I drive a 24 year old Porsche and the engine already has a lot more mechanical complexity than most other engines- especially for their variable camshaft timing system. You’re right that Porsche and their target customers don’t care much. I’d say German engineering culture in general is to make things work better (when new), and not worry about complexity.

I Do Cars did a tear down of the M96 engine from a 986 Boxster S. Seeing inside of them, it makes sense how these motors cost $20K to teardown, rebuild and remedy Porsche's cost cutting in their first water cooled engine. I would own another 986 or 996 in a heartbeat. Tear down video: https://youtu.be/qrkALiq5hTU?si=0OmBKYcim-cflJEy

Thanks! I’m not sure what people expect from these engines- they’re somehow basically the most reliable car engine from that era (they regularly came out at the top of reliability ratings), while still making ~1.5x the power per displacement that was standard at the time. Things like the D chunk failure and IMS failure can happen, but most people will get a reliable 200-300k miles before they do, and the IMS can easily be prevented with a new bearing kit that is fairly cheap and easy to do. The 2.7 Boxster engine had none of the cylinder issues- that’s the Porsche to get if you want low hassle fun transportation IMO.

It’s true they’re expensive to rebuild properly but you can get used engines with a lot of life left for just a few k.

Not a ME but many modern ICE’s have tons of mechanical complexity in the valvetrain to handle varying timing and lift. From multiple valves driven by different camshafts to various ways to switch between camshafts or rotate cams, this stuff gets crazy.

Presumably Porsche’s design still has all of that, too.