bluelines1974

Love the Albert Blue. Not sure about the seats. Weird that it was ordered with the base audio system, but I guess you don’t need music with that wailing 4.0 at 9,000 rpm.

cvalue13

I also like TH quite a lot.

And agree that they’re as near as can be to peak Rop Gear entertainment, without too blatantly attempting to recreate Top Gear, unlike a lot of the other options out there.

you just can’t replicate peak Top Gear, without coming up awkwardly short

but TH has their own shtick to enough of a degree that it scratches a similar itch

sandwedge

No doubt. I know an attorney in town who's been buying factory new Turbo S cars from the dealership on an almost yearly basis or at worst, every other year. He gets whatever he wants when he wants it with some limitations. But he's clearly at the top of the list or near the top and gets priority treatment. I asked him once why he keeps trading in cars with typically less than 15K miles on them. His answer: " I like change. I get bored with the same thing for too long". Never mind that he's lived in the same house for almost 30 years now. Go figure.

cvalue13

Possible here that he fails to mention that he can drive it for one year, then sell it on the secondary market for ~$20-40K more than he bought it for, which after taxes and everything effectively keeps him driving a brand new Turbo S for less than the net cost of a leased Lexus.


Which is a market opportunity available only to the rare bird who has the right relationship with a dealer.


To that point: is this guy among the VIP 918 buyers?

(For those not aware, generally and in short, back when the 918 came out Porsche offered a deal to juice sales of the 918 that if you bought a 918 and kept it at least six months, you would have first right on any new allocations of other models. Those that took them up on it, have ever since been able to eg simply hold up a finger, buy a new GT3 RS, and then plop it on the secondary market for premium … over and over again. I’ve heard Porsche is trying to shut this program down but I’m not clear on why it’s hard to - or that Porsche is really motivated to. Here’s a time capsule of a thread from back in 2015 when this was beginning to take shape: https://rennlist.com/forums/991-gt3-gt3rs-gt2rs-and-911r/863275-rs-allocations-given-to-918-buyers.html)

bluelines1974

I think the 918 program was 10 years - ie next year they no longer qualify for allocations of any new model.

When I enquired about getting a Sport Classic (not super seriously), the dealer showed me the allocations they had. All had gone to 918 customers.

cvalue13

a 10-year run of casual to side-hustle flipping … not a bad gig if you can get it

bluelines1974

The zero option white Dakar that sold on BaT last year is probably the best example of this. Almost certainly ordered by a 918 guy who had the allocation, and just spent two minutes over email saying "white, no options," in exchange for a clean $120k profit. I don't think I've ever seen a Porsche with zero options before.

Benlavigne

Another explanaton I see of the demand for manuals now vs when they were new is that when new, a lot were used as regular everyday cars, so the automatic was preferred, but as used vehicles, they are now seen more as weekend toys, so the commodity of the automatic is not as important, vs the pleasure of manually shifting gears?

Ben

sandwedge

That I don't know but good possibility. He''s dropped a lot of money at this dealership and as I said, seems to get whatever he wants when he wants it.

Carrera2RS

I guess we still don't know if it's 20% or 40%, but I can say the manual 997.2 % for sale in the UK is definitely not 40% ! So I seriously doubt the answer is 40%

Right now 111 automatic 997.2 for sale and 12 manual (excluding GT3's), I think it could easily be below 20%

Prairiedawg

The 40% number would be for North American cars.

da Vinci Dan

Very hard to find C2S or C4S coupes in with a manual trans. for sale Its certainly not 40% , can hardly believe 20% too. Lots of turbos or convertibles with 6MT for sale

festina-lente

I guess those are 997.1 Turbos?

bluelines1974

I feel like I've seen quite a few .2 Turbos with MT recently. Probably easier to find one of those than a low mileage RWD GTS, based on my experience.

Busta Rib

The largest sample size/database that provides a real-time snapshot of 997s for sale (all flavors) at any given time is Autotrader (that I am aware of). Last I checked there were almost 500 active listings. Slice your searches any way you want but the results will yield about 38-43% of the listings are advertised with manual transmissions. This is for North America.

There are currently 140 active For Sale listings for 997s of all flavors (2005-2010) on Rennlist (not including Want to Buy ads). Of those, if you filter for Manual, that nets 95 active listings (67.8%) of 997s currently advertised for sale on RL are manual. (caveats: I didn't check for duplicates, age of the ad, etc etc). This is a lot higher than I expected, but kind of makes sense since RL is mostly populated/frequented by Porsche enthusiasts, not your average 997 buyer/owner.

Without official production numbers and configuration mix from Porsche, we will never what the actual percentage breakdown is, so all of this is speculation augmented by snapshot data similar to above. That said, these data combined with the configuration mix for North American GTS cars convinces me that more than 20% of North American 997s have manual transmissions.

Busta Rib (another keyboard warrior with too much time and zero credibility)