@chicagomarketing I just took the time to read your last report. Kudos to you.
I found your previous analyses had a wide margin for interpretation but this last post... that's investigative journo level. Very well done.
It's an unfortunate commentary of the level of rot going on in the US right now, at least in so far as this little niche is concerned. I felt dirty just reading it.
I'm not in the US and ADMs are illegal in my country. But if I was in the US and buying, I'm not sure what it would change for me.
For me to acquire a car, I have to come to a price that will be agreed to by the seller and if someone is willing to pay more than me, I'd be left without a car.
It comes back to elasticity of price: so long as there are people willing to pay artificially inflated prices, that's where the market is and what buyers have to pay, regrettably.
It doesn't take away from the brilliant work you've done. I hope this lands in the hands of the righ tperson at PAG and PCNA, and I'm sure simply posting it here, it will.
Thank you for the deep dive and for sharing it here. Again, kudos.

 

100% this ^ I was thinking this. If the value is there, and the market at large will pay then why go through all the tomfoolery?

For example - I'm a customer tomorrow if I can get a configurable allocation at MSRP full stop. If a dealer is reading this, just DM me. But 350k option heavy WP PTS cars don't really interest me.

 

Great job Chicago Marketing!!

 

This ^ is the right question to ask - it is not about the the cars, ADM's, or artificially inflating prices - its all about using the system for laundering money!

 

Agree with others. That was great investigative work @chicagomarketing . I think you are better at investigative work than market analysis. Is chicagoinvestigative taken? I kid....somewhat.

Anyway, I'm in it for the long haul so the current market doesn't mean much to me. I'm not waiting around to see if ADMs drop or go away, only to miss out building my own GT3. Appreciate the work and effort that went into this!

 

The more I think about this situation, with the dealerships using BAT to artificially inflate prices,

the more I realize they are SCREWING Porsche over themselves. They are creating an artificial marketplace for markups to cut Porsche as a company out of their profits.

Porsche should be LIVID with the dealerships for doing this. The dealerships are ruining the perception of the brand, and raking in lots of money for themselves that Porsche is missing out on.

And of course, the honest Porsche enthusiasts are suffering from this as well because they don't have access to cars that are instead being horded by dealers and sold to speculators and flippers with deep pockets.

Porsche should cut dealers out of this completely like Tesla did; that would prevent a lot of these shenanigans, allow them to reap most if not all of the profits, and allow the actual drivers and enthusiasts to buy the product at a decent price.

 

oh it’s crashing. In plain sight. If some folks choose ignore then it is on them.
The dealers and PCNA have treated their customers with contempt and as dirty ATM machines the past 5-6 years.
it is crashing down. Right now.
Nobody should be paying any ADM right now.
2026 is going to fascinating to watch.

 

nope. Porsche and PCNA have quietly encouraged this behavior. They think ADM and “false scarcity” is good for the brand. They think making customers feel “privileged” to be given an allocation will make the customer feel special. They think ADM add to the lure of exclusivity.
yes, in the long run it will, and is, destroying the brand.
Have you seen their financial results and sales volume?
it is going to get worse.

you ever shopped at an Hermes store? Or a Patek Philippe store? You feel dirty after you leave. They think it’s good brand marketing, The customer, however, just feels dirty. It ends badly…

 

I know you're joking, but the absolute number of billionaires is too small to make any difference for the Porsche GT car market. There may be enough multi-millionaires interested in these cars to keep the demand high. Hence no crash on the Porsche GT cars. The people hoping for a crash may be mostly people who are stretching to buy one of these cars.

 

Chicagomarketing.

excellent job. Keep calling out the fake facade of this charade.
Some of us know this all to be true. Others choose to willfully ignore it, or are part of the “game”.

 

Wow. Impressive and fascinating analysis @chicagomarketing . Nice work. I'm not even close to some of the big dog whales on these forums, but I bought a few Porsches over the years, and GT3s recently. Anyone paying attention could tell some of this was going on. But you bring a whole different level of clarity.

