Not A Car Guy

Well, it seems like every few years, my old Porsche 911 Turbo, the one that started my whole "interesting depreciated cars" adventure, gets resold on the car auction site, Bring a Trailer (BaT). And here we are again . When I sold it there back in 2016, it was the first 911 Turbo from the 996-era (2001-05) Turbo that had ever been listed for sale on Bring A Trailer (at least, that's what they told me at the time, tho it looks like a red one may have beat mine by a couple weeks). Since then, there have been lots and lots  sold on BaT.  I bought this car in 2014 for $38k with 50k miles on it, sold it in 2016 on BaT for $45k, and then watched it be sold again in 2020 for $42.5k, and then for $64k in 2022 .  But it seems like the appreciation bubble may have burst. Today, in 2024, after 9 owners and 71,000 miles (which means that it has only put on 21,000 miles in the past 10 years!), the auction bidding reached $54,000 but did not meet the seller's reserve price. I...

  Here we go again! My 2002 Porsche 911 Turbo just sold on Bring A Trailer for...wait for it... $64,000! I'm stupefied.  Just to remind everyone, I bought this car on eBay in 2014 for $38,000. I then sold it on Bring A Trailer  in 2016 with 55,000 miles for $45,000 (which sounds like I made money, but not after you include the maintenance ). That buyer then sold the car in 2020 for $42,500 (he also put in quite a bit of maintenance ). That second buyer just sold the car at 62,000 miles for $64,000. Wow. That fellow got a real windfall, since most of the big maintenance items were paid for by myself and the guy I sold it to.  I'm sure the price is partly due to the general insane run-up in car prices (plus, Porsche has currently halted all new car production as a result of the war in Ukraine). Also, part of the run-up is because this era of 911 Turbo has been criminally undervalued for many years, mostly due to the weaknesses of the non-turbo versions from the same...

Well, well, well. The buyer of my 2002 Porsche 911 Turbo has just sold it on Bring A Trailer . In the four years since he bought it and took it to North Carolina, it appears he put about 4,000 miles on it (~1,000 miles/year) and invested another ~$5k in maintenance (new clutch, rear main seal). The car sold on BaT for $42,500 (recall, BaT adds a 5% fee on top of that), which is $2,500 less than I got on BaT in 2016 . His failure to run a DME report  (which records "over-revs" where the driver has pushed the engine too hard) probably cost him a little. But the he got roughly what he paid for the car on resale. Overall, this confirms that these cars are still at or near their price nadir. Of course, there's still the cost of maintenance -- this car has absorbed ~$15k in maintenance over the past 5 years! But given all the work that has been done, along with the low mileage, I'm guessing the next 5 years should be quiet ones. Although the next owner will need new t...

I managed to get a comment pulled up into the subsequent roundup article ( Here's the Furthest You've Ever Gone to Buy a Car ). But I'm still not a car guy. :-)

There is such a thing as too much car. That's what I learned from my year with a 2002 Porsche 911 Turbo. Don't get me wrong, it's a remarkable car. The common wisdom is that the 911 Turbo is the "everyday supercar," combining insane performance while also being practical enough to drive every day. That's mostly true, but... The single best thing I did was drive the car home from Dallas after buying it. On smooth, empty highways crossing the high, dry desert, the Porsche was a dream. I set the cruise control at 125 mph, and the car was happy to go like that for hours. It's utterly at ease at those speeds, with plenty of acceleration still on tap. In fact, let's pause for a moment on the subject of acceleration. It's really rather shocking ("face-melting" in Jennifer's words). Other than the Tesla Model S, it's hard to get the same feeling of rocket launch acceleration without unnecessary drama. I will miss that. But unli...

The Porsche has been sold and sent off to the East Coast by transport. Time to tally up the total cost of ownership for this, my first "one year, interesting car, fully depreciated" experiment. So, before we get to the raw numbers, some context. As with any Porsche, maintenance is a big expense on these cars. Even routine things cost more than they would for a typical car (e.g., oil change = $250). And there were two big, unanticipated expenses. First, the failure of a coolant pipe necessitated an expensive "engine out" repair, which also led to a bunch of "while you're in there" maintenance and upgrades. For the 996tt, the coolant pipes are a known weakness, and thus a risk you take, until it happens and someone fixes it. Chances of it happening are slim in any particular year, and once it's fixed, it's fixed forever. So it's unfortunate that it happened on my watch, but them's the breaks. The next owner doesn't have to worr...

Welcome, BaT readers! You can see all my articles about the car here , gathered together with the label "996tt". That'll save you from having to read about my car swaps and about the Corvette. Happy reading and (hopefully) bidding. For the rest of you, the time has come to sell my 911 Turbo, bringing to a close my first "one year with an interesting car" adventure, and making room for the second car, a 1965 Corvette convertible. I've decided to list the Porsche on Bring a Trailer (listing here ), rather than dealing with Craigslist or eBay or Shift. Very curious to see how it goes!

Lovely day for a drive, just like last year . I tried to retrace the route I drove when I did the Miata swap . I missed my intended turn, however, and just decided to follow Skyline Drive all the way to its end (wow, it's a single lane for much of the last 10 miles), then continue on 17 to Santa Cruz. Sunny and chilly, is how I'd describe it. And fun, except for the traffic (!) from Half Moon Bay.

Although my 2002 911 Turbo is among the least desirable of the 911s, the non-turbo versions are the real " black sheep " of the 911 family. Porsche snobs hate the headlights (same as on the Turbo), the interior (same as the Turbo), and the water cooling (same as the Turbo). With somewhat more justification, they also carp about the rear main seal (RMS), which tends to leak, and the intermediate shaft (IMS) bearing, which can fail and destroy your engine at any moment (which is NOT the same on the Turbo, which has a different engine). But after a week in this car, I call nonsense on all that. Because this car is great. I mean it. If I were interested in long-term owning a 911, I would choose this over my Turbo. This comparison is an object lesson in how "too much car" can be less than "just the right amount of car."  So how is this car different from mine? Well, obviously it's a convertible. And that turns out to be a pretty big deal, ...

