPUTATION?

Do they really want to be a company that sent out the proverbial German hand grenade with the pin already pulled, then cobbled them back together and sold them at a discount - undercutting their actual customer base for new, intact GT3 cars in the future?

That is why I say - the right thing to do is buy them back, scrap them, and start rebuilding the reputation with the re-engineered new revised version.

That is better for the owners, and in the long run - better for Porsche.

 

Changing the subject slightly, I wonder if we will ever know whose heads have rolled over this fiasco?