I've got no interest in living to 90. Anything past 80 will be just fine with me.

I just don't really understand some of the varying prices in the market at the moment - you've got $1m '73 RSs and $100k 911Ss, $500k '74 Euro Carreras and $50k '74 CIS Carreras. That the former command premiums isn't a surprise... But an order of magnitude?! Especially when the conversion of one into the other is a pretty straightforward task. Personally, I'm not sure the top of the market can keep climbing further into the stratosphere like it has, but solid 40-year old sports cars are generally going to appreciate if looked after.

Not if there are 100,000 of them. Some of you folks are in a dream world. At least not the 3.2 cars. So some of the very best will be worth the least.

You might want to rethink that as you get older.
Wishing you a long and healthy life.

That's the thing, even if you started out with 100,000 of them, how many are still on the road? How many get wrecked and rusted into oblivion every year? Every one. That goes makes every one that survives a bit more valuable. Hell, in the UK you can pay over £20k for Triumph Stag these days and there is no more a rubbish pile of rubbish than that - it's just old and there are always fanboys willing to pay...

There are still many thousands of nice 911 cars in the world. Probably most here in California. The main reason that they are still around in large numbers is because they were made so well. They did not rot and leak like the British cars or the fiats. Also, they always cost a ton so people took better car of them. I really like my car but if someone wanted to trade for a Cayman, I just might do it.

Another thing to consider about attrition rates is what were the cars originally being purchased for. A lot of those British cars were year round daily drivers and in a lot of cases a guy's or families only car. 911's and particularly the impact bumper ones were second and third cars so they never got subjected to a lot of the crapola that takes a car out. Because they cost a ton, so people who have a ton can typically own a "regular" car to drive in the sheit. They also never got really low in value, saying sub $2500, like the British stuff did. I think that kept a lot them from being seen as disposable/not worth fixing and scrapped.

On what do you base these assumptions. I grew up in 1970s and 80s CA. 911s were everywhere. They most definitely were daily drivers for many people.

And from about 1995-2010 or so middies were seen as disposable. Many parked them when the engine popped. Or someone took a 3.0l from a wreck and put it in on the cheap.

I bought my first 911, a '70T in 2005 for $1000. They most surely got cheap.

I think there are a few on here trying to imply that impact bumper cars are common place. Fact is the 2.7 cars were made in far less numbers than long hoods. The 3.0 and 3.2 cars were made in roughly the same numbers as longhoods, 356s. Muscle cars, Japanese sport cars were made in the millions. So 80,000 is a small number. As for attrition in Europe it's HUGE. Stateside is higher than you would think. I'm going to say that most likely fewer than half of all impact bumper cars built from 1974 to 1979 remain. The 930 has the highest attrition rate of any impact bumper car. Especially the 1970s cars. These cars got cheap had huge running cost compared to NA 911s as a result many were gutted into track cars or just parked somewhere and left to rot away because the repairs greatly exceeded the cars value. This can be said for 1974 to 1977 2.7 cars as well.

Wow! Wally! A British car as a family car????? I took care of my MG's but they spent most of their time leaking, popping out of third and electrical stuff not working and keeping a rawhide mallet in the car to tap the electric fuel pump when it got stuck with dirt (MGA) and just not working. Very pretty terrible cars. But not as bad a a rotting Fiat. Sometimes I would get together with other MGB guys and we all replaced all the very same stuff!!!! All the time. 911 cars were very much like a VW bug in that they were so reliable for many years. Same with the 356.

Ok, explain the crazy prices of VW Micro Buses.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1436749307.jpg

Even in SO CAL there are not many micro buses. Please!

Being the current owner of an 82 SC and a 66 VW microbus, I'll suggest the current market trend on the microbus is just plain fantasy. Sure there are plenty of them listed on The Samba for crazy money, but how many of those "patina monsters" are actually trading hands for the ridiculous asking prices? I realize attrition took many of them out, seen more than my share of VW bus chicken coops and rotted storage buildings.

Okay, I was basing this assumption on being form the Midwest where cars rust. I never saw them around in the winter from what I remember. I grew up in a fairly wealthy Chicago suburb and friends fathers had them and they never left the garage in the winter. I'm sure in CA they were regularly used as daily drivers just like people use motorcycles for year round transportation.

A lot of this is based on conversations with aging sportscar (mostly Healey) enthusiasts talking about how there seem to be so many more 6 cylinder Healeys around. One of these guys is in his 80's and owned Le Mans 100's when they were new. One worked as a mechanic at ConImEx in Chicago in the late 50's early 60's, another not quite as old was heavily involved in the sportscar scene in this area again in the mid 1960's (he attended Meadowdale on a regular basis), etc.

These guys say there was a general shift somewhere in the early to mid 1960's from families owning only one car to owning two cars. These were sportscar guys and generally hung out with other sportscar guys and this is what they saw or what they remember at least. By the time the 3000 Healeys came out, a significantly higher margin of them were second cars. Hence they could be spared from some of the crap and therefore the attrition rate was not as high. Given they were still only second cars for a couple or family, they would still get driven in some crap, but not to the same extent.

