When looking for mine, I found that manual's are worth more...coupes worth more. Coupes with manuals...even more. Coupes with manuals and sports seats, shifter and chrono (like mine)? Yikes, whatever someone is asking...

The dealer I bought mine from mistakenly marked mine as a PDK in his website marketing software, which threw it all over the internet as a PDK (cargurus, ebay, autotrader, etc) rather than a manual. I actually looked at the pictures of it by dumb luck and was like, "whoa", that's not a PDK.

I'm convinced that this was the error that made it available for me to buy it. He'd had it for weeks, and I never mentioned the mistake to him.

 

Those prices were too good to be true, then I saw they were PDK. 997's are hot right now so you have to ready to pounce immediately especially if checks all of your boxes. There are dealerships that will buy it with a full price and move it their collection.

 

Thank you - that's so very close - a little more $$ than I want to spend and the wrong silver but thank you for the find.

Car has a perfect history but they salt the roads heavily in Chicago.

It seems that 2010 is the sweet spot for me and my budget.

 

That is a sweet targa. Would be better if it had the sport design steering wheel... but otherwise awesome color combo.

 

Since I live 90 miles away, I have purchased several cars from the Chicago area. I would not buy another. Aside from the salt damage, most low mileage cars have spent their lives in heavy urban traffic on horrible streets. It is not uncommon to find cars with 30K miles with suspension that is shot. You will also find the Illinois DMV is very slow. Accidents don't show up on Carfax for a considerable amount of time.

 

Thank you for your input and I agree. The last time I was in Chicago (about 2 yrs ago) I was shocked by how bad the roads are. Didn't know about the IL DMV but it makes sense with everything else I know about the rust belt.

 

I have a beater I use for a daily driver because downtown Milwaukee streets are just as bad as Chicago's and we probably use more salt. My beater is a 2006 Mini Cooper, also purchased from Chicago, but the mileage is low (70k) and the price was right. But, the struts are shot, it's a terrible rust bucket and I just replaced the steering. In other words, a typical Chicago car. My 2009 Carrera S has 15K fewer miles, is 3 years newer and came from California. If you put these two cars side by side, you would swear there was an age difference of 40 years!

 

I agree the market seems very hot, especially for 997.2 manual coupes. I just finished a 6-month search and ended up with a low-mileage (23,500) and lightly optioned 2009 Carrera S coupe that was listed for $53K. Thankfully, it was located only a couple of hours from my house, so I saw it 2 days after it was listed, left a deposit for the seller to hold it while I arranged for a PPI and then closed the deal one week later. From my observations, it seems that low-mileage, mint 997 manual coupes priced under $60K sell very quickly. I am only two weeks into ownership, but as a long-time BMW driver, the clutch, shifter and steering feel seem perfect to me and on a completely different level than the BMWs I've driven. Very happy with the purchase.