Otto Mechanic

Alex, you make the common mistake that economics is a "science". It isn't. It's the study of wants and needs. Needs may in some very twisted way be quantifiable, however "wants" are not.

You're young and your misunderstandings are excusable. My "logic" isn't demented, neither is it logic. The love of a car, the value a person places on it, isn't logical and it would be a very severe mistake to assume it was. Take a step back and a deep breath. You're no longer on well known soil.

Otto Mechanic

I'll take a chance Alex. Are you serious? Do you honestly think a person should go to the effort of restoring a car and take less than the cost of restoration in exchange?

67King

Do you include gas, tires, oil, taxes, and insurance costs? The repairs that were listed were maintenance items. Those are not costs that add value to a car. One could make an argument that those costs prevent the value of the car from going down, but to imply that they increase the value of a car by an equal amount is an illogical position.

When I got my first project car in 1989, musclecars were really starting to become a hot thing. And there were articles upon articles warning prospectors about trying to make money. The bottom line was printed eloquently at the bottom of one of them, which was published in a Year One catalog - "The only way to make money restoring cars is to restore other people's cars."

That's it. Unless a car has some exceedingly unusual intrinsic value due to rarity (e.g. a Derek Bell edition street 962), anyone who restores it, particularly if they pay another person to do the labor, will be losing money.

Plus the mere fact that people who do not value a car by what was spent on it outnumber those to do probably 10:1 means that in an overall economic environment (i.e. 10 cars for sale, 10 buyers), the market will not bear that value. There are too many other options where folks can look to buyers who ARE willing to sell. Even so much so that even the one who thinks that value = cost will be able to find a car that is below that, and won't pay it (meaning he'll think he got a super deal).

As to this specfic one.....there is no way there are $7700 in parts there. Parts plus some really expensive labor, maybe. But not in parts. And most owners of these cars can do most of those repairs very easily themselves. If I looked at a car that needed that much stuff done to it, I'd maybe try to put $1500 in value on it, though I could do it all for half that.

Also FWIW, friend of mine and retired Porsche mechanic a year or two ago bought an absolutely pristine 924S, super low miles, for $2500 from the original owner. The car could easily enter concours shows. These cars are just flat out not worth much.

odurandina

one day, my high-school supermodel sweetheart, decided to take up modeling....

about 4 months later, she left me for dead.

our lives are often beset with rude awakenings, deceit, unfulfilled expectations, ridicule, and sloth....

depends on whether or not you're successful in landing a very generous buyer....

or what many in the automobile enthusiast world might call, for lack of a better term; a sucker.

in the last few years, we've probably had 10~20 part outs on this forum of 100% good~perfectly running 944Ts. !!
if we add one particular LA chop-shop to the list – that number easily triples.

in the case of the 944, often, the most significant source of $$$ to accomplish the nearly impossible
task you speak of above, is found literally on this prison island of junk car swap meet enthusiasts.

in the real world, the price and the market is not set by jackwagon sellers with stacks of rap sheets....

–but by the what the buyer is willing to pay.

I've been spewing upside down numbers for flagship and collectable 911s vs 944s for years on this forum.

but, I've been unable to identify any car in existence that trumps the Porsche 924 in the upside down context....

not even the 80s/90s Lotus' and 60s/70s Jag E-types rise to such pitiful levels as the 924 and 924S.

I don't wish to flame owners of these cool cars, or harm in particular, 1 fellow R-Lister who recently departed the forums, but, I did an
informal data crunching on his 924, and came up with some number between 12~13: 1 money in/money out/upside down/final tally.

unfortunately, the silliness is not limited to the 924; is someone going to pay me $90,000 to drive a 190mph 968?

no chance in hell.


before prices on the air-cooled 911s really shot up (say, like 2010~2012), guys were doing resto's, driving the cars
and recoup'ing near 100% of their total investments at re-sale time.

eventually the money out numbers began to balloon to multiples of their original investments (think 2012~present).

but today, that market is probably at near peak.

unfortunately, this type of pleasant scenario has never been true for our 924s, 944s, 944Ts and 968s.

some have even gone as far as to say, our cars are cursed.

as a person who's archived nearly every project on this forum dating back about 7~8 years, I'm convinced the grim reaper
and the boogieman are not only active forum members – but they have a sick sense of humor.

be careful.

V996

I've never seen someone more out to lunch than Otto.

I mean the car OP talked about wasn't even a pristine example. The door handle and the sunroof don't work. The seats and leather around the stick are torn. He doesn't know when the clutch was replaced (KIND of a big deal....). He didn't say anything about the outside of the car but it's probably not 100%.



I guess these cars are just severely underpriced?

http://allentown.craigslist.org/cto/4978476769.html

http://annarbor.craigslist.org/cto/4965861495.html (sport seats)

http://peoria.craigslist.org/cto/4995653829.html

http://honolulu.craigslist.org/mau/cto/4944119362.html - This ad says it all - "This is a great car! I don't know why I have to offer it for such a low price to get it sold but here it is so come and get it!"

