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996 GT3 Purchase


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On 28/10/2020 at 19:49, Cam Arnott said:

Curious to get people thoughts on this one given the lack of service history in the book? Given that there is a very limited pool of these cars to choose from, and assuming that the car checks out fine from a PPI, what's the price penalty for no history? 

And I guess the non bucket comfort seats...

 

 

Silver gt3.png

So this is my car, however I'll give you my thoughts from when I went on my GT3 purchasing journey. I fully appreciate the difficulty of pricing my car .. even now I don't really know what it's worth as what data points do you use?  There's not a great number of 996.1 GT3s come up for sale ... most that come up are some version of CS ... the threads prior to this one show how hard that quagmire is to sort out.  Throw in a lack of service history and mix it up and you come up with ???

To counter this, basically this is a very straight and honest car.  Due to the challenges listed above I had two independent PPIs completed .. in some way to find an excuse not to 'have to' determine a price.  The PPI came back all clear. No over revs, no indication of accidents, the body is in pretty good condition.   In short there was nothing wrong with the car apart from an absence of paperwork telling me that was the case.  The interior is showing some marks here and there, however for a twenty year old car I feel it presents pretty well.

Then you're left with the fact it doesn't have 'the' seats and the roll cage.  I asked myself what I wanted to use the car for, and determined that as I didn't want to track the car, the roll cage and associated equipment wasn't really of that much value to me.  To be honest, when I have the car loaded up for a week away driving twisties, having access to the rear of the car to put luggage is really helpful.  So when I realised this I asked myself how often do you actually see GT3s with non sport seats and I determined it's actually quite rare. 

The final part for me was the fact that I actually enjoy working on my cars.  I could spent $40k more and get a car with all the service history and low kilometers... but then I'd be nervous about driving it in case I added too many kms, I'd have to drive it for hours just to get it serviced (I live in the boonies) and I wouldn't get to create the bond I find I get with cars when I've spent some time grazing knuckles and cursing double jointed German car builders.  I stressed and strained then just went and purchased the car and discovered that 996.1 GT3s really are as much fun as all the rumors suggest.

As someone who typically owns their Porches for decades (924T currently going on 21 years and previous SC was 10 years) I decided that I'd just get a GT3 that worked for me and not get too stressed about purchasing an investment.  Thankfully I'm not in a position of having to sell my car, the only reason I put it up for sale is that we're currently moving towns and I'm having trouble find appropriate accommodation for my 'collection'.  That said, since listing last weekend we've made some progress of sorting out this issue.  I expect I'll probably just remove my car in the next few weeks and then I won't need to be stressed about the day I sold one of Porsche's most important models purely because I was struggling to find garage space.

What I have found interesting is that the people who have contacted me about my GT3 are enthusiasts with some very nice Porsche collections.  I think the opportunity for a 'normal' enthusiast to get into one of these cars is slowly drifting away.  I certainly doubt I'll be able to get back into the market if I sell mine .. certainly not one that isn't very tired. 

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On 31/10/2020 at 00:44, bear924 said:

What I have found interesting is that the people who have contacted me about my GT3 are enthusiasts with some very nice Porsche collections.  I think the opportunity for a 'normal' enthusiast to get into one of these cars is slowly drifting away.  I certainly doubt I'll be able to get back into the market if I sell mine .. certainly not one that isn't very tired. 

Don't sell! :D

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4 minutes ago, Cam Arnott said:

Yeah that one! I've always been curious why the list of Aussie delivered cars notes it as OPM but most call it Zanzibar.....?

Yep, it is the same colour.  But interesting/strange about the colour name.

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On 31/10/2020 at 15:52, Jason A said:

Hey Wayne we were chatting about you and your GT3 today, we all said - try to keep it if you can

Well today I finalised my car storage for the new year.   Tonight my car was removed from carsales.  Love win win situations.  Suspect my GT3 will be in my hot little hands for many more years as I have no idea what I would replace it with.  

