Warning!
We have 15 years of archives. Links older than a year may have been updated to point to similar cars available to bid on eBay.
This site contains Ebay partner affiliate links, which may earn us a commission at no additional cost to you.
Back in 2016 when the Porsche 911 R broke cover, GT boss Andreas Preuninger said of it, “It’s a car just for a fun day.†Typical German understatement, the same way they claimed they ” … still looks with pride at the honorable record of the Hindenburg and her crew” after their dirigible had an uncharacteristically rough landing. To me, the 911 R is up there with the GT3 RS 4.0 in terms of the best 911s made in the past 20 years and would without a doubt look to own one if I could afford one. That seems unlikely given what they are currently selling for, though…
Today I wanted to look at a 2016 Mercedes-Benz … SL400? Yes, that is a thing. Back in 2015, Mercedes-Benz introduced the SL400 with a 329 horsepower 3.0L twin-turbo V6 paired with a the 722.9 seven-speed automatic. The whole reason for this is that the base price was $85,000, which meant it was $23,000 less than the SL550. For legacy SL buyers, that is a big deal. You still get your SL with all the toys, but save a bunch of money if you don’t ever use 430 horsepower. This was true in a lot of households as these cars are used as Sunday cruisers and rarely get full throttle. A win-win for both Mercedes and buyers as more cars were sold and buyers save a little bit of coin. Now five years later, these could be a bargain, right?
Last month Porsche announced a facelift to the current generation Macan that introduced some minor visual tweaks, some changes to the interior, and a power upgraded across all the engines. The most noticeable change was with the front fascia, which lets just say has resulted in mixed reviews. Still, the Macan is the butter on the bread of the Porsche lineup, as consumers love their mid-size crossovers even more than the Cayenne. Still, these are “buy, drive, and repeat every three years” kind of vehicles. No one is going to be nostalgic for a used Macan S that someone leased to drive to their cubical everyday, but that doesn’t mean people still don’t want them today. This particular 2016 Macan S up for sale down in Florida isn’t your normal lease-spec, and you are certainly reminded that when opening the doors to see what is inside.
As much as the Porsche 911 GT3 Touring was theoretically produced in an attempt to curb the insane mark-up prices on the 911 R, it seems like they didn’t produce enough. Based on the recent prices, a lot more people want GT3 Tourings than are out there. As for the 911 R? Good luck even finding one. If they do turn up, bring a barrel of money. Several barrels of money. This example up for sale in Houston with 158 miles? Do I need to even so more?
Say what you want about the Porsche Cayenne, but without its emergence in the early-2000s, there would be no special Porsche cars that we all enjoy. The easy-to-produce SUVs that platform share with the other VWAG SUVs was not only easy to scale, but saved a ton of labor costs as the majority of it was built at the Volkswagen Bratislava Plant in the Slovak Republic, rather than in Germany that is just used for final assembly. Because of this, Porsche now had the cash to dump into RS cars, Speedsters, and other fun things that Porsche really weren’t forced to build. Just to put it into perspective, Porsche sells as many Cayennes as they do 911s, 718s, Taycans, and Panameras combined. The Macan? Same numbers. So the next time you see a 2006 Cayenne Turbo chugging around with a blown out suspension and blue smoke pouring our the tailpipes, give it a little thanks for funding the 997 GT3 RS 4.0s that exist because of it.
