Quote:
Originally Posted by tonypeoni
Before you get your sticks out..  Ive owned my Porsche for 14 years, Ive spend a small fortune on it and it still needs more. It hit me hard today when a friend turned a profit on a Corvette. Im underwater on my 9## and I know it. I don't feel so bad because I suspect that a lot of Porsche owners get nailed this way. Understand that I DIDN'T buy the car to make money. I simply wanted to drive it, enjoy it, spend too much money on it and maybe a little increase in value over 14 years. What has happened is I never drove it, I don't enjoy it, I spent way TOO much money. And of-course its gone nowhere in value.  |
Nothing too pragmatic about your comments here. Cars are depreciating assets, not investments. A car is "consumption," not a capital investment. There have been effectively zero investment grade Porsches. The arguable exceptions are the likes of the '73 RS or '89 Speedster or some rare examples of the 993, if undriven or with extraordinary provenance.
There's never been a Porsche outside a unique race car with special wins at Le Mans etc., that has done better than a checking account. Even great Porsches today (993 Turbo, Carrera GT) are under water compared to a checking account. Let's not go into the purchasing power of the dollar or price relative to an actual investment like gold, but compared to any number of Ferraris, there is no such thing as an "investment grade" Porsche. How I wish I'd had the irrational flight of fancy to buy an F40 circa 2000 when I saw a near perfect example and they were unloved cars changing hands under $200K.
As ever, once you drive a car and pick up miles, there's no return on investment.
Relative to other cars, I find the total cost of ownership is very good in 911's, quite poor in the Cayenne and pretty ordinary in Boxster and Panamera. All Porsches are like gold bullion compared to Range Rovers. : )
I've had a 964 that I sold for a profit and close to break-even if I include every cost down to insurance and fuel. I sold a 997 GT3 for a profit. A 996 GT3 for maybe $5000 less than I paid for it after two years. I sold an '09 C4S after two years and 10K miles for about $10K less than I paid. And the 997 RS 3.8 in trailer right now is still valued close to its purchase price after three years. These 911's were not expensive motoring.
In context, anyone who bought a house between 1995 and 2005 is probably not too happy to be a decade or two down the track and find themselves at about break-even on purchase price, not including taxes and expenses.
Conversely, if carefully managed as a deductible business expense, rented out to qualified pilots, a plane can even operate at a profit! And those things stay in the air for decades and remain valuable. What a racket! : )
Now, let's talk about the bain of my existence, boats ...