aarrow

Instead of focusing solely on pristine low mileage 993's, I'd channel more energy towards the "custom shop" side you mentioned. I don't know what the current inventory is, but my guess would be there's more higher mileage - rough around the edges, examples for sale than garage queens. You wouldn't have to pay premium for those. I also see a younger crowd coming into the market for older P-cars (look up "rotiform porsche"). A 993 that's been lowered and already equipped with aftermarket goodies would catch their eye faster than a 100% stock example. Think Scion, and how they marketed their cars at a low base price which left room to add personal touches.

XR4Tim

This is the big thing, IMO. To make a reasonable profit, you need to get a good deal on your cars. While there are 993 deals to be had, they don't come up that often, and they are snatched up VERY quickly (often times by one of the other dealers you've mentioned). Also remember that 993 buyers can be very picky about price. Just look at some of the for-sale threads any time someone asks $60k+ for a non-turbo.
If you have access to a large pool of 993s priced under market that the rest of us don't know about, you'll be able to make it work for a while.

MGibilisco

Ok, I had my dealer's license, insurance, a website, and a passion for cars and tried diligently to make a go of buying and selling two things I love:
-AC Porsches
-older Toyota pickups/4runners/FJ's

You will never be able to source enough good inventory to make this feasible, unless you know of a hidden source of cars and have a gigantic bank account.

Finding clean older tacomas is like panning for gold, finding clean older AC 911's is like panning for gold and then having to wrestle all the other 49'ers who saw the same nugget.

I've been looking for years for my personal 993 example and have endured multiple cases of heartache and outright rage having been beaten out by dealers who buy these things within minutes of coming on the market and then add 10k to the price. 99.9% impossible.

Open the tuning shop and do a few example cars to drum up biz, if you come across some nice stuff to sell along the way, awesome.

JoeFromPA

Wow, this is really fascinating feedback. Realizing too that most (but not all) comments are coming from opinion and not personal experience, it's still very consistent feedback.

My buddy, the artist, would want to do more of the custom shop stuff. I urged him to consider forming a baseline business to provide early and steady income (i.e. buying and selling a niche P-car with a high enough base price that at 10-15% margins you can earn a living).

Now I'm curious if I had it backwards and the focus should be more on the creation of something unique....hmm, something to consider.

bobt993

Joe, I can offer personal experience in your area considering I am around the corner. I think your underestimating the competition of the Philly market. I like your passion and interest, but the market you are seeking is fragmented among a list of existing well experienced race shops in the area: Dougherty Automotive, Vintage Motorsports, Possum Hollow, Performance Automotive, Fabspeed, Porsche of the Mainline, Holt, Tillsons Motorcars, AWE Tuning and a bit further down the road Dawe. (that's the short list). If you are not familiar with all of these and their various famous owner/operators then do some more research. The staff from these shops includes Penske engineers, ALMS and Grand Am builders, pro racers, etc. I can also tell you that a certain member of this elite group started a very big performance race parts business backed by a good 10 mill and they eventually closed the doors.

If your interested in putting together a profitable business then start small with a couple cool project cars (2). Build them and do a nice web based presentation of the results. When they sell at a profit move onto the next 2, but keep it limited at first. Their is a ton of super talented engine builders, fabricators around your area that are great at what they do, but not good business people. If you want to focus on 993s then keep it very small and simple.

Not wanting shed rain, but give a bit of caution. I wish you luck and success.

NC TRACKRAT

First of all, I admire your good taste in selecting 993's above all the others. That brings me to my next question: Who's got the expertise? Not having owned one, how will you know which to buy and which to pass on? Who's going to do the work? Will you farm it out or does your prospective partner still have his shop? Is he experienced in 993's? I guess what I'm getting at here is you may have a pretty steep learning curve to overcome and, should you pick some bad apples, it could be very expensive.
Also, who's going to travel to buy cars? Or do you just figure that folks will come to you? If so, as has been suggested, you're going to get in a bidding war and the cost of cars will go up.
IMHO, you really need to set yourself apart from just being a dealer in 993's. I think, as others have suggested, if your buddy is a renaissance man, you two should become an East Coast version of Singer...only at a fraction of the cost of theirs. Do your own interpretations and sell them and also let customers bring their cars to you and you transform the cars to their wish. In that manner, you add content rather than simply marking up a car that you've purchased.

nycarrera

I also think you should go in the direction of an east coast Singer. There are a lot of inventory available that can be customized to an available pre-programed set spec. For example, who wouldnt in their right mind not want something like this:
http://mightymotormedia.com/download...vo-porsche.pdf
People want things but simply do not have the skills to produce them and one offs are too expensive.

vincer77

1. Do you have any experience in the automotive business?
2. Why is your buddies shop "winding down?"

Used car salesmen didn't get their stereotype for nothing. A used Porsche salesmen is still a used car salesmen - sorry if I am offending anyone.

