Porsche Carrera GT: 5 Reasons It’s Still the Collectible of Choice
An analysis of the Carrera GT’s value as a collector’s item and predictions for its future.
The year was 2004. I went to my local Porsche dealer and inside the showroom, behind velvet ropes was the first Carrera GT that I ever saw. It was black and looked incredible. I got close enough to see the window sticker. It showed an eye watering MSRP of over $440,000. I still have pictures of that car and the window sticker stored somewhere around here. I was also there when they fired it up and gave it a few revs. Holy crap. I never heard a streetcar make a sound like that before. Suddenly the nearly half a million-dollar price seemed reasonable. Of course, today I would happily buy every Carrera GT I could get my hands on for less than half a million dollars. The problem is that any Carrera GT offered for less than $500K today has likely spent time sitting at the bottom of a lake.
The value of the Carrera GT has exploded in recent years. Most examples now trade for about four times their original MSRP. And even as the values approach $2 million dollars they still almost seem like a bargain. Well, bargain might be a bit of a stretch, but certainly worth the price. According to the Hagerty Valuation Tool the value of a Carrera GT has increased by roughly 80 percent over the last five years. And by roughly 200 percent in the last ten years. Can that red hot trend continue? Well, again according to the same tool prices have actually come down about 18 percent in the last year. Let’s take a look at the Carrera GT as a collector’s item and look at some of the factors that will determine how it will perform in the future.
Disclaimer
First, I don’t have a crystal ball and can’t predict the future. If I could predict the future, I would have enough money to be out driving my own Carrera GT right now instead of just writing about it. Second, I always feel like I need to say this whenever discussing car values–don’t worry about the value. Buy a car because you love the car. Is it nice if the car also increases in value? Sure, but if you buy a car you love, you are happy either way.
If you buy a car just because you hope to make money from it, you may be bitterly disappointed. Besides, I think people doing that are bad for our hobby. Car flippers can inflate prices and keep desirable models out of the hands of true enthusiasts.
