Since I’ve purchased my 2001 Porsche 911, it has been sitting in my driveway. I didn’t put a trickle charger on it yet, so when I came back out to start the car again, the battery was totally dead. I was able to open the door with my key, but no power to the car at all. Normally when faced with this, I’d just open the hood and jump start the car. But on the Porsche 911 996, the hood is electronically actuated, so when you try to pop the hood with the button next to the seat, nothing happens.

There is a specific way that you can pop the hood on the Porsche 996 in order to gain access to your battery.Keep in mind that on the 996, the engine is located in the rear, but the car battery is located at frunk (front hood).

Open the plastic door cover near the driver’s side pedals. There is a red lead that can be pulled out here. After you pull this red lead out of the fuse box area, it has metal contacts for you to attach a jumper wire to.

The positive (red) wire attaches to the lead that you just pulled from the fuse box. The negative (black) wire attaches to ground, which you can simply attach to the metal door hinge. After doing this and knowing that you have power going to the jumper lead at the fuse box, the car should have power to now operate the frunk of the car.

The frunk should now open up and you can gain access to the car battery which is located right under this plastic cover under the front hood. Jump start your car as you normally would.

And of course, make sure your car is put on a trickle charger if you don’t already to avoid having to do this in the future. It’s not much harder to jump start your car if you need to in the future, but it is an extra step makes it a bit more annoying to do.

I desperately wanted to write this post because my 996 is new to me and I went through unnecessary steps to try to jump start my car.

I ran into a wall when I realized the trunk button was electronic, had to figure out how to pull that jumper lead from the fuse box, tried to open the rear trunk (which I thought was where the battery was located) and led to another set of issues, then eventually finding my way to the frunk and jump starting the car there.

So, I hope this was helpful to you if you’re trying to jump start your Porsche 911 996. I’ve tried to lay out every step required to jump start your 996 so that you don’t have to jump through all the hoops like I did when I did this the very first time.