Why You’ll Never Really Make Money on a Porsche (And Why That’s Okay)
Eleven After Nine | A Porsche Culture Podcast
Why You’ll Never Really Make Money on a Porsche (And Why That’s Okay)
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Car
Porsche 911
The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car that has been around for a long time, starting in 1964. The 1972 version is loved by many because it looks great and is really fun to drive, which is why people often talk about it when discussing cool cars.
Term
car trailer
A car trailer is a flatbed that you can use to carry a car behind another vehicle. It's helpful for moving cars that can't drive themselves.
Car
Porsche Boxster
The Porsche Boxster is a two-seater sports car that you can take the roof off. The 1998 model is one of the first versions and is known for being fun to drive and a good entry point into owning a Porsche.
Concept
Blue Ridge Parkway
The Blue Ridge Parkway is a famous road in the mountains that offers stunning views and is great for driving. It's a favorite spot for people who enjoy scenic drives.
Concept
Lyft-Caco
Lyft-Caco is a car show where people can see and appreciate Porsche cars. It's not just about the cars; it also includes art and installations that celebrate Porsche's history.
Company
Lucky Strike
Lucky Strike is a brand of cigarettes. In this case, they used an old factory where Lucky Strike cigarettes were made to host a car show, making it a special place for the event.
Concept
Le Mans winning car
A Le Mans winning car is a car that has won a famous race called the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This race tests how fast and reliable a car can be over a long time, and winning is a big deal in racing.
Car
Porsche 550 Spider
The Porsche 550 Spider is a classic sports car from the 1950s that is very valuable and famous for racing. It's known for being lightweight and fast, making it a favorite among car enthusiasts.
Car
Porsche 911 Turbo (930)
The Porsche 911 Turbo (930) is an older version of the 911 that has a turbocharger, making it faster. It has a unique rear spoiler that many people recognize.
Car
Porsche 917
The Porsche 917 is a famous race car that was very successful in competitions. It has a unique design and a powerful engine, making it a standout in racing history.
Car
Porsche 356S
The Porsche 356 is an older sports car that was one of the first made by Porsche. It's known for being light and having a unique look.
Term
Albert Blue
Albert Blue is a special color that some Porsche cars are painted. It's bright and stands out, making those cars unique.
Term
Aga blue
Aga blue is a different shade of blue that some Porsche cars can be painted. It's also popular among car lovers for its beautiful color.
Term
taxes on the purchase
When you buy a car, you often have to pay extra money to the government based on how much you paid for the car. This extra money is called taxes.
Term
registration
When you buy a car, you need to register it with the government so you can drive it legally. This usually means paying a fee and showing that you own the car and have insurance.
Term
inspection
Before you can drive a car on the road, it might need to be checked to make sure it's safe and not polluting too much. This check is called an inspection.
Term
RPMs
RPMs tell you how fast the engine is spinning. When the number is high, it means the engine is working hard, which can give you more power but can also be tough on the engine if you keep it there for a long time.
Term
Porsche guy
A 'Porsche guy' is someone who knows a lot about fixing and taking care of Porsches. They can help you if your Porsche has problems.
Concept
shrewd negotiator
A shrewd negotiator is someone who is really good at talking and making deals, especially when buying a car. They know how to get the best price possible.
Term
PPI
A PPI is a check-up for a car you want to buy. It helps you find out if there are any problems with the car before you spend your money on it.
Term
rear diff
The rear diff helps the back wheels of a car turn at different speeds when going around corners. If it breaks, it can cause big problems for how the car drives.
Term
air-cooled
Air-cooled engines use air to keep them cool instead of using liquid. This is typical in older cars, especially some Porsches, and can lead to unique maintenance needs.
Concept
period correct
'Period correct' means making sure a car looks and feels like it did when it was first made. This can include using original parts and designs from that time.
Term
upholsterer
An upholsterer is someone who fixes or replaces the fabric and padding inside things like cars and furniture. They help make sure the inside of your car looks nice and feels comfortable.
Car
Porsche
Porsche is a famous car brand from Germany that makes fast and luxury cars. They are known for their sports cars and are very popular among car lovers.
Term
ceramic coat
Ceramic coating is a special treatment for cars that makes the paint shiny and protects it from damage. It helps keep the car looking new, but you might not get back the money you spent on it when you sell the car.
Car
Porsche 981 GT4
The Porsche 981 GT4 is a special version of the Cayman sports car that is designed for performance. It has a powerful engine and is great for driving on tracks or winding roads.
Term
PPF
PPF is a protective film that you put on your car's paint to keep it safe from scratches and damage. It helps your car look good for longer without needing extra care.
Term
paint correction
Paint correction is when you fix the scratches and marks on a car's paint to make it look shiny and new. It helps the paint look its best before putting on any protective layers.
Car
Lamborghini
Lamborghini is another luxury car brand from Italy that makes very fast and flashy cars. They are famous for their unique designs and powerful engines.