I could go on but sort of need to get to work. Thanks for calling me out as this was just speculation. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me that some guy that could afford a 911 wouldn't be able to afford another car to drive in the salt. Particularly in an era post where the nation as a whole trended to having 2 cars. Porsches have always been expensive cars, I mean 911's were 2-3x what an MGB was again reinforcing my thoughts. Maybe they were being purchased by people who were just getting by and had to be pressed into winter daily driver service.

My dad says the same thing. He's approaching 87 in a few months. He still drives and so does my mom.

I've got a hot young thing to drive me around when I get old. When I'm 80 she will still be 69.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/blah.gif

When you're 80, she'll still be into 69? Good for you!

When I'm 80 my sweet wife will be 68..

The first owner of my 79 SC was a young female doctor in California. She put 200K miles on it in the first 20 years, and then sold it for about half of what she bought it for. (30K -> 13K).

Between 1999 and today, it has only seen another 56K miles (although I am making up for lost time).

So while it is definitely been living a 2nd car kind of life since '99, it had the wheels driven off it for 20 years.

Relisted: Porsche 911 Carrera 911 G50 | eBay

and more detailed images:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bxhzd8c6Ol3dfnE4R2R3UXpnMmd1NDI4Mnp Hcl96MGRwVjRNVG05amF0Y19ORFVIZ2x6RTQ&usp=drive_web

One thing I haven't seen discussed (unless I missed it) is the up and coming generation of kids/young adults. This next generation seems to have ZERO interest in these things (from my personal experience). It's not important to them. When they grew up, the family car was likely a piece of S*** and there's very little connection automotive-ly. Their interests are very much elsewhere. I don’t know how many times I’ve asked the younger generation about what they just saw driving down the road beside us and they have no clue. “Was that a Camero??” they say. “No……. *sigh*….. it was a Ford Mustang”, dad groans. No connection or importance to them.

Generally speaking, all the car shows I attend are mainly us older guys and our wives (if we are that lucky to have a wife that’s interested!!). I'm not seeing the younger generation taking interest and participating as they are glued to tablets and iPads. Yes, there's the odd case where this doesn't 100% hold true but I think the future holds a very different market place for these precious gems. My kids have no interest in “wrenching” or learning anything about what we do with our older cars. Nor do their friends.

My brother inlaw had an older VW bug as an example. Meticulously restored and maintained. His intention was that it was to be handed down to his son, the next generation. It was an impressive gift. At the time, his son was in his late teens and never stepped into the garage with his dad (first sign). And there was no interest as he was more enamored by big turbo-ed Nissan Skylines, then Jeeps with 30” tires and finally joining the army to drive military vehicles. So the bug was eventually sold off to “some guy” where it apparently sat and rotted. I believe this story holds true to some extent now in many families and will be very much the case in the future.

My point?? Long story short, bubble or whatever, I believe the Porsche market is going to tank. The next generation is not "connected" for the same reasons we are, if at all. The prices on these older cars will not hold as a dying generation of "old guys" eventually unload their pride and joys on a market of un-interested people..

Well, my 28 year old has TWO Porsches; a 944S and an 88 911. I'm pretty sure that he would be considered the younger generation.

The sky is not falling. This is an old argument, heard about older cars forever. I think we've got quite some time to go before people lose interest in air cooled Porsches.,,,like maybe never. Besides, with global warming, emissions and gasoline becoming larger and larger topics, gas powered cars will become rarer and rarer; and perhaps even more desirable...who knows?

No, you've got a lifetime of enjoying these babies still to come.

Yeah, when I mention to the younger generation I have a Porsche and a Nissan GT-R, they only care about the GT-R.

Your son is the exception. By and large, "millennials" think cars are for transportation and are appliances like washing machines. I firmly believe that generation X will be the last one with car lovers represented in good numbers.

Besides, there is a realistic scenario where self driving cars, electric or otherwise, lead to prohibitive insurance costs and increasingly less roadways left available for drivers, with the endgame of driver cars being regulated away and only being allowed on private property, much like horses today. Would become a hobby for the rich and the extravagant. If electric cars do become prevalent, that'll make it even worse, faster. That's not an outlandish tin foil hat fantasy, I'd say it's the relatively more likely scenario really.

Not to say that this would impact 911 prices any time soon, but I think the sky will very much fall at some point in the future.

The demographic angle has been discussed. I think this link has been posted before:

Baby Boomers Created the Classic-Car Market—and Could Crash It – Feature – Car and Driver

I tend to think it's a legitimate concern, but I'm a "typical" boomer who got hooked on European cars during college in the '60's and have seen what the disposable income of my generation in our '50's and '60's has done to prices of all things "fun and special." The same argument is being applied (correctly, IMO) to large houses in suburbs. The appetite among millennials and younger is all about urban living and renting - and using UBER, Car2Go etc.