OK, so all I have to say is that I'm not the one who scraped the side of the car while exiting the garage. But I will withhold the name to protect the dignity of the party in question. So this necessitated a visit to the body shop for correction and repainting. Thanks to the Porsche-premium that applies to everything related to these cars, fixing this purely cosmetic boo-boo ran to $2,800. And that was just repair and respray--no body panels needed replacing. For comparison, I did something similar to my Honda Fit (yes, that time, it was my fault) and the repair came to $1200, including a new bumper and fender. So, there's that. Good news is that it looks good as new again.

On the heels of the repair of the second broken thing, my passenger side window started making a terrible noise when rolling up and down (play video to hear it). This is one of those times when calling on other 996tt owners helped diagnose the problem. I posted the video and asked the 996tt forum on Rennlist for advice. Armed with the suggestion that it was the "window regulator," I then went to YouTube. Where, lo and behold, there were several videos (gathered here ) that confirmed the diagnosis and provided a nearly complete step-by-step tutorial on how to fix it. In the end, I opted to get it fixed, rather than doing it myself (mostly because I didn't want to mess with the delicate adjustments necessary to get the window to shut cleanly). But it was nice to know I probably could have done it myself, if I needed to. The new regulator was about $200. That, plus 1.6 hours of labor at SF Porsche-specialist The Stable , and all was well again. Total cost = $468.

Well, the first broken thing was cheap and easy to fix. Not so much the second broken thing. I happened to be driving my friend's Miata (as described here ), as he was driving my 911 just ahead of me. Suddenly, there was a big cloud of white steam from the back of it, and a big wet slick on the pavement behind it.  You see, this vintage of the 911 turbo (aka 996tt) has a well-known design flaw: the coolant pipes. These pipes (there are 8 of them) carry coolant from the radiators (three of them, mounted up front) into the engine block (in the back). Hoses connect to the pipes, and the pipes connect to the cooling manifold. And that's the problem. In its infinite cost-saving wisdom, Porsche decided that the pipes would be glued into the manifold. Yes, rather than a mechanical bond, Porsche decided to couple two different metals, entrusted to survive multiple drastic temperature changes, with only a film of epoxy (see here ). Well, to Porsche's credit, this epoxy la...

Putting a pin in this very informative Rennlist post , where the rumors that the 2002 had a reworked suspension are put to rest. 2002 model year added: Lockable glove box (Map pocket below steering wheel deleted) Cup holders & larger AC vents ("Together with the integration of a new cup holder, the centre vent has also been re-designed. The cross-sectional area has been increased by 20%, which improves interior ventilation.") Bose (analog) sound system standard [but not yet the fiber optic digital Bose that appeared in 2003 and is much harder to refit to a modern unit!] Flat non-glossy buttons, light switch Redesign instrument cluster with on-board computer (former 259) standard Hollow wheels (lighter then solid wheels -15 lbs) Different seat and memory functions, changes to the alarm system, and PCM differences Optional X50 package added  UPDATE: adding a pin to this even longer Rennlist thread about the topic, which seems to come to consensus that ...

This one . Nice, especially on Oakville Grade between Mt. Veeder Road and CA-29.

Literally the first day I had the car, I managed to lose the cover off the left headlight washer jet. This appears to be the result of a known design flaw in the 996 series. If you have the headlights on and trigger the headlight washer jets while driving, the chrome covers fly right off. And, of course, because it's a Porsche, you can't just replace the cover, you have to replace the entire washer jet assembly, which runs about $65 (part numbers Part # 996-628-144-00 and Part # 996-628-143-00, different for right and left). Fortunately, the process for fixing these is well documented on YouTube ( 1 , 2 ) and takes a couple of minutes. I'll get around to it right after I polish the headlight.

Somewhere on CA-58 between Buttonwillow and Santa Margarita. After picking up the car, I immediately drove it 2000 miles from Dallas back to San Francisco, with a stop in Las Vegas to visit family for the holidays. Here is the route I took . I tried to avoid the major interstates in favor of two-lane alternatives, which turned out to be great -- more fun to drive, fewer highway patrol, and had the roads almost to myself. Here are the relevant stats: Total miles = 1995 Avg gas mileage = 21 mpg Avg speed = 66 mph Traction control engaged = twice First impressions: OMG, passing. The turbo boost is the ultimate passing tool. By the time you slide over into the passing lane, the turbo boost kicks in like an afterburner.  Fast. This car really likes 80+. In fact, setting cruise control at 125 is something that works surprisingly well in this car (in the desert, on straight, empty, dry roads). Loud. Sports car people like hearing "the song of the engine." It...

The first car on my car guy journey is a 2002 Porsche 911 Turbo, also known as the "996tt" (Porsche enthusiasts generally identify each major revision of the 911 by Porsche's internal numbering system -- in this case, 996 , plus "tt" for twin turbo, produced from 2000-2005).  So, why start with a 911 turbo? Well, it meets the requirements -- the 911 is a classic car enthusiast's car, and this vintage is currently at or near the bottom of its depreciation curve. It also checks all the boxes of a modern high performance sports car (420 horsepower, 0-60mph in less than 5 seconds, all-wheel-drive). In other words, it's a good representative of car that is catnip to a particular kind of modern, high performance, sports car enthusiast. That said, part of the reason this car is affordable is that Porsche enthusiasts love to complain about this vintage of the 911. They complain about the interior dashboard layout. They complain that the engin...