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What is it about Porsches?

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JPSmit

JPSmit

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<rant>

Well, I gotta say: The 356, although a milestone in sportscar history, is by contemporary standards a s**t-shaker of a car. The only value it has is as a "classic" and belongs primarily in museums. The Pantera looks to have been updated and may even be reliable. Still, they're both over-rated and over-priced. Want a bargain performance daily driver? Buy a new Corvette! Chevy has finally come up with a fun-per-dollar winner to compete with cars coming from Europe costing well beyond twice as much.

And it ain't just Porsches that have increased in price recently. Tho a decent mid-eighty's 911 two years ago could be found for around the $20K mark, it now has nearly doubled. So have the E-Tpes and many other marques.

Blame it on nostalgia. Very few examples are purchased for preservation by museums or preservationists, rather as toys to relive childhood. Jay Leno is a preservationist. We need more like HIM. Fewer like those wildly escalating the prices like Barrett Jackson's bidders.

</rant>
 
My old boss at the shop I worked at owned a speedster, he had bought it from a GI at a yard sale for $500 in the mid seventies. When the prices on these started getting stupid he decided to sell, we put it on Ebay and some fella from California bought it for $47,000.
 
You want crazy? - just look at the asking/selling prices on Porsches -
especially the total lumps of rust that go for STUPID money.
Check out BringaTrailer......

- Doug
 
This one wasn't a lump by any means it had been sitting in the back of the shop for twenty years in primer and with no interior, but it was rust free and still fired up and ran any time we needed to move it about.
 
waltesefalcon said:
This one wasn't a lump by any means it had been sitting in the back of the shop for twenty years in primer and with no interior, but it was rust free and still fired up and ran any time we needed to move it about.
Click to expand...

I'm sure - still, coming to Doug's comments and BaT - he's correct (leading to my original post) they are selling burned out rusted out hulks for amazing money - I can presume for the VIN? it is stunning
 
There's a silver lining though. The increased value of old cars has made it worthwhile for manufacturers to produce spare parts for them, so people like us can keep them running.
 
Wow, enlarge and look carefully at some of the under chassis pictures of the Pantera. That thing needs some help. I have my TR apart doing some repair and refurbishing, it looks better than that.
 
The entire vintage car market seems to be riding a bubble that is being pulled upwards. What we're seeing is a lot of the Baby Boomers hitting retirement age with more disposable income than any other generation hitting retirement in history. Now that they have time on their hands, they are snapping up the toys they remember from their youth. Even the LBC world can't escape the bubble. Big Healeys are pulling down crazy money, which is pulling up the MGA market, which pulls up the Bugeye market, which is pulling up the Spridget market as an example. The car I bought 2 years ago could easily be sold for $2000 more than what I paid for it in the same condition, let alone what I've done to the car since.

I've often asked the question, are Porsche 911s really THAT good? As in $100,000 worth of good?

If you want to see what happens when the bubble bursts, go look at the used airplane market. There's always going to be a demand for warbirds, but your run-of-the-mill GA aircraft are incredibly inexpensive. You can get yourself into a decent Cessna 172 for about $20,000 that is about a mid-time airframe. The number of private pilots who were trained by the military has been dwindling since the World War II / Korea generation for the most part aged out of flying, and the cost of learning to fly is prohibitive for most people. The result is there are more airplanes out there than people willing to purchase them.
 
Yep, I wonder about the pricing bubble also and what it is doing to the value of Austin Healey's and other LBC's. You look at any of the club magazines and most of the folks in the pictures are baby boomers like myself. How often do you see owners that are not baby boomers ? When we go to the big car lot in the sky is there going to be anyone else that appreciates LBC's ? Seems like all ages still like muscle cars and exotics, 911's but do not see younger owners too often. I plan on keeping my Healey until I can no longer get in and out of it but do wonder if I should sell before the bubble bursts !
 
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I understand the Porsche is like the American Corvette, a mail ego money problem.
 
I am a British car guy from when I started driving, but will step in here and defend the Germans a little bit

The 911s looks are a matter of taste (the old ones have really grown on me) but the cars themselves are pretty unique and special. The view out the front where the hood slopes out of view and the fenders point to and help you place the car in the corners is pretty neat, the rear engine layout makes the steering very light and responsive. Their racing/rallying pedigree is second to none, and you can actually fit younguns in the back seat. My brother had one of the last of the original chassis air cooled cars and it was pretty neat.

Car values are crazy, e-types and big Healey prices are as crazy as Porsches. Micro-cars crazier still. If you want a really good deal get a c4 corvette for under 10k, or a first gen MR2 for 3K, great fun for the bucks invested.

The front engined, water cooled Porsches are still pretry cheap too.
 
I owned a 356 back in 1958. It was a squirrely handling handful, but it was fun to come up to a left hand turn, cut the wheel 1/2 turn to the left, watch the rear end come slewing around, straighten out the wheel and off you go. Just don't lift your foot off the gas in the middle of a turn. It got hit and after I had it fixed, I traded it for a Twin-Cam MG. Years later, I sold raffle tickets in Greenwich for the Cancer Society. First prize was a 911, 2nd prize was a 928. (Only in Greenwich). I got to drive both of them from Greenwich to Fairfield on I-95. I hated the 928. Heavy; incomprehensible radio controls and affected by tar strips and road imperfections. Believe it or not, the Chevrolet Nova we drove back in handled just as well on I-95. OTOH, I loved the 911. It made a terrific noise, went like **** and handled like a roller skate. The noise might get to you after a while, but I would accept one in a heartbeat were you to offer me one. Parts prices are crazy though so I'll stick with my TR6.
 
"Parts prices are crazy"

The same guy I used to work for who owned the Speedster owned a 356. When the prices for parts skyrocketed we pulled the engine out of that 356 and put in a 1600 out of a super beetle. The car about the same but the parts were quite a bit cheaper. Never fear the 356s engine was retained for posterity.
 
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