Used Car of the Day: 2004 Porsche Boxster S 500

Tim Healey
by Tim Healey

Today's UCOTD isn't a project like yesterday's ride. It's a nearly 20-year-old 2004 Porsche Boxster S 500 that looks to be in pretty decent shape.


It's number 1,842 of 1,953 units made -- only 500 of which made it to our shores. So it's a pretty rare bird, yet the price tag is just $14,900. This car has an automatic transmission and Cocoa Brown interior.

The owner says it's been well-maintained and drives/runs well. The A/C works and so does the convertible top.

The mileage is 168,000 and this Texas-based car once lived in California.

Click here to check it out.

[Images: Seller]

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Tim Healey
Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

More by Tim Healey

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2 of 29 comments
  • The Oracle The Oracle on Oct 24, 2023

    This is a proper clunker from Stuttgart

  • Tassos Tassos on Oct 26, 2023

    For sports cars, and legendary ones too, Porsches have proven surprisingly reliable.


    The Boxster is a ton of fun to drive, and actually a real man can fit and stretch in it, while only a dwarf (or should I say, Little Person) would fit in your lame, girlie Miata.


    It's on my list, but if TIM chose this specimen, there must be multiple things wrong with it (price, modifications, and old age to name a few).


    I do have it in my not-so-short list, but I will pick one Myself when the time comes.

  • 2ACL If your driving and/or maintenance regimen wrecked the valves, what other horrors await me? A maintained 2.slow can be decent basic transportation, though many of the models carrying it are old enough to have age-related problems. This is impending heartbreak for anyone not intent on getting their hands dirty.
  • Theflyersfan If cutting costs (which usually means cheaper parts and materials) is their plan of attack, all the while dealing with millions of cars recalled and with serious quality issues, I think staying away from Ford is the best thing possible. When you hack and slash away like that, it tends to be a race to the bottom. (See: Nissan and Mitsubishi. )How about, instead, focusing on what is breaking and forcing expensive recalls and emergency service bulletins because it always costs more to fix it after the fact. And then the reputation can be improved and you can charge $100,000 for a pickup without a guilty conscience.
  • EBFlex Translation: “We want to lower quality even more”How about stop with the EVs that nobody wants and is a dead end road and invest that into making quality vehicles?
  • Jeff Agree but manufacturers in the US have discontinued manuals on most vehicles and eventually discontinue all manuals. The problem is that most vehicles made today have computers controlling most functions in vehicles. HVAC, power steering, power brakes, parking brakes, transmissions, and many other functions that were manual and now electronic. The mechanical functions were easier to repair and more reliable. The Maverick has a lot less technology than many of the newer vehicles at least you can control lights, temperature, and radio without going through a screen but compared to past vehicles I have owned it has more technology than I want or need.I am not looking forward to these recalls as a Maverick owner but I will get them taken care of. I do not like the trend toward mechanical functions that have worked well for decades being controlled through a computer function or CANBUS. It is cheaper for the automakers to buy preassembled components reducing time on the assembly line but it makes it more expensive to work on and the parts are usually more expensive. Hoovie and the Car Wizard have some good videos on the difficulty of working on most modern day vehicles and the increasing expense of replacement parts.
  • Funky D I have pretty much my entire music collection on my phone (72 GB) worth, so I always have something to listen to when I don't want to stream SiriusXM.
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