[flybigjet]

So-- long story short.

My wife's always had "a thing" about ragtops and Porsche's. I loathe one and am ambivalent about the other, but not my monkeys, not my circus.

A buddy of mine is getting close to retirement and is downsizing. He offered me first dibs on his 2005 Boxster S. ~34k, MT, overall good condition except that some idiot massively keyed his car down the entire passenger side. Since he's one of the nicest guys on the planet, it was obviously done by some pinhead who was pissed because he had a nice car.

Basic math says car (~$20k), new upgraded stereo/computer center that allows for CarPlay and a backup camera ($2500 +$1k in labor) and getting the scratch fixed (estimates range from $5-8k) put me just around $30k for a 20 year old car. It would be a reasonable deal if I didn't have to repair/repaint the scratch, but after sleeping on it for the weekend, the Wife decided that the scratch is a dealbreaker. Adding an additional $5-8k for the repair makes it a no-go.

Then, I started looking and it looks for about $10-15k more, I can get a 2015-2020-ish or so (probably base model- she doesn't care about performance) Boxster with low mileage, soft top and MT.

That seems to be a better idea. I can sell her (pristine and low mileage) Miata RF-GT for about $25k, so I'd be out of pocket the additional $10-15k-- that's doable.

The problem? I know NOTHING about Boxters. Which are good years? Which are the years to avoid? What are the problem areas? What are the differences between the base and the S?

And most importantly..... how in the hell do I go about finding them? Most of the obvious sites (KBB, Edmunds, CarVana, AutoTrader) seem to cap the years available at 2016 and earlier, which just seems weird.

There's got to be a better way of finding her "dream car".

A little help?

TIA--

R.