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Welcome to Renthousias Radio. This is Derek, and this is Still Derek.
Oh boy, so we were down at Lyft this week.
Actually, we were rolling in the beautiful mountains of western North Carolina.
Then we were at Lyft this week. Will I, a bunch of Will's friends, had a fantastic week,
went to record a podcast together, and had a lot of issues with the microphones.
And so we didn't get to record like we wanted to.
So on the YouTube side, unfortunately, there won't be a podcast this week.
However, for those folks, ladies and gents that are out there on the audio side,
I'm sure on a Tuesday morning, you're looking forward to listen to something on the way to work.
So what I wanted to do was give you guys a secret little preview of what Will and I are going to be talking about next week.
Just kind of outlining what we did these past couple of days just for a few minutes.
And then I'm going to pull up an oldie but a goodie from, gosh, more than a year ago.
And it's the lie of making money on Porsche and why even though we think we do get out of these deals
and these ownership experiences ahead, we in reality really don't.
Kind of the psychology behind that.
So that was, gosh, September of 2024. So where has time gone?
Anyways, if you guys are going to be on Renthusiast, the YouTube channel this week,
Will literally just dropped a video driving his 993 talking about why it is the B's knees
and by far and away the best Porsche.
The interesting thing if you guys do watch that video is that I was behind him as he was recording it
and we were moving at speed through the North Carolina mountains.
So the fact that he was able to record that just shows how much concentration he has
because I was barely in control of my car.
Anyways, on 11 after 9, what I did this week is I was able to post up a couple shorts on YouTube
just kind of showing Luft and some of the driving.
I went down with my 1972 911 Bertie, my Albert Blue car.
I threw it on a trailer and took it down because my big worry was I was going to drive it down
which was I think like almost 800 miles and then do this rally through the mountains,
hairpin turns, on cliffs, over rocks and something was going to break and then I wouldn't be able to get home.
So I threw it on my car trailer and towed it down.
I'm glad I did for no other reason than it's a bit of a slog from New England down to North Carolina.
But what I did do is I was able to capture some shorts with a video camera as I was driving.
I'm going to be putting more up in the next week or two.
Check them out.
So how much you guys think I really love the sound in the mountains, especially with my old car.
So I thought that was really cool.
The other thing I'll mention is tonight, I think on 11 after 9, we might be ticking over the 5,000 subscriber mark.
And I just wanted to thank all of you out there that do listen to the podcast and have been on my channel
and subscribe to the content I'm doing.
I really appreciate it. 5,000 in just a few months is really unbelievable.
And it's all due to this amazing audience who was very vocal when I met up with a lot of folks at Lefka Colt down in North Carolina.
So my most heartfelt thank you.
I'm really excited to continue creating content for all you folks.
As a matter of fact, I literally just got out of a 1998 based Boxster this afternoon.
And just I really wanted to try to get a sense of does this make sense as an entry level Porsche for someone who might be coming into the brand.
So I definitely have some thoughts on that.
That video is in queue.
Anyways, so like I said, I trailered down my car and went to a town called Blowing Rock, North Carolina, met up with Will,
a bunch of his buddies that he usually rolls with down there, as well as an amazing group of gentlemen that run in that area.
Many have car collections that number in the 20s or 30s or even more.
And I definitely do want to thank just the unbelievable kindness and hard work of the crew down there, Mike and Don and Chip and Bob.
You know who you are.
Thank you so much for a great week.
Some of the routes we did through the North Carolina Mountains were known only by the locals.
And these are the twisty, turny, up and down, divey type of roads that are completely dead and completely empty in the middle of the day because they really don't go anywhere.
They just kind of connect other roads.
And so they're the perfect roads to not only see the countryside.
Well, if I'm going to be honest, I was really looking just about 10 feet in front of my car as we were swooping and braking and hard turning.
But Bob was the leader of our group and he had planned all this out and did an absolutely amazing job.
So we spent two days heading out around the Blue Ridge Parkway through the Smoky Mountains.
We went to Bristol Motor Speedway and ran on the track for a while with our cars.
You know, I always give Will a hard time.
I always say that we have the most amazing roads up here in New Hampshire.
We've got mountains, we have ocean, we have wilderness and we have beauty.
And so, you know, he's always telling me that they have the rail driving roads.
So I go down there.
I got down there a day early before the little pre-rally started and it was still raining, unfortunately.
But I still hopped in my 72 and headed out and I just picked the first road I found that looked as squiggly as possible on the map.
And I did it at, you know, four tenths.
You know, I just took my time.
And probably after about 15 or 20 minutes I texted Will and I said,
All right, you win.
You're completely right.
I can't hold the candle to this road in the wet up in New Hampshire.
Because up in New Hampshire we have these long sweeping roads.
They're not straight, but they're just, they're long, gentle curves.
Usually because they're planned out around the mountain ranges or up through passes.
So we don't have these crazy switchbacks.
We don