Prepare For The Porsche GT Market To Crash
The special edition supercar thing is getting entirely out of hand. As of this writing, there are 66 new GT2RS examples for sale on my preferred car searching website, cars.com. In contrast, only 57 Targas (4, 4S, and 4GTS) are currently for sale. The sellers appear to be more confused on how to price their cars than Christopher Columbus thinking he found India.
We have some reasonable folks asking $305,910, which is slightly above the base MSRP. Then we have people who are clearly fueling expensive habits and are going to be very disappointed they don’t get their $529,220 offer. Even with the Weissach package, people have 65 other options that don’t have a cheeky $150,000 premium. There are simply too many other examples available for someone who can spend half a million dollars on a car to pay that large of a premium. Bad news folks, only some rich people brag about how much extra they paid for something.
The business end of the 700 hp 911 range-topper
Selling Exclusivity
Special edition cars are a very tricky thing for Porsche. The GT cars need to offer an exceptional driving experience and they need to be exclusive. Praise be, Porsche has nailed driving experience. It seems like all of the cars coming through their GT program have a distilled essence of wallop. Anyone lucky enough to have driven one of these know that they take the normal Porsche driving experience up to the next level. In terms of exclusivity, Porsche has a more interesting challenge. The good news is that typical buyer of these cars usually already owns a number of cars and they are happy to add another exclusive car to their collection. The one caveat to this is that these buyers have had a “no-brainer” decision to buy these cars because they historically have appreciated over time. Meaning, anyone who could get a limited build spot for one of these cars could choose to sell it for a profit.
GT2RS in Auckland, NZ. One of many seen in the wild.
Balancing the market
What is the “right” amount of special editions? It depends on who you ask. From Porsche’s perspective, one would think that they want to make just a few less than they would be able to sell while pricing it at a premium. Porsche knows that anyone who bought the 911R and 918 (along with the Turbo S 918 Sypder edition of course) will be interested in any new special edition. However, historically Porsche has produced far fewer cars than the market demanded, thus creating the secondary market. This positions Porsche at odds with the speculators who get allocations and subsequently offload the car to another prospective buyer who happened to be finalizing their divorce when they originally got the call from Porsche. Now that they have successfully shed their worse half, what better way to celebrate than by driving around in the latest Stuttgart metal. Thanks to the prenup, a $50K premium seems like a great way to celebrate.
How long can this market last?
Despite this seemingly magical scenario where you can drive around in a supercar while making money in the process, it appears that Porsche is now testing the limits of the market in an effort to capture a greater share of the profit. With the latest special edition vehicle, the 911 Speedster, they are building 1948 units. Far above the number of other other special editions in the 991 generation (the 911R had 991 examples). This is nearly twice the total number of Acura NSXs sold since the relaunch in 2017. Hardly a “limited edition”.
An example of this playing out in the used market is with the current GT2RS. Porsche did not put a limit of the number of GT2RS units to be sold. Essentially, everyone who wanted one would be able to purchase one. For all of the flippers who have been accustomed to taking their limited build spot and flipping it may find themselves in a challenging situation when it comes to sell their vehicle.
An example of this is this used 2018 GT2RS in its owners future body bag. This “mummy edition” GT2RS is a desperate attempt at an optimistic profit. Take this as a clear signal hat the time of never depreciating supercars is over.
The classic GT2RS red-accented interior reminds you that this is a special beast.
Losing value isn’t necessarily bad
While it isn’t clear what will happen to the market of used “limited edition” cars yet, the increased volume of options may cause values to follow a more traditional depreciation curve in the used market. It may make this list of cars much more interesting in the years to come. As a person who enjoys buying a car at the bottom of its depreciation curve, I rejoice.
It will be better in the long term if the people who are buying the cars are doing so with the intention of driving them. As a car enthusiast, the true value of a car comes from the driving experience.
