groovzilla

Correct Answer: Not enough

sandwedge

And as I've kept repeating, there seems to be two separate markets for Porsche now. One which is dominated by PDK buyers and then a small segment of manual buyers. So it should come as no surprise that the manuals get a premium given the small number of manuals having been built since 2009. The small number of "must be manual" buyers are basically getting into price wars over the few cars available while the PDK buyers could care less. They have no interest in a manual any longer and there are plenty of PDK cars available compared to manuals so no price wars or inflated prices needed or created.

Another thing I've wondered about. With the manuals becoming so hard to find in the used market (not exactly news) and priced higher than PDK's, why haven't the die hard manual buyers ordered new cars from the dealerships to the exact specs they wanted instead of fighting over the few cars that comes on the used market? A manual from the factory has always been cheaper than a PDK which carried a $4,500 premium last I checked.

In other words, in what seems like a lot of cases they could have bought a brand new manual to their exact specs for less than a low mile used one. Maybe not in precise dollar amount depending on miles and condition but based on prices for manuals posted here it sure seems like the gap between MSRP and used is closing if it hasn't already.

bluelines1974

So your argument is now that manual 997.2 buyers should go back in time 14 years and order a new car to their desired specs? And that the desirability of manuals on the used market isn’t real because you personally don’t think the price premium makes sense?

Aside from these bizarre arguments, if it was actually true that the PDK was really more desirable, the greater numbers on the used market wouldn’t matter since there would be a proportionally similar or greater ratio of buyers to sellers. Again, the obvious point is that the used market for a car that has been out of production for more than a decade is different than the market for the same car when it was new.

Prairiedawg

Over 40% is not a small percentage.

cvalue13

in addition to what blueline / prairie point out in the two above posts, indicating your thinking seems to have a couple of wrong turns

here’s another confounding issue:

because manuals are priced higher than PDK and fewer are available in the market, there’s no reason to think a given buyer has purchased a manual only because they they couldn’t find a cheaper and available PDK

but the inverse should be true: a given buyer that wants a manual can end up settling on a PDK for either financial or available config reasons


which is to say, it’s not clear that you can casually infer that every person buying a PDK 997 does so because they prefer a PDK unit, all else equal

but it’s pretty clear, by market conditions, that people buying manual 997s prefer it

bluelines1974

Probably beating a dead horse here, but I also think that the 6MT manual in the 997 is a much nicer transmission than the 7MT in the 991.1 and 991.2. The shift action / throw length never felt quite right, and seven gears was always one too many. I haven't driven a 992 manual, so can't comment on that. By contrast, the PDK has clearly improved with each generation.

Busta Rib

There is a big reason why the 991/992 manuals feel different than a 997 manual. Besides the extra 7th gear, the 991/992 stick shift is fundamentally different than the 997 stick shift, which is one of the last of the traditional transmissions with a direct mechanical linkage from shift lever to transmission to enable shift changes (991/992 GT 6-spd manuals are still direct linkage, which is one of the reasons why they feel so good). The 991/992 7-spd stick shift is actually "shift-by-wire" with a software abstraction layer controlling the shifts, similar to PDK trannys. Porsche basically adapted the PDK transmission and added a stick shift and clutch pedal, which is why it has 7 gears and you can flat-foot (shift without using the clutch) shifts. You can read about it here: https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews...ual-enjoyment/

bluelines1974

Interesting, I feel like I was vaguely aware of some of this, but good to have it clarified. Another reason why the 997.2 is "peak 911" in my mind at least.

ATX_Native

When I was searching for my 997.2 Manual 4 years ago there was only 3-4 manual C2/C2S coupes at any given time on the wider market in the entire US.

9 times out of 10 when I got an alert that a new manual had popped up on Cargurus, Autotrader and Cars.com, it was a PDK car.

If I hade to guess the number is somewhere between 10-15% are Manual of all of the C2/C2S cars from my experience.

Prairiedawg

It's already been answered above ^^^^.

It's >40%.

ATX_Native

Didn’t realize that had been settled as I tuned out when it was being discussed that only the GTS cars were known.

That’s a crazy high number from what I was experiencing on the market back in 2020, so I guess manual owners are more satisfied / holding on to them.

Maybe PDK buyers as a whole get them for commuting and over time they find a better car for that mission?

While manual cars are occasional cars that sit in garages more or are traded less, who knows.

There are some bonkers pricing on the 997.2 manuals on the market right now on national sites.

Ironically the only one that has a decent price is from Porsche San Fran on a cream color car.

bluelines1974

It has not been settled. Unless someone does the exercise of querying all the VIN data, or Porsche releases an official breakdown, we don't know.

It does not seem likely that the GTS numbers would be the same as the non-GTS cars.

groovzilla

Lets all be happy the 997 Manual Transmission is nothing like the early 911 915 Transmission which was sloppy and 100%of them had Syncro failures and needed replacing.
997 Manual Transmission a wonderful advancement.

soundbehindyou

If you are a PCA member....the next time the magazine comes out....look at the PDK vs Manual Trans 997's for sale....(granted not all for sale are in the magazine each month, but the number of manuals trends closer to 20%

Ironman88

What is the source of this information?