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On 31/10/2020 at 00:44, bear924 said:

So this is my car, however I'll give you my thoughts from when I went on my GT3 purchasing journey. I fully appreciate the difficulty of pricing my car .. even now I don't really know what it's worth as what data points do you use?  There's not a great number of 996.1 GT3s come up for sale ... most that come up are some version of CS ... the threads prior to this one show how hard that quagmire is to sort out.  Throw in a lack of service history and mix it up and you come up with ???

To counter this, basically this is a very straight and honest car.  Due to the challenges listed above I had two independent PPIs completed .. in some way to find an excuse not to 'have to' determine a price.  The PPI came back all clear. No over revs, no indication of accidents, the body is in pretty good condition.   In short there was nothing wrong with the car apart from an absence of paperwork telling me that was the case.  The interior is showing some marks here and there, however for a twenty year old car I feel it presents pretty well.

Then you're left with the fact it doesn't have 'the' seats and the roll cage.  I asked myself what I wanted to use the car for, and determined that as I didn't want to track the car, the roll cage and associated equipment wasn't really of that much value to me.  To be honest, when I have the car loaded up for a week away driving twisties, having access to the rear of the car to put luggage is really helpful.  So when I realised this I asked myself how often do you actually see GT3s with non sport seats and I determined it's actually quite rare. 

The final part for me was the fact that I actually enjoy working on my cars.  I could spent $40k more and get a car with all the service history and low kilometers... but then I'd be nervous about driving it in case I added too many kms, I'd have to drive it for hours just to get it serviced (I live in the boonies) and I wouldn't get to create the bond I find I get with cars when I've spent some time grazing knuckles and cursing double jointed German car builders.  I stressed and strained then just went and purchased the car and discovered that 996.1 GT3s really are as much fun as all the rumors suggest.

As someone who typically owns their Porches for decades (924T currently going on 21 years and previous SC was 10 years) I decided that I'd just get a GT3 that worked for me and not get too stressed about purchasing an investment.  Thankfully I'm not in a position of having to sell my car, the only reason I put it up for sale is that we're currently moving towns and I'm having trouble find appropriate accommodation for my 'collection'.  That said, since listing last weekend we've made some progress of sorting out this issue.  I expect I'll probably just remove my car in the next few weeks and then I won't need to be stressed about the day I sold one of Porsche's most important models purely because I was struggling to find garage space.

What I have found interesting is that the people who have contacted me about my GT3 are enthusiasts with some very nice Porsche collections.  I think the opportunity for a 'normal' enthusiast to get into one of these cars is slowly drifting away.  I certainly doubt I'll be able to get back into the market if I sell mine .. certainly not one that isn't very tired. 

Sensible.  Every word of it.  Many points you have raised describes what I believe to be a real malaise in Porsche ownership.  Too many people conentrating on things that shouldn't matter, but do, because we've become obsessed with collectability and value.  I for one will symathetically thrash the balls off mine and in 10 years time it will have patina and provinance of the best type.  The kind I gave it.  And my 'joy' bank account will be overflowing.

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On 07/11/2020 at 09:23, Pork Chops said:

Sensible.  Every word of it.  Many points you have raised describes what I believe to be a real malaise in Porsche ownership.  Too many people conentrating on things that shouldn't matter, but do, because we've become obsessed with collectability and value.  I for one will symathetically thrash the balls off mine and in 10 years time it will have patina and provinance of the best type.  The kind I gave it.  And my 'joy' bank account will be overflowing.

Unfortunately given that the price of entry is well into 6 figures, collectability and value are very real things to most people looking to invest that sort of money into a toy. Its all relative I guess depending on your own financial situation 😉

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2 hours ago, Cam Arnott said:

Unfortunately given that the price of entry is well into 6 figures, collectability and value are very real things to most people looking to invest that sort of money into a toy. Its all relative I guess depending on your own financial situation 😉

Yep price of entry is expensive but price of exit is exceptional. I look at these cars being virtually free to own as long as you can pony up the entry fee to start with .

I have owned 3 GT3 cars now all of different series if I choose to tap out now none of them would have cost me a cent .
Money well spent IMO . 

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