THE CAR IS WORTH WHAT THE MARKET IS WILLING TO PAY. ECONOMICS 101! As long as supply is high (it is) and there are a low amount of buyers who are informed, the price will stay low. Now if all 924S owners have an epiphany and just don't want to sell their cars, and there are collectors who desperately want a 924S, then yes the prices will go up! But the odds of that happening are extremely low. There just aren't enough people who appreciate the 924. If well cared for 924s are suddenly worth $8000, that means a well cared for 944 would go up to $12000, a well cared for 951 would go up to $15000, and a well cared for 968 would go up to $25000. Meanwhile there are bonafide, air cooled 911s that you can get right now for $35000 which have far, FAR more sentimental value from an affluent crowd. The typical person who buys a 924S isn't the type who can drop 10k cash on an old lesser known car. They're just not. A lot of the ones I've met aren't diehard Porsche fans like us. They just want something fun that they can beat up on. As long as those owners exist the 924S will never be worth a ton of money. We have to wait until the supply of these cars is extremely low (due to these negligent owners) and out of the hands of people who don't really appreciate them.

Otto Mechanic

Hardly illogical Harry and reducing the argument to the absurd doesn't help.

Consumables are consumables, but even some of those should be listed and considered to add value to a car. New brake pads fall into that category as do rotors and clutches. Since there are (occasionally significant) labor and parts costs associated with them, they do in fact add value to a used car.

There's a great deal of spread in the prices of used cars, if that weren't true then the OP would not have asked the question. Some buying decisions are based on personal preference, however I think even playing Devil's advocate you'll have to agree that the level of restoration in a car is a major factor in determining its value. It would be downright silly to assume that a car with a brand new clutch in it was worth as much as a car that had 50,000 miles on the clutch; both cars are functional, both can be driven, they aren't worth the same.

This is an absurd argument. If the seller wants to set the asking price based on the cost of parts recently installed in the car, that is not only reasonable, it's common. It would be misleading if not downright disingenuous to say otherwise.

Can the OP purchase a used car that doesn't have those restorations? Of course. Would such a car cost less? Probably. Could the OP purchase a used car and then purchase and install the parts listed for less money? Not unless the seller paid too much for the parts. It's that simple.

This should be so obvious it isn't worth discussing. You can realistically assume that a car built in 1986 that has been restored to showroom floor condition can command the original sales price of the car adjusted for inflation. The price then goes up from there depending on the rarity (i.e. collector's value) of the car if it exists, but it is never cheaper to buy a car that has been restored to any degree than it is to buy one that hasn't been (unless of course the seller is totally clueless). That's economics.

If the OP doesn't want that car because they consider the restoration unnecessary, there are other cars. Dealers have option packages for this reason. There's no difference in the aftermarket.


And FWIW I once bought a 931 (924 turbo) with 60K miles on it for $3000 from someone who didn't know the difference between a 924 and a 931. Sometimes we get lucky. That doesn't mean the car was only worth $3000, it means the guy selling it was a fool. These things happen.

Otto Mechanic

Your writing style is right up there with your reading comprehension.

If the fellow has receipts for all of the parts that have been installed in the car, and those receipts total $7700, he is well within the realm of asking a fair price for the car. If that isn't true, then it isn't. Notice the predicate.

You want to argue with that? Try. It's not going to work and what you've written is horribly naive; no one sells something for less than they paid for it unless they're desperate. If the car was taken from stock condition to, for example, make it into something the owner felt was an improvement on the original design, it becomes a very different story. Race builds fall into this category as do "funny" cars and hot rods. That doesn't appear to be the case here.

If you think you can buy a fully restored 924S for less than $16,800 be my guest. Find one and maybe we can have some sort of meaningful conversation. If your sole purpose is to demonstrate for ignorance you're doing a bang up job.

I said the receipts should be checked. If the guy has real receipts for real parts that are really in the car and he paid $7700 for those parts, and plans to sell the car for the price of parts alone, it's a good deal. It isn't hard.

Otto Mechanic

I wish I could say I'd never seen (or actually read the words and advice of) someone more arrogant than yourself, however I'd be lying. You're definitely among the top 20 though.

Otto Mechanic

Did IQ's drop sharply while I was out of the room?

A well cared for 944 does go for $12,000, in fact I've recently seen well cared for 944s go as high as $22 to $27,000. A well cared for 951 will go from between $20 and $35K. I've seen 944 Cabriolets sell between $27 and $35K within the past year. Can you buy cheaper cars? Certainly. Will you get what you pay for? Maybe.

Buying a "maintained" car of any of those types might run 50% less, a car that runs and has under 200,000 miles on it can be had for $2 to $5K, but a realistic person should expect to put somewhere between $5 and $10K into it within the first year.

Your 968? You might find one for $15K if you wait long enough, most start around $18K and go up from there. Yes, they do sell in the $25K and above range depending on the level of restoration.

And that's about all the value they have. 911s are viciously tail-happy underpowered cars that tend towards front end lift-off, uncontrollable pedal off over-steer (an upbeat euphemism for spinning wildly out of control when you take your foot off the gas in a corner) and they look like squashed snails. The only thing that endears them to my generation is the fact we've all almost died in one at least once If you put enough power in a 911 you get a 930, which is a truly gorgeous car that will kill you in half the time.

To ignorance and arrogance I think we can safely add snobbery...

Priced a 914 lately?

Otto Mechanic

As usual, prose poetry at its very best

67King

odurandina

"THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BAY OF PIGS!!!"

–Richard Helms to H.R. Haldeman after Haldeman told him Nixon had instructed him to tell the Director, 'this would open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing....'

Otto Mechanic

Harry, you just don't get out enough! You need to hang with a better class of people. Ask V996 to introduce you around...

Otto Mechanic

Od, why are you wearing that toy on your head?

odurandina

........