When Man Maths goes bad

Last year I bought a cheap Porsche 996 Targa from an online car auction. And yes, it doesn’t take much car knowledge to spot more vigorously waved red flags in that short sentence than in a crowd of excited MAGA enthusiasts at a semaphore convention.

If you’ve ever been on the internet, you’ll no doubt have heard the acronyms of doom that are bandied around for the 996/997 generations of 911 and contemporary Boxsters: IMS, RMS and their new colleague in catastrophe, bore score. But perhaps remarkably, this tale of Man Maths gone bad doesn’t involve any of them.

So how exactly does owning a 21-year-old Porsche for nine months go so spectacularly wrong? Sit back and settle in for all the grisly details in this tale of self-imposed financial woe.