Good point about the old Porsche holding its value. They depreciate like mad to a certain level for the first WAG 15 years, then the prices pretty much level off and coast for the next 10-15 years on the strength of the collector / enthusiast market. Which doesn’t happen for more ordinary cars.
But there’s still a but. Coincidence time …
I was just a few minutes ago riding in a Lyft, a nice VW Golf GTI. I’d dropped my car at the dealership for periodic service and he was taking me home. So cars were on our minds. The driver told me his tale of car woes.
He owned a 2018 BMW X5 SUV that he bought used a few years ago and had fully paid off. It now has ~200K miles on it. And was a fine car for him as single Dad to shuttle his kids & their bikes & soccer stuff & etc., around in. The VW is his car for Lyfting and his day job. It doesn’t transport the kids & stuff so well.
The X5 was great until the day in mid Dec that the transmission “blew up”. A mechanic friend of his who he trusts says a) it’ll be $7K to fix at the friends & family rate, and b) it would be foolish to put that kind of money into what’s now a time bomb.
So my driver is now the proud owner of a fully paid for dead car that only has salvage / parts value. Despite having had some decent value 6 weeks ago.
Those are the problems with owning older originally expensive cars. They’re great until the day something expensive breaks. Then your “investment” in high style on the cheap suddenly gets real expensive.
This really is the bottom line for big buck fancy-pants sports cars. TBH, I drive my Porsches like a little old man because I don’t want to incur the cost of breaking something. If I was wallowing in $$, I might be more spirited in how I drive, but I don’t have a Scrooge McDuck swimming pool. It was far more fun and relaxing to drive the Miata harder.
As soon as I saw your post about buying an MR-2, I was going to recommend getting a Miata instead. When I got to the point where you were planning to buy a used Porsche, I was going to relate the horror story of my 18 months owning a used 944T.
There’s not a homophobic bone in her body, but to her they look like something either a woman or a gay male (open, fey and swishy gay male, like Brad from The Middle) would drive.
Also, as relates to sporty convertibles in general, she’s just turned off by large men such as myself trying to squeeze into small sports cars.
Yeah, I thought it might be the “chick car” thing.
Tell that to these guys (not all of whom are necessarily guys):
Spec Miata racing is one of the most affordable, and hence popular, amateur racing series in the world.
But depending on how large you are, you might end up being turned off by getting in and out of a Miata. Have you driven one? Is it a tight fit?
I was 25 years younger and 25 pounds lighter when I owned my Miata, and had no trouble getting in and out of it. Not sure I could say the same today.
The hardest car to get in and out of that I ever drove was a Lotus Elise I rented for a track weekend in California. With the T-top off, it was no trouble, but with it on, I had to fold myself in half and twist and turn to get in and out of the thing. Once in, it was great! SO much fun to throw around the corners.
I had an Elise and it was definitely a challenge to get out of, although my S2 was slightly easier to manage than the S1 in your photo.
Gravity took care of the getting in, for the most part.
And while that was the most fun car I’ve driven, especially at the track, the limits were so high that it was truly antisocial to drive as fast on most backroads as the car demanded. The thing that was great about the Miata was that it was fun at a much more sane speed. I felt like a hero using all of the capabilities of the car and not like a chump that could barely find a reason to get out of second gear.