I started Carobu Engineering which specializes in hot rodding Ferraris. We specialized in older cars - initially carburetted cars, then more recently in CIS cars. We sold/sell (I am no longer in the business) aftermarket parts for all Ferraris and other Italian makes (www.carobu.com).

We have been relatively successful, but found that our initial niche was too small, and there must be many more carburetted Ferraris than 993s. We did not get involved in buying and selling other than a few cars here and there because it is a cut-throat business and takes a special kind of person ;-). We were screwed more than once by "car dealers."

This is a tough business. tread lightly.

il pirata

[QUOTE=JoeFromPA;10199905 Realizing too that most (but not all) comments are coming from opinion and not personal experience, it's still very consistent feedback.
[/QUOTE]

Actually knowing a number of people here personally there is a LOT of business experience floating around on this forum...listen carefully. I have been involved in three startups....one bootstrapped the other two Venture Capital funded...as well as helping run larger companies. No one is trying to stop your dream...just saying keep your eyes wide open.

UserA

You should have a long talk with the people that you are going to be competing with. Tim at Holt, who by the way should not be lumped into your group of Victory and Sloan, Phil at Performance Automotive and John at Doughertys will paint you a less than rosy picture of the Porsche Enthusiast as a client as well as the state of the industry in general.

These are all guys with a 30 Year head start in the business and who have built up a following over time and still have issues with the dollars and cents of this business.

Finally, as far as all of us giving feedback without first hand knowledge, 95% of us have attempted to find nice clean 993s and can attest that you need to look at 6-7 before you find a good one. I have bought 4 993s over ten years and can tell you that they do not grow on trees.

race911

I'm going to go straight for the track thing, since all of you above have hit, hit, and hit again why this is beyond a longshot.

So I'll go ahead and say it: only a small percentage of 993s are ever used on track beyond pony trot pace, and honestly they aren't a very good track car until you get to the stupid end of prep. And if you're presented with that car, overwhelmingly the driver is experienced across so many platforms (911 or whatever) that it really doesn't matter what you're belted into. (In other words, you look at data for anything in the same HP/WT ratio with equal tires and they're all pretty much the same.)

Best of luck getting to where you want to go, but as said above with Daugherty (they are the ones that closed the catalog business right?), if I've got $10M to burn I'll buy some commercial real estate and use to net to run a hobby hangout place where everyone's welcome, and a little work gets done. Which is kinda what I anticipate happening next year, sans the $10M in property............

producerjohn

Wow, I don't think you have any idea how difficult the car business really is, and I also don't think you even realize that you're getting into the car business. It seems like the romanticism of selling only 993's makes you think that it's fundamentally different. Well, I'm here to say that it doesn't.

Sure, Magnus Walker has become a legend, but he admits that he's not in it for the money. His Porsche "business" is supported by a successful clothing line and film locations business.

The Magnus/Singer model works because they are building custom cars. It's completely at odds with the idea of selling clean, unmolested, factory 993's.
If you were to start building custom one off 993's and get a following, then the value of what you're selling is what you're brand has created. That is, a clean, unmolested, factory 73 911 may be worth say $50k (idk) but if it's had the Magnus treatment, it's now worth $150k.

You on the other hand want to buy 993's from the same market everyone else is buying from and then turn around and sell them for more with no value added. Good luck with that.

pmo75

Just become the East coast Magnus walker. This country has two coasts, work that to your advantage.

JoeFromPA

Hi guys,

The last few posts have turned a bit negative and I want to try to put a stop to one thing: I posted early on that some posters were offering personal opinion and some professional - and both jived. That was deliberately not maligning the professional/business experience of all posters: It was showing respect to both people without industry-specific experience and those with, especially considering the opinions were similar and not divergent.

...

One thing I think a few have missed here: I was not looking to generate income from this endeavor (at least upfront) for myself. I'm not looking at this as some sort of lucrative business venture. I want it to be profitable, of course - but I don't need it to support me.

Also, I've spoken with the owner of Dougherty and I think I'll take the suggestion of speaking with Holt as well!

Quadcammer

easier said than done unfortunately