Stick a fork in it..........
 

I have noticed that more and more the Porsche thing is fading away. I just received my last issue of Excellence magazine. It's half in thickness than it was three years ago.

I tried three times to sell very nice interior door handles for '87 the '89 911 on ebay, starting at $50.00............not one bid on any of the three auctions.

I have a boat load of '80's Porsche Pano's and Christos with Factory covers. Wish me luck on trying to unload that stuff.

What happened? It's like someone pulled the plug.

Wish a Boss 302 would plummet like the Porsches, then I could afford one.

Don't give up quite yet! I just bought an '85 Carrera coupe, and am just getting into the 911 mystique! I also have three 924 turbos in the shed, which were my intro into all things Porsche. So, the point is, as the '80s cars (911s) have come down in price, noobs like myself are finding it easier to step up to the 911. I'll keep my turbo cars though, variety is good!

Totally disagree saw two Ts sell for last week one $69K another $59K. Unrestored RS for $260k and up, high end restores and lightweights $400K and up.... If you have a highly personalized car it will not pull exceptional money unless it is truly unique... Nice Carreras and SC are bring in fair money but they are not considered yet to be a classic car. Try to buy a USA carrera for under $30,000 or a euro carrera for under $75,000......

The market is not dead. money is just not being thrown around.

You seem pretty convinced the Porsche thing is dead, but here goes...

I bought my 911 14 years ago and I have never had more choices for events. Our local PCA has 21 track days this year, and we are one of the small PCA regions. We also host a club race in August, and a club race as part of the Rolex Grand Am! (how cool is that-race your Porsche as part of the Grand-Am weekend)

There are cars and coffee type events, a few a month within driving distance of Philly, a very active Early 911S group nearby and driving tours for classic Porsches all summer, all up and down the east coast. The enthusiasm is there, just pick your fun (racing, concours, touring events) and jump in.

No one wants your old Pano's? I don't even want the NEW Pano's I get :-) Have you noticed this forum is approaching *2 million* posts?

Times are changing, but thank goodness people still enjoy filling a machine up with gas, taking it out and having some fun.

Todd has eloquently stated a perspective that I rarely state; the perspective of an enthusiast. So far this year, I have rallied in CA, in New England, I will go to the Rennsport Reunion and another Rally in VA. A group this summer is going to the Tail of the Dragon, BBQs are being planned. Every event I did last year is bigger this year.

Last Friday, I went to drop a starter off at a shop in Allentown an hour & half from where I live. My Friend Lee drove me in his 1960 Roadster and another friend Lewis drove two hours to meet us. All because of the passion.

Stick a fork in it..... hardly.........

So if you sell the door handles next week the Porsche thing is back on?

Maybe just maybe you're the one not into it ENOUGH! Stop reading and start
doing as others have posted prior if you just get off the 'puter and get out in
your garage or out to one of the events ..your sure to find plenty enthusiasm.
As well as projects to do, I've had to sell down a few early S projects just to
be able to find time to get to a few events and commit time to projects I just
have to see to fruition!!!
Bert

Thanks for the heads up
 

Awesome news, its over. I'm going to swing by early S registry and let them know cos there are a couple of cars over there I want to pick up for peanuts.

I guess I'm a little unclear on this: some plastic door handles didn't sell so the entire Porsche market has gone to hell?

This would be news to the 4 people who have asked me to find 911s for them in the last couple weeks.

As someone who manufactures parts of racing these cars, I will tell you that May was our best month ever. And I would say that I sold parts for mid 70's and 80's 915 gearbox about 2-1 over modern GT3 watercooler variants. And when we showed up to sponsor the PCA's 48 Hours of Sebring race in Feb. we were told that they had the largest number of entrants ever in more than 15 years of holding the event.

There's nothing dead or fading about it...

I quick look at ebay completed listings for parts and cars will show the original poster is on to something. With exception to a few anomalies here and there, the market is dead. Very dead. and it is not just Porsches. Cars finally caught up with houses. The difference only being those selling these cars and parts haven't realized it yet, and are continuing to expect 2007 pricing.
The audience is obviously dwindling and has by in large left the building.

Core enthusiast and big buck collectors will keep the rare cars appreciating, but from the shade tree mechanic hobbyists vantage, what was worth having is had, and pretty much out of reach now....thus the total drop in demand on parts. If you don't have a car to fix up, the parts aren't really needed either.

All very amusing anecdotes.

Here's another: I was at an international shipper's yard last month. There were between 25 and 30 cars overall awaiting packing into a container destined for Europe. 5 were Porsches. The market is as strong as it ever was, if the asking prices are in line with reality. And reality is that prices are up from a year ago on most 911s. Ebay is the 'court of last resort' for Porsches. It is dominated by open cars. The coupes sell more easily and often with little or no advertising.

Too funny. I have passed on a dozen or more cars lately that I would have not hesitated on in years past based on current market, including a no reserve Silver, numbers matching 75 Carrera 'COUPE' that sold for under $12K a few months back...on ebay.

