Value of SC's and Carreras ??

[slangager]

I know a few people have talked about this from time to time but I'm not sure I really understand why SC and Carreras( "80's" porsches) are so hard to sell for what seems to be reasonable prices. A lot of people agree that these car are much better then the earlier cars even though they added emission controls and a few creature comforts. Living in the Bay Area we have a lot of Porsches for sale all the time on Craigslists. Unless something gets priced way under market value they never never seem to sell (even then it seems like they're just a handful of "flippers" competing for these cars).

So what's the deal? I hear the value of older Porsche's in Europe is really low.... Are these cars being written off as insignificant gross polluters or will they come back and gain some value? I can only imagine that as the number of cars that get parted out becuase of high repair costs increase the demand will go up slightly but will they ever regain the status they once had.

Thanks in advance,

[aemidnight]

You stated the issue yourself. "reasonable prices". What is reasonable to the seller and what is reasonable to the buyer is the most intriguing part of the sales process. Basic economics always comes down to two words, supply and demand.

For my 2 cents, I've been searching for an affordable 911 for quite some time. My feeling is that the late seventy's thru mid 80's cars are in their "identity crisis" years sort of like 80's and early 90's corvettes are going thru.

I personally will put up with more problem issues on a "classic" car as it is part of the personality of the car and fixing them is part of the restoration process, which brings some attachment to the car.

The late 70's-early 80's cars are too new to have any "restoration" value. You just end up paying for someone else's neglect, which is harder to justify, which in turn deflates the value of the car.

Those looking for an older CLASSIC porsche will stay away from the sc as really dont have enough of a different look then the newer cars. Those looking for a good driving sc now have way to many choices to choose from.

[slangager]

That's a good observation. It's always difficult for someone who is passionate about a paticular automobile to rationalize what is going on in the "real world" when it comes to market value.

It's hard to say how many potential buyers there are out there for the 80's era Porsche and what might happen to increase or decrease the value of them. I am one of those that grew up in the 80's and just had to go through the experience so I bought one I thought I could afford. Now that I am knee deep in rebuilding the top end of my SC I'm starting to understand why not everyone would want to take on such a responsibility.

Thanks for contributing....

Stuart

[GothingNC]

Location pays a big part in pricing.

A nice SC listed for sale at a Major Metropolitan city will have a lot more potential buyers that are close buy to look at the car and their income is higher.

If you are smack in the middle of swamps you have a limited pool of buyers
I would not travel further then 500 miles to look at a an SC or Carrera unless it is a unique, a very good deal or an exceptional example to justify my time and travel expenses.

One ting that puzzles me is that if you purchase a nice SC for $11,000 and a year later you find out that the motor will need head studs and then you know have a $16,000 SC where as sometimes you can find one with the top-end rebuilt for 13-14,000 and you are ahead of the game.

IMO, I think the prices for the SC's will remain flat for a while and the clean, non-modified examples will start to go up in value probably within the next 5 years.

Hope I did not ramble too much (Strong Coffee)

[rburn]

I think that the SC's and the Carrera's 84-87, are the best money spent if you want to have some fun and drive a Porsche with the 911 body style on a low budget.

I say this as if you get the right one and take care of her then you can get ALOT of miles from the engine and have the typical maint of the rest of the car. These years if not abused greatly can get over 400k easily on the motors. Obviously you have to tend to the trans and starter, alt... etc etc along the way, but I can't tell you how much money some people spend on there Porsches on a yearly basis and I really dont.

Depends on your budget. But I tell you what it's extremely hard to find a clean sc or carrera. I spent alot of time looking and after seeing all the leaky door seals, body repairs, cracked dashes etc etc etc, it's just plain hard to find a good example of one -at-a-reasonable-price

my 2 cents.

[Jay H]

Originally posted by rburn
But I tell you what, it's extremely hard to find a clean sc or carrera. I spent alot of time looking and after seeing all the leaky door seals, body repairs, cracked dashes etc etc etc, it's just plain hard to find a good example of one -at-a-reasonable-price

I agree. Nice 3.2 Carrera's are darn hard to find. I spent 1.5 YEARS searching for my 3.2. I finally found something that was interesting to me, still relatively original, decent history, mileage that I wanted and, most importantly, priced correctly. But, I had to really scramble and make a quick decision. Everyone was all over the car quickly with offers. Luckily, the seller was an exceptionally honest person that dealt extremely fair with me.

