HistoryBuff

I don't know as much about this car as I should but wrote this story about its appreciation potential. Feel free to throw brickbats at it. I can take it...

The Short Lived Carrera GT: Is it an investment car?



The ideal , in choosing an old sports car, is one that, for all the time you own it, goes up in value. But choosing which used car is available today that has this Upside Potential is a bear.
I would theoretically like to nominate the Porsche Carrera GT.
It goes back to the 911 GT1 and LMP1-98 racing cars. Because of FIA and ACO rule changes in 1998, both designs could no longer run so Porsche planned an all new LeMans prototype for 1999. Originally they thought they would run it with a turbocharged flat-6, but later decided a V10 made it more of an all time great supercar. That pushed it back a year.
The V10 was already designed, built in secret the Footwork Formula One team in 1992, but later put on the shelf. When considering it for the street car, they enlarged it to 4.7 liters.
But then the whole project got shelved because they needed to do a SUV first, the Cayenne SUV
It was thought of at the time that the powerful VW-Audi chairman, Ferdinand Piëch wanted Audi's new Le Mans Prototype to be a superstar and didn’t want the Porsche mittelmotor spoiling the Audi R8 debut.
Porsche did put a 5.5 L V10 into a concept car shown at the 2000 Paris Motor Show, and got interest. They started to make them in Leipzig, Poland, in 2004. The pricetag was an incredible $448,000. The first Carrera GT went into a showroom in the United States on January 31, 2004.
The car was a totally modern car in terms of construction --a carbon fiber chassis, dry sump lubrication, inboard suspension and a mid-mounted engine that was engineered to sit as low as possible to ground. In addition to an aero topside, a lot of attention was paid to the undertray, controlling aiflow.
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Originally they planned on making 1,500 cars but announced in August 2005 that it would not continue production of the Carrera GT through to 2006, blaming changing airbag regulations.
I think the bad publicity about the car skewered it. First two occupants of one were killed in Fontana, CA when they pulled out in front of a speeding race car and got hit hard. Then much later Paul Walker , the film star, was killed with his partner in a car business, whilst showing the car off at a charity event.
Plus some car magazines tested it and I was surprised (in a field where there is a lot of “soft pedaling” of flaws to keep the test cars coming) to read biting reviews of how tricky the clutch was to use. Some testers blamed the then new-fangled ceramic clutch which delivered a reduced size and weight. The two-plate clutch was made of ceramic composites in order to reduce the rotational masses of the clutch by a factor of ten, but supposedly delivered less wear than a conventional clutch. Combined with a lightweight flywheel, rotational mass of the engine was exceptionally light.
Estimates vary on how many were sold. All the sources I read said, by the time the line shut down May 6, 2006, more than 1,270 GTs had been sold, but there may be some difference in the distribution totals. One source says 644 units went to the U.S. , 31 units to Canada, and 49 to the UK.
This production number in terms of “classic” cars is right on target, as the number of Ferrari Daytonas produced is around 1200 cars, and those are approaching a million dollars each. That seems to be the magic number—1200 cars. Witness the ’05-‘06 Ford GT was a little slow in appreciating as they made around 4000, three times as many as my “ideal” production number.
In value I have seen them advertised for nearly $1 million, then call to the $600,000 range and then go back up again. I would venture to see these will be future collectibles but it might depend on how they do at auctions that are Porsche only; if the cognoscenti embraced them, they will be like gold; if they reject them, they’re just another used supercar….

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Flachbau

North America #s for any spec u want use www.pcnalocator.com/cfgr and also check data section

Allan-BilletDesign

If I recall correctly, the people who died in Fontana were not hit hard. They were at speed (160mph) when another car entered the track at a slow rate of speed. The driver of the CGT swerved and basicly went head on into the wall.

Johnb55

Brickbat #1: You lost me on the very first sentence. I didn't even read past that.

"The ideal , in choosing an old sports car, is one that, for all the time you own it, goes up in value."

JasonAndreas

A copy of the DOT/NHTSA waiver denial was posted here at least 6 months before the story was ever published in any magazine.

W8MM

^^^^ THIS