Reality is this market is in a major transformation, as is many others. Not a challenge, just a simple observation of a very real reality.

PS, your anecdote about porsches leaving the country is a large contributor to the shrinking fan base that brings about these changes. Supply shrinks to levels unsustainable for a larger viewing audience.

It happens to all collectible markets as they age and new generations emerge.

I'm in the market every day. I have people with cash at the ready now, and having trouble finding 911s for sale without "stories."

Exactly. Several factors are converging to dilute the 'the Porsche thing'. Economy, attrition, age etc...at least as I understand what is meant by 'the Porsche thing'.

Like you, I am also a dealer and have enjoyed these cars and profit from them for 2 decades. I find that when one area of collecting dries up, another is usually not far behind. You just have to be open and take advantage of the serendipities.

It is no coincidence you have 4 people that want Porsches and not 4 Porsches your looking to sell.

In a lot of ways, I think we are on the same page here, saying it in different ways.

Best of luck to you my friend.

I suspect I should have further explained myself........sorry.......didn't mean to be so general. I had, two wonderful examples, an '84 and '86 911. Both coupes. And a 356 driver. Finally they were all gone by the end of the year.

I cannot believe how long it took to sell them (at a loss). I'm not bragging when I state my cars are top notch as I am a fanatic on keeping them up to snuff.

So, after seeing prices of rebuilt engines continue to go up I thought that's it.

10K for a rebuilt 356 four banger.......nonsense
10-who knowsK for a 911 engine........more nonsense

They were great cars.................but not that great.

Guess I'll go change the oil in the Sunbeam Alpine. Will it go 140mph, nope. But they are cute and fun to drive.

By the by. One of my buds is a Porsche racing parts provider. Business is way off.

Cal,
What you have witnessed on this thread is responses from really the core group of 911 enthusiasts. They are in most part, so deep inside the circle of their passion, they can't see out past the first few rings. I know Harley guys who still hold onto how popular their sport is too :-)

No one wants to read magazines anymore because they are becoming obsolete. Why would anyone want to keep (let alone pay for) shelves and stacks of musty magazines when you can instantly look up anything you want to know about cars on the internet and just print what you need? I guess some people do, but they risk ending up on Hoarders: Buried Alive. Just like newspapers and print magazines, many people see them as obsolete. As for being unable to sell a couple of door handles... I wouldn't consider that a barometer of a global market.

Core groups define the success of a boutique business. They do not rely on the masses. Example is Pelican Parts, Wayne doesn't own a 959 and 964 because Ford owners come here to buy parts for their Mustangs. He relies upon a core group of well catered to enthusiasts.

Perspective; 60 (+/-) million cars and trucks are sold per year. They made one million air-cooled Porsche's over a 50 + year time frame. It will always be a niche.

I've never been accused of being in the inner circle before. I just know that most economic recoveries start from the top down, and that's what my professional experience suggests in this current economic slowdown. After being flat and tapering for about a year, my business cratered hard in the fall of 2009. As in sales were off more than 50% over previous year same month periods.

Starting about 14 months ago my business started to recover. Racers started to open their pocketbooks and spend money again. Now we're back up to and over our pre-2008 recession sales numbers. Sure, we're only one company and it's anecdotal, but the majority of race shops in America that prep cars for Club and professional racing uses our parts in their cars. We've got a very wide market sampling in our customer base and deal with both the big pro operations and the smallest of the small one or two man mom and pop P-car shops. A lot of the smaller operations tell me they are still struggling and are hand to mouth. The bigger shops and companies report more of a stable business flowing in the doors.

I really think what is being observed by the OP has very little to do with Porsches specifically and has more to do with toys generally. I bet the same sort of slowdown is present in high end speedboats or in snowmobile sales as well. When there's a recession on, people stop spending money on playthings.

I think the absence of cars on the market may be related to people who aren't forced to sell not being willing to sell until they feel the prices have recovered. All the crisis sale cars of two years ago are gone and sold. A lot of these owners aren't connected to the day to day fluctuations in prices and just pull the car off the market for 6 months or a year and don't check back on pricing until they consider selling again.

+1

There are 713 examples of what I am talking about on ebay completed listings of Porsche 2001-1961 just since May 23, 2011.
...and this is just cars. USED parts, wheels, seats, etc...well, just look at what's ending on ebay at any given moment of any given day.

Revenue and sales up on the top .01% cars or racing supplies & equipment have almost nothing to do with the majority of 'the Porsche thing' dying as a whole.

Can't seem to make it any clearer, these sales numbers are down 30 to 50% of what they once were, when I buyer is even present in the first place. This is due in large part to shrinking supply and thus fading interest, not to mention economic conditions, fuel prices, uncertainty in fossil related fuel powered vehicles etc...in answer to the og post, 'that's what happened'.

'I think the absence of cars on the market may be related to people who aren't forced to sell not being willing to sell until they feel the prices have recovered.'


+2 ....I wouldn't sell my house right now either. Still irrelevant to the hay day of air cooled fun by in large part being behind us.