Most of these cars are worn out, abused, have been hit, leak like an Exxon tanker, etc, etc. Anything really nice is either a) too nice to drive or b) priced way out of line with sellers that refuse to move on their high price.

Location has a lot to do with it, but I also think realistic pricing and honest descriptions will do a lot too for a seller in moving a car quickly. Good stuff doesn't last long...

Jay
90 964 & 84 3.2

[anthony]

Originally posted by slangager
Living in the Bay Area we have a lot of Porsches for sale all the time on Craigslists. Unless something gets priced way under market value they never never seem to sell (even then it seems like they're just a handful of "flippers" competing for these cars).

I look on craigslist too. In fact I bought my SC off craigslist - 80K miles, black/black, and sunroof delete for a great price.

The crop of cars there that I see not selling are often higher mileage cars (175K+) that are priced like low mileage cars.

I think it's a tough market for those higher mileage cars. With around 200K miles these cars will only appeal to bargain hunters at firesale prices. I guess most owners hold out and keep trying to get $12-15K when they should probably price it at $9K.

[Jay H]

This spring, I looked very hard and very seriously for an '84 to '86 3.2. Man, the market was tight and prices were UP. Nice, low mileage stuff was around $20k for an early 3.2 with a 915 and the '86 cars were really up from what I noticed during the prior year I was searching.

Just lately, it seems to have calmed down just a bit. When March rolls around, all us snow belt guys get really itchy and can help drive some values up. The few Carrera's that were in my area sold extremely quick.

[aemidnight]

i've been looking all spring....currently a 76k 86 targa on ebay, buyer started buy it now at high teens, and now its down to 15250, high bid is at 12900 with 9 hrs left. with reserve not met,

similar car went on ebay last week for 13600. another in my neighborhood is sitting for 18k.

seems to be a good time to buy...if i could just find the right car.

[slangager]

As quickly as the repair bills can add up on these cars it is very important to the buy the right car at the right price with the expectation of having to service the car to keep it properly maintained.

I bought my 79SC back in September for what If felt was a great price. I knew that it was going to need a clutch but was willing to take that on for the price it was being sold for. Needless to say doing the clutch was just the beginning of what appears to be a pandoras box. Yeah, I could have slapped in the clutch and waited for the next problem to surface but I fell into the "while you're in there" trap. So what I thought was going to be just a clutch is now going to cost me quite a bit more then I had originally anticipated.

Oh well, you live and you learn and at the end of this process I should have a car that's ready for some summer fun.....

[rburn]

I should have added this to my post.

What's interesting is I see carrera that have lower miles < 100k say and have rebuilt motors.... You know they have been beaten badly.

I bought mine a couple of years ago and it had over 200k. Here was my logic. I paid about 12k

It had all the records of maint and a single mechanic.

The interior except for the custom sterring wheel is excellant, original untorn seats, the dash is near perfect and it was just very very clean accident free. So my thought was do i get a lower mile car and test it and hope it's not close to a rebuilt (ie. driven hard) and fix interior etc etc or get a nice example and since i only planned on driving it under 5k miles per year and get maybe 5 or 10 years on the motor and save for a rebuild.

My thinking is a low mile car is like less than 40k... and gauge the owner and mechanic and see if it's been taken care of and pay the piper (if that's in your budget).

Then I thought of ok if it's 100k or 80k etc then it's time for a trans and other items that seem to go at certain mileage intervals... or get a car that has had all the done and had alot of miles on it and the specs were still good... compression, passing smog etc...

Bottom line
It's kinda a crap shot.

[anthony]

What's interesting is I see carrera that have lower miles < 100k say and have rebuilt motors....

Carreras had the valve guide issue so lots of them had valve jobs in the first 40-80K miles.

[Mysterytrain]

My 2 cents on these cars is that they are on the about to take a turn in value. My thinking is that at the moment there are cars out there that can be had cheaply. They will fall into the hands of those that will modify, hack and abuse them. When they are to far gone they will become candidates to be turned into stripped race cars or parted out. Very few of the bargain cars will ever be restored. The nice high mileage examples that are at the top end of the market are all beginning to require engine rebuilds, interior and paint freshening. Once the owners invest in the work this will push the value of the nice examples even higher. I think you can look at any vintage, make or model car and see that they all go thru the same cycle. Its unfortunate that the low entry price contributes to the thinning of the herd.

