The best way to prevent "money draining headaches" is to establish a "monthly maintenance estimate" and deposit it into a savings account. This way, large but predictable expenses (tires, major service) are taken care of in small bites and large unexpected expenses (out-of-warranty component failures) aren't quite as bad. Also, if a combination of timely preventive maintenance, mechanically sympathetic operation and good luck result in a surplus when the car is sold you have a bit extra to put towards the new one.

 

Yes, introduced for model year 2009 so sales began in 2008. Overall seems very reliable. That said, many Porsche sports cars are driven less average miles per year than other makes. There are relatively few cars with 120k+ miles.

There are some problems with the 9A1 based engine in the 14-16 991.1 GT3 but that engine has a unique valve train. A major criticism at the time was the engine did not have a motorsports pedigree like the earlier Mezger GT3 engine. Since then the 9A1 has been used in competition and has held up well. The GT4 Clubsport uses the 3.8 l in both 981 and 718 models. I know of 2 variocam failures in 981 Caymans, one a 3.4l S and one 3.8l GT4. These both occurred on tracked cars.

My 2c would be keep the maintenance up to date always fully warm up the engine before running high rpms and drive the car regularly. Should last a long time.

 

+1 on the warm up before running hard.

V6

 

My 2010 Cayman S is at 155,300 miles and still going strong with minimal hiccups and regular maintenance done by BGB Motorsports here in Ormond Beach. It’s been my daily driver since August 2012 when I bought it CPO with 23,300 miles from Bert Smith Porsche in St Pete. It’s at BGB now for service and was told that mine is the highest mileage Cayman that they service. Hats off to BGB for keeping me high mileage at high speed.

 

I have about 68,000 miles on my daily driver '09 Cayman Base with the 2.9 liter engine. The engine is rock solid, IMO.