AX and porsche warranty?

[Chip]

Is your warranty affected if you drive in the monthly AX's or TT's? Has anyone else had good or bad experience with any dealers in the past?

[Greg Phillips]

No easy answer, check out an earlier thread from Feb 10 of last year that cover some of this issue and many branches off the thread.

Greg

[Kim Crosser]

As Greg notes - no easy answer.

Note - all the following are from a lay person. This is NOT legal advice, and you need to make your own decisions.

First, read your warranty. It specifically excludes "...competition, racing or track use." (I think it occurs three times in the warranty document.)

Actual experience seems to depend heavily on specific circumstances.

On the one extreme, if you modify your car at all for competition (including use of non-Porsche approved tires!) and you have any malfunction that COULD be related to the increased stresses placed on the car in competition, you should assume that any warranty work could well be denied by the dealer. (Use of extra-sticky tires and/or other suspension modifications can place stresses beyond design spec on the drive train, including causing oil accumulation/starvation in the boxer-type engines, leading to engine damage.) At this point, you are hoping that your dealer will ignore the competition clause, or will decide it wasn't a factor.

Ok - so what if you didn't make any modifications, you are running Porsche-approved tires, etc., and something breaks. Now things start getting fuzzy.

Competition - arguably, AX and TT are competition/racing events. These include timed runs at the end of the day, with the fastest times "winning" the events. But what about DE's? These aren't timed, and there are no winners or losers - they are Driver's Education events, which aren't mentioned in the Warranty. They might be considered "track use", but use in a parking lot with instruction seems pretty fuzzy...

*My opinion* (yes, all of the above is my opinion also, but especially here) is that if you have a failure which the dealer honestly believes was caused by use in competition, racing, or other track event, that you will have problems getting them to do the work under warranty. I don't *think* any of our local dealers would solely use attendance at track events (particularly AX or DE) as a reason to exclude warranty work, unless they had other reasons to believe that it caused the problem.

Several people in the club have had legitimate warranty work done without question after tracking their cars (including some who regularly attend TT events as well as AX events, and where the dealership staff was well aware of the track use). However, there is also at least one local case of a dispute between a driver and a dealership, where competition was given as a reason for exclusion (and where the dealer made assertions that the failure would not have happened except for the competition use).

There is no guarantee that warranty work will be honored if you are participating in "...competition, racing or track use". In fact, the warranty document says those are reasons for exclusion of coverage, so you are taking somewhat of a risk in participating.

If something does happen, and you encounter resistance from the dealer, there are multiple levels of resolution that can still be used to obtain warranty repairs. The key question will likely be:
Was racing/competition a factor in the failure?
If a dealer claims your participation caused the failure, get them to document it in writing, with a description of how/why the competition contributed to the failure. There are Zone and National PCNA representatives to help with disputes with local dealers, and (*my opinion again*) unless the dealer/PCNA makes a reasonable case that the competition materially contributed to the failure, the warranty work is likely to be approved.

Repeat - read your warranty. Each of us needs to make their own decision as to whether we consider there to be a significant financial risk when we choose to participate in any activity.

p.s. The question you didn't ask - so what happens if you do something *REALLY* bad and damage your car (or you!) in a competitive event? Have you studied your automobile insurance policy to see what is and is not covered? Most policies exclude coverage for things like "prearranged speed contests", meaning that if your Porsche has a close encounter of the ugly kind with a another object, you may be paying for it out of pocket.

(Question - does anyone really read the words of the waivers we all sign at each event??? You should - the words are there for a reason - there is a certain amount of risk associated with any activity, and mixing a few hundred horsepower with a ton or two of metal and lots of adrenalin [and testosterone?] can produce a pretty potent cocktail.)