[aigel]

The SC prices have actually gone up. I have not seen any half way decent SC for sale for under 10k locally in a long time. When I was hunting for a 911, there were a lot more cars for 8-9k asking price. Yes, most of them had issues, but they at least were offered at one digit prices. In my eyes any car that has been maintained is actually worth a bunch more than 3-4 years ago, because the parts prices have gone through the roof. Just a tensioner upgrade or a new dash, they all cost you about 50% more these days than they did 3 years ago, thanks to the euro and inflation. I bought my dash for $600 something, now it would be a grand to replace.

Not too sure about the "abuse of the cheap car" theory that will thin out the herd. There isn't much you can do to these cars that isn't reversible fairly easily, if you stay away from slant nose conversions, wide fenders and other body work ... It is a fact though that at some point there is only wrecks or restored vehicles left. That's happening to the early cars. And a good example are other brands as well, say a first gen Camaro ...

Just my two cents.

George

[samsnead]

I have just recently become a porsche owner. I started out looking for a 930 since that was what I wanted since I was a kid. I finally decided to get a turbo look, all the goodies of a turbo without the maintanance. It took 18 months to find a good one. I am suprised that 84 and up carreras are not moving, I live in the NYC area and good clean cars are hard to find, low mileage are getting a premium. Prices seem to have gone up a little, but with rates getting higher we shall see. I think as long as the car is clean and stock, you cant go wrong. For the the whale tail and the wide flared body epitomizes porsche.

[gerry100]

What you for "asking " prices in ads for old cars can be very misleading.

Before the turn of the century, I studied the ads for a 63-67 Corvette and concluded that I could by a nice one for $25K, maintain it and not suffer depreciation.

Problem was that on inspection the $25K cars were rats and the nice ones were $35K.

With older cars, you've got to see'm and check the records to compare values.

[hytem]

The NADA for an SC in good condition is about $15K.
Good means the bones/finish of the car are original and in good shape, the engine does not need a rebuild and the mileage is no more than about 100K. If you pay less for a car like this, it's probably a good deal. I bought a car like this for quite a bit less, but it has an oil leak issue that could be expensive to resolve, but doesn't warrant fixing with the small amount of driving I do. So how the car is driven has some bearing on how much you might want to spend, i.e., you don't need a pristine car to drive 2000 miles a year on Sunday.
If you check the NADA, you find that the SC cars through to the mid-80s aren't much different in value--so they aren't really depreciating. That means they are a decent investment at this point, even if you have to put some money into them. Since most newer cars depreciate substantially, these cars are somewhat better investments as cars go.
At some point, I checked the average selling prices of SCs here and on ebay--and found it was somewhere around $12-13K. Mileage is a factor --all other things being equal. In this price range, the SC is a lot of car for the money--if it is a decent one that looks good and drives good--even only on Sunday.

[Rockafella]

I would agree that SCs and Carreras are suffering from a general lack of interest right now. Everyone wants a longhood or a 993 for sure. 964s have newfound interest because everyone is figuring out that ones for sale now have a lot of things fixed and aren't as bad as first thought. In California, 74s and 75s have interest due to smog exemption.

So I would say that SCs and Carreras are going through what longhoods were doing 10-15 years ago. Thinning the herd on common and plentiful cars. What is left is nice(r) and parts cars. Try finding a super-clean SC for $15k in 5 years.....not gonna happen.

I just sold my 82SC which looks and drives great, but is higher miles (just under 200k) to a friend. The car feels like 100k miles and has been well kept. This kind of car is sort of common today just as you could find these type in long hoods a decade ago.

Oh, and wait until the gen-xers start getting nostalgic. I want to wear my glam-rock hair, listen to some poison, and drive my bellow Carrera. Wait, I do that now .

[aigel]

I sold my car within a week. And it is a car that has a narrow market, because it was set up for AX/track. There is interest in SC and Carreras for a decent price. The problem is that people hold out for 15k on high mileage cars. Ain't going to happen. And those cars never demanded 15k since I had been looking 6 years ago. I still believe that at least the SC has gone up a couple grand for the driver / average car here in the bay area. The real hurt was in 2001 when the .com burst.

George

[lark]

I presume that this is an example of one of the less desirable Carreras:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1985-PORSCHE-911-Slant-Nose-CARRERA-Targa_W0QQitemZ320010069833QQihZ011QQcategoryZ1015 6QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

What a hideous car.