ursine22

I hate for my first post to blow off steam but here goes:
I retired recently from the faculty here and have wanted to reward myself with a used 2020 S,
I have bookmarked all the used car search engines and check them daily.
While I have noticed several cars with Carfaxes showing many return visits to the service departments, I'm blown away to find 5 "title issue" (buybacks?) on Edmunds today.
https://www.edmunds.com/inventory/sr...sc&year=2020-*
(Look under the mileage to see the "title issue" in orange).
Investigating them I noticed one dealer had yet another 2020 buyback in the inventory and a slightly different search showed yet another in Atlanta.
I wrote a different search engine asking why they had noted the car as a "great deal" so checked back to find they solved the issue by removing the link to the Carfax.
One is marked as electrical issues: instrument cluster/speakers. (I am aware of the recall on the speakers). Another is marked "ACC failure" A few (non-recall) cars seem to have repeated wheel/tire issues.

I'm disturbed the Porsche doesn't mark their PEC cars as such so I have had to guess if they had under 5K miles, were owned by a "Financial Company," to have slick roofs and PDCC. Asking one dealer point blank they say they "don't know" and a call to Porsche customer service won't clarify the mystery. Even a call to the service dept with the VIN won't help.

Yet more frustration using the Porsche finder that still shows a that the dealer said was a salesman said was sold a year ago. After reporting the error to the both the sales manager and Customer Service it still hasn't gotten it pulled yet.
https://finder.porsche.com/us/en_US/...rrera-S-144858

phaser

This is damn scary, been looking at pre owned 2020 911s also. Just missed one at our local Mercedes dealer. GT silver 5k miles.

drcollie

There are a couple of issues with buying a lemon car you should know about.

1) No one will finance them. You may be able to pay cash for one, but when you go to trade it in or sell it in four years, it's still a car that no lender will loan on, which means your buying pool is sharply diminished and most dealers won't take a trade in on it.

2) No change of getting a warranty on a lemon car.

I bought a lemon-buy-back BMW once, took a terrible beating on price when I sold it which took several months to do.

ursine22

They finally sold it? I'd been trying to sell myself on it for weeks. It was a lease return to Naples and they passed it to Bonita where it sat and sat even with weekly 1K price drops... and it was cheaper than the lemons listed on Edmunds. Guess Naples must have gotten burned on the C2 they had all summer. Check out the history of that poor guy. I even saw it listed at a Maserati dealer there.
https://www.carfax.com/VehicleHistor...&partner=DON_0

ipse dixit

I don't understand this post.

ryanlsmith

Not sure I follow. Are you complaining about cars you aren’t interested in?

ldamelio

Apparently so. In the second line, he told us he's an academic. Lots of thinking, little doing. A practical mind would note that certain cars are undesirable, pass on them, and move on to execute the purchase of an acceptable one.

Tanqueray86

You’d be surprised how dumb some “academics” or “professors” are. I know because I’ve worked with many.

ldamelio

My point exactly. I was in academic surgery for 10 years. Few of my peers could operate with a modicum of technical skill; most of the research was misguided and futile and lots of grant money went to buying iPads that went home for their kids to play video games. Most meaningful scientific progress comes from private industry these days. Look to the Covid vaccines as an example.

OttawaSteve

I don't understand the whole idea. I would think that a pool of very recent (2020) used cars would include a pretty substantial number of lemons. There aren't that many reasons to get rid of a new car.

Keadog

Anecdotally, I believe this is fairly common in medicine.
Those who can, do.
Of course, there are clearly brilliant and talented academic physicians. I have know several in my career. But merely being in academic medicine guarantees neither intellectual talent nor technical skill.

As to the cars, yes, just a hard pass.

phaser

This so true.
So many of these "professors" are little more than Liberal products of the educational system and have no where else to go other than the front of a classroom. They see the world through a lens of how things should be and are generally hopelessly out of touch with how things transpire in the real world.
Rodney Dangerfield nailed it with his performance in "Back to School" when he sparred with the idealistic business class professor.

ipse dixit

How did this post go from an unintelligible rant about used 2020 911s to a meme on bashing academicians?

Rennlist is the gift that keeps on giving.

3rdpedal

Ah yes, it really is!

ldamelio

Guilty as charged. Usually, I try to stay out of the Rennlist feeding frenzies. A little bored today so I stirred the pot for the hell of it.