But as the prior poster pointed out, for most of us it's all about what we want and get out of our car passion/hobby while we still can drive. The major unknown, to me, is still whether the hard asset hockey stick over the past few years has brought in a bunch of non-hobby investors and whether this is a bubble that could end pretty quickly.

Case in point, of the 71 993's currently on eBay, more than a third (28) are turbos ranging from $150K to $525K. I don't think there are that many enthusiasts shopping for them just now - but a lot of dealers/owners trying to get out while the getting's good?

What's going to happen to prices in ten or twenty years has nothin to do with this idea of a bubble.

That said, my 23 & 25 year old younger brothers love my air cooled cars. And when I go to Cars n Coffee here there are plenty of 20 something's wandering around looking at them and ogling. Furthermore, I've seen plenty of comments about how google and FB employed hipsters are part of the current run up in air cooled prices. They want to buy a 911 made in the year they were born. There's even one guy over on RL obsessed with having his 3.2 Carrera made the month he was born. Maybe that's part of the run up in 964 prices? It's all these 26 & 27 year old kids.

People go on and on about how expensive these cars are. I've seen a lot of mid to late 20s guys join the forums recently who are getting out of a $30k STi or EVO and spending that money on an SC or Carrera. People are actually financing these old cars. That's commitment in my mind. If you are making a 30 year old car your daily driver and taking a loan to do it? Yeah, you are into them.

Decent point. My other two 20 somethings don't even own cars, and live in cities.

Nick,
New construction in SF is allowed to have a maximum of 1.5 parking places per 2 units.

I actually read a curious article recently that said sort of the opposite. That driverless cars would be so safe (time will tell...), insurance companies are seriously concerned that their premiums collected will plummet and that they'll have to find new sources of revenue (I won't cry if that happens unless they skyrocket the premiums for the remaining cars with actual drivers).

I'm seeing a trend in la. I'm seeing lots of "younger" (think mid 20s to 30s) driving cool older cars. There is an appreciation for the art/design/classic nature of them. My wife first pointed this out. I see a cool older car and very often it's someone in that age range. Sure the expensive classics may not be in reach... I'm honestly not much outside that age range but I feel hope for the younger generation. I like my cars mechanical, my music on vinyl, my coffee brewed by hand (espresso please), and my charcuterie house made. :-)

F-in hipster! I keed. You just are learning to appreciate what I've appreciated for the last 3 decades. I used to get my Peets coffee at the original location on Vine St in Berkeley years before Starbucks had a slice of their pie.

lol. Not really. I've never stopped listening to vinyl since I was a kid, but the coffee thing was making espresso at home waaaay before "3rd string" was a thing. Besides I'm too old to be a hipster. But those driving the cool cars, gives us hope !

My son has two older BMW collectable cars and is looking for a 911 coupe to backdate.
Remember there are more of them(hipsters) than there are of us old fogeys and there are less 911's as time marches on.
Supply and demand.

really, u dont say..... i attended cal for 8 years. yes, i keep flunking out....
i like on francisco and MLK and shop at the safeway near that peets!

oh and like SpyerX, play LP and run vacuum tube stuff....

but kind of sad that the next gen kids are texting more than i do... that is scary....

This is what Im banking on, most of my peers see cars as point A to B and thats it. To them and all my co-workers Im the freak because Im a 24 year old that drives a '68 Camaro to work every day with no power steering/power brakes or AC... "Why dont you just sell it and buy a new car since its worth 25k?" is all I ever hear. No offense to all the older gentlemen but I cant wait for the market to come back down so that I can start really collecting.

I have heard that too. My 912E is actually assembled around the time I was made by my mom and dad. http://forums.pelicanparts.com/support/smileys/fles.gif

Yep. I lived there from 1989 to 2001 when I moved to Colorado. I only spent 5 years at Cal getting my 3 degrees. I lived on Spruce and Rose. Later on I lived off Solano through the tunnel. Mmmm, Zachary's.

I've seen several surveys and studies that indicate that millenials in general really don't care about cars at all, and those who do value things like tech features, safety and gas mileage.

Of course, that's just in general, and there are still plenty of genuine car enthusiasts in the 16-32 age bracket. I do think that outside of hipsters going for retro authenticity, their tastes will veer more towards GTRs and the like than vintage 911s, but that's just my guess as someone who belongs to that age range.

F'kin hipster! hahah... and live in the 'springs now? lol!!!! You and Mooty. And he's not kidding on txting. But my vinyl is amplified through hybrid amps (tubes/SS) so maybe I'm not all that hipster authentic.

But...The benefit of the 911 relative to most other cars is it is timeless, it is classic, 50 years of history, so it appeals, i think, to a much broader audience than most older cars.

Then again, the entire population has never been 'car people' and it's always been a subset. The question is if that population or subset is shrinking. I live in SoCal, probably the car culture center of the US....and I'd say that car events, shows, meetings, etc seem BIGGER than they used to be - sure not all porsche focused.... I think there is hope :)