HyperCars

B for effort. They sell you cars, but don’t know what’s on them. They sell you cars, but don’t know what’s on them. More

I bought the car knowing it would need some work and had planned on rebuilding/refreshing the engine when I had enough money and time to do it. With in 300 miles, I had a CEL that revealed cam timing issues planned on rebuilding/refreshing the engine when I had enough money and time to do it. With in 300 miles, I had a CEL that revealed cam timing issues and a potential exhaust leak. Had it diagnosed and found that the car was going to need $10-15k of work to fix it (guestimated quote) but was advised I could drive it as long as it wasn't misfiring or making any strange noise. When it started misfiring 2-3 months into ownership, I scheduled the repair work with my shop that they had quoted me for, mentioned above. Not even 5k miles into ownership and this is now the issue after I've already spent $16,500.00 on cams, seals, timing chain, suspension, exhaust, cold air intake and pretty much any parts I could refresh while the engine was out: 1) Finding: During the disassembly of the cylinder head for removal, found a broken bolt inside the cylinder head, right next to the area that was leaking around the cylinder head, and "repaired" with JB Weld. This is likely the cause of the crankcase leak. Proceeding with the cylinder head removal. 5/21/26 10:42am 2) Finding: After the bank 2 cylinder head was removed, found the empty bolt hole in the cylinder head to not line up with the bolt hole in the block. The old head gasket lines up with the bolt hole in the block. And the new head gasket lines up with the bolt hole in the cylinder head. Also found the cylinder walls for bank 2 to have deep scoring. Repairing the scored cylinder wall will require complete disassembly of the engine. Will proceed with valve cover removal of bank 1, to inspect the same bolt that was missing on bank 2 to compare the cylinder head and engine assembly. 5/21/26. 1:10 pm In summary, a 3.4 short block was purchased from a used 996.1 to replace the faulty 996.2 3.6 long block in 2014 and that work was done in collaboration by Tom Gray Auto (based out of Louisville) and Stuttgart Specialists. JB weld was used to hold the head to the core and I'm guessing they weren't banking on anyone ever wanting to restore or fix this car when they did it, because this is a fire hazard. Buyer Beware - absolutely under no circumstances should you purchase a car from this dealer without checking, at minimum, the serial number on the engine block. As a result of this miss, I had to spend another $20k for another engine and labor to refresh a completely different engine. Had Ian disclosed all of this up front about this car, it wouldn't have sold for $19k and I wouldn't have offered more than $7k for it because when it's all said and done, I have had to replace: Suspension (two cracked strut mounts), Cold Air Intake (was cracked), Door lock actuator that never worked right from day one, the cam shaft, timing chain and guides, entire engine assembly (because the existing engine was a throwaway and ruined by Stuttgart) among other things. The only thing this car had going for it when I bought it, was that it showed like a clean 2003 996 C2 and it ended up not being as advertised. I pursued fixing it because I owed my shop $17k for the work they did up until the point of discovering that this engine assembly was ruined and wasn't prepared to leave that on the table on top of the money I still owed for the car. I attempted to do some mediation with Hypercars on this, but they chose to blame it on me, stating that I waited too long to mention these problems to them when I was communicating with Ian the first two weeks of my purchase, asking about these issues that later lead to all of this. The reason I didn't attempt to mediate with the Attorney General over this soon had to do with the fact that we didn't tear down the engine until it started misfiring and I guess I got to enjoy a $19k car for almost 3 months before I would park it in a shop, where it still sits today. Buyer beware, definitely do a pre-purchased inspection before you buy anything from this dealer, regardless of their reputation. More