Without home equity spending, weekend toy purchases will be down for a long time. Sure there will be some who can afford a nice Porsche without a cash out refi, but the boom over the previous decade was very much due to equity spending, and that ain't gonna be back for a long time. Those sellers trying to get top dollar today are completely out of touch with the market reality.

Exaggerate much...:rolleyes: top .01%?

People said "it was over" a decade ago when RS values slid from a high of 80-100K back down to 50-60k. Now they are two, three or even 4 times that number. We're in a trough right now. It's directly tied to a slowly recovering economy. Give it 2 or 3 more years and we'll be right back where we were. The excitement and interest in anything air cooled will return.

But I doubt that there will ever be much interest again in B-grade used parts. There's so many good repros on the market today that someone with a presentable air cooled driver is going to use a bunch of repro parts. Only concours caliber used and NOS parts are going to be the stuff that gets chased in the future. Otherwise, most owners will just turn to the aftermarket.

That trend started before the recent economic downturn. Before my current business, I was an employee in one of the larger Porsche air-cooled dismantlers in the country. Not top 10 in size, but probably in the top 20, and we had a yard full of good used air cooled 911s. We also sold new stuff. When a repro tailight reflector sells at retail for a '73 T is $80, a nice used one is $100 and a b-grade used one is $50-60, which one do you think we sold the most of? That's right, the repro. Same thing with door handles, lock kits, headlight lenses, Fuchs wheel crests, etc. etc.

It happened in American muscle cars and it's happening in Porsches now. The top of the market for high quality OEM skyrockets. The reproduction market fills the gap for those who can't afford to "restore" to OEM concours standards, and the bottom drops out of the value of marginal used parts.

This aligns with my experience. The A grade parts are sold on insurance repair tickets at prices that would astonish the typical Pelican shopper. The parts in the marketplace are often B-grade or less. And still, a nice engine lid grille that would have brought maybe $150 2 years ago is $250 or more now, comparing grade-to-grade.

An average '72 T coupe driver today is a high teens/low 20s car -- probably about equal to where it was 2 years ago when the statistics told us the Great Recession was over. Excellence numbers notwithstanding, the market is active, but not all models are desirable. Fashion changes. A Carrera that was in the low teens a year ago is now in the high teens. I'd say +20% straight across the board for the 3.2 cars in a year.

I don't make my living buying & selling cars. I broker 7-10 cars a year as a sideline to pay for my Porsche hobby. I make $500 per completed deal, so I really don't have a dog in this fight. Since this thread started, I got yet another request to find a car and made an offer on a 911S project that was (I thought) market-appropriate, but which was rejected out of hand. Over half the cars I broker are not advertised. They come to me on a referral basis. So maybe part of the market is just not visible.

This has been discussed for the last two years.... Marginal is marginal and outstanding is outstanding. Outstanding is appreciating and marginal is languishing.....

+1

That's illegal in the State of CA without a dealers license, I don't think I would be making statements like that publicly.

It's hardly illegal to put buyers and sellers together.

Your right about that...collecting a fee for it is the illegal part.

Your exhausting Mr. Weenie. I don't have the energy to argue this Ca law with you too, which is even more black and white than the original discussion.

Enjoy what you do, just offering some advice from my profession, auto sales, which I do make a living at ;)

You can routinely print a 8 1/2 x 11 inch 150 dpi image from an on-line Porsche magazine? Do tell...

Mr Renntrade, I'm sorry you're tired. I'm lucky in that I get to spend no more than 3-4 hours a week 'matchmaking' buyers & sellers. I don't have a stake in any car, so whether the buyer changes his mind or not is of no great consequence.

As for illegality, well, I appreciate the tip, but I'm willing to take the risk. Parting out a car in California is illegal, too. So I guess the Highway Patrol could also be combing the 'for sale' section of Pelican to arrest miscreants.

Our big difference is in the perception of the market. I see it as mostly strong with some weak spots. Longhoods are still strong, Carreras have come up in the last year, and Boxsters and 996s probably can't fall much farther. 914-6s are finally bringing strong money. 914 2.0s from 73/74 have been strong for a couple years.

As always, there are multiple forces at work, from the 'back to basics' move you get in any economic pullback to the increasing desire for creature comforts and reduced "fussiness" (a key motive in "backdating" SCs and Carreras). So, from my perspective, the glass is half full.

Me too!

I am talking about stuff like a how-to for a repair. You can find that by a search on this website and print it in 30 seconds, rather than maintaining shelves full of magazines and indices to flip through. If you want to look at pretty pictures accompanying an article from 1987, there's no substitute for holding on to decades of issues of Excellence magazine that 99% of people tossed in the trash after flipping through.

I just picked up this very nice, original owner 72 sunroof coupe. Very original, complete, rust free and 120K miles. Lots of detail pictures. Let me know if any of your buyers might be interested....



http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1307727273.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1307727286.jpg

'72 911t
 

How much are you looking for? It looks original and the wide steelies are kinda cool...

If it was viper green or another interesting color people would probably be beating your door down to get to it!