That said, NONE of these games work, if there are not end customers - like us, who are willing to pay the higher prices. About a year ago I bought another 992.1 GT3 Touring. The price, at around $300K OTD was unbelievable to me. Especially given I paid a LOT less, including a little ADM, for basically the same car about 3 years ago. And that one was a brand new car I got to spec! But I wanted another 992 Touring, so that's what I was going to have to pay. Period. You'll just have to take my word for it that I didn't over pay. I shopped the country, and negotiated hard (I'm a little weird, but it's fun to me). Including walking away from cars I liked because the dealer wouldn't play ball.

Could what you describe be influencing - inflating - the market? Sure, but I can't imagine it's a ton. Like every market it's almost all about Buyers and Sellers. And by buyers I mean the people who are actually going to drive the cars. As many, including me a few years ago, have already said, $200K for a 992 GT3 was a steal. There's just literally NO real alternative to a car like it anywhere. I'll skip the why's because they've already been stated a million times, but you know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. And Porsche knows it. "Influencers" and a broader buyer/driver profile certainly played a role. So, unlike 99% of new cars, prices went up. A lot. And Porsche added a big price increase for the .2.

I believe what you described is mostly driven by a desire to avoid the wrath of Porsche for charging more than MSRP for a car, not market manipulation. I also believe we've now sailed passed bargain into a world where GT3s are at best "fairly" priced if not at least a bit over priced. Whether or not prices are about to crash soon, who knows. But crash feels like too strong a word to me. I absolutely love (lots of snide remarks from my wife about the car vs her) my car and do my best not to look back.

 

I think this is all basically correct. I think Porsche GT car prices stay where they do because there's literally no substitute. BMW, AMG, Audi, etc. are nice, but Porsche GT cars are a different category. Exotics are also a different category for many reasons - prices, flashiness, sparse dealer network, etc. Porsche non-GT cars are also nice, but they're not NA, high redline, light, designed for heavy track use. 992 3RS is so good that nothing else really compares. Porsche is pushing prices up on these cars to what they think the market will bear, and it turns out that the market will bear a lot.

 

I felt dirty and wanted to take a shower after just talking to the last few Porsche salesmen near me about a Turbo S allocation... This wasn't even a GT car!'

Some of them are just shameless and don't even try to hide it.

 

I was starting to catch on to this as well when looking at the Maserati MC20 market.. glad you shared the data you discovered. Thanks for the leg work.

Same things happening with the Swiss watch market (Rolex, AP, Patek, etc) for sever years now

 

@chicagomarketing I’ve thought a lot about your analysis. After reading your post, I felt dirty. A day later I still feel dirty. It seems like some dealers are attempting to fix prices. BAT is often used as one way to see what cars are worth and can help set the market. This thing with the gt3 seems like a huge scam.

given: gt3 hot commodity

the play: dealer has a certain number of allocations but isn’t really allowed to charge adm or at least it’s frowned upon. So they figure out a way to juice profits. They sell to an independent dealer or a network of dealers who in turn sell for “market value” to the general public.

the grift: a few cars get put up on bat. That helps set the “value”. Some go directly to dealers after the sale who try and squeeze more profit. Some go to the public. Either way a floor is set on pricing and people deduce this is the market price.

the kickback: the dealer like in Vegas always wins. In this case, the original selling dealer sells to independent and for that privilege, the Indy kicks back a predetermined cash amount to the selling dealer. For you guys who are into watches, this is the same play that happens with Rolex Daytonas and Patek Philippe nautiluses. I would be shocked if a single red cent gets reported as taxable income.

the losers: us. Truly. We car enthusiasts pay silly money for our obsession and for good reason. We love all things cars and many of us have bent into pretzels to get whatever car we are after. In this case we end up paying even more money for a car we love due to the quality learing center of dealer malice.

am I a conspiracy theorist? Maybe. But the documented trail of dodgy ownership still leaves me disgusted. Just my 2c