In my opinion, in terms of dollar for dollar value, there is no better Porsche 911 than the 996 Carrera 4S. It has all the looks of the 996 Turbo, but for about half the price. In terms of reliability, as long as you take care of the boogie man IMS bearing, these cars are solid. Inside, you can go as tame or as crazy as you want, as the “special requests” just started to gain traction with the rise of the interior in the early 2000s. Today’s car, a 2002 up for sale in Miami, is just about perfect in terms of the whole package. Arctic Silver over black, full carbon fiber trim, and some H&R lowering springs to get rid of the pesky wheel gap. Sign me up.
Author: Andrew
The classic blues have been so popular on Porsche 911s, that the company actually wised up and offered as a standard-ish color for the 991 chassis. From a money perspective, it seems like an odd move seeing as they know they’ll get another $7,000 or so if someone orders it for paint to sample, but maybe it was a logistics thing of them selling more cars to begin with if they could sprinkle some of these cars throughout dealer lots around the county. The blue offered on the 991 was actually Miami Blue (not Mexico Blue) that had just a little bit of a teal shade to it if you look at it in certain lighting. Meanwhile, the Mexico Blue that I linked, is a much truer royal blue that you would associate the color of blue with. Now don’t confuse that with Rivera Blue, as that is a little lighter shade of Mexico Blue. Are we having fun yet? This photo explains it best with left to right, Rivera, Miami, then Mexico. Easy.
Naturally people want this color more than a black, white, grey, or silver, so of course Porsche charged more for it. You thought you were getting off that easy? A more standard color like Jet Black Metallic or Agate Grey Metallic is $710, but Miami Blue? $3,140. That bigger price tag just isn’t exclusive to Miami, a color like Lava Orange also carries the same $3,140 premium. So now that the 991 production is done for good, people are dumping their cars to upgrade to the 992 and these special colors are now on the used market. This 2017 C2 up for in, wouldn’t you know, Miami, Florida, just has 3,400 miles on it. I hope the extra money was worth it.
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 2017 Porsche 911 on eBay
2 CommentsAfter last week’s Porsche 911 Targa 4 GTS loaded up with a seemingly endless amount of options, I wanted to look at another GTS in the Porsche lineup, the Cayman. Porsche introducted the Cayman GTS in 2014 with much fanfare, as this was once again a setup with the S model but not as hardcore as the yet to be released GT4. It boasted respectable numbers from the 3.6L flat-six, and would accelerate to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds with the manual transmission, 4.7 seconds with PDK, and 4.5 seconds with PDK and Sport Plus mode. Base price was around $75,000, but of course you could never find one for that price given how many options were stuffed into these. This 2015 up for sale in New York is a great example of it.
CLICK FOR DETAILS: 2015 Porsche Cayman GTS on eBay
2 CommentsI’d never thought I’d type this, but maybe it isn’t such a bad idea to buy a W220 Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG. Okay, maybe that was a little too broad. What I mean is maybe it isn’t such a bad idea to buy a W220 Mercedes-Benz S65 AMG if you really want a crazy powerful sedan and have lots of discretionary income to support such a purchase or you were seriously considering last week’s mess of a S600. I think that statement gets a little closer to my point, or maybe it is just one of those situations where it isn’t nearly as bad as it could be.
In the shock of the century, the W220 SL/CL/S65 AMG cars seem to be holding up fairly well considering what could actually go wrong with them. After all, this is what happened when the engineers at AMG turn the dial up to 9, with a 10 only being the SL65 AMG Black Series. Just encase I didn’t make this clear, I’m not saying these are cheap or inexpensive to keep running, but rather the same situation as living in Siberia and saying “Hmm. -8°F today, not that cold at all”. On the price end of the equation, it seems that these have hit rock bottom and dare I even say are actually being sought after by enthusiasts. So when a really sorted example pops up like today’s S65 in Los Angeles, should you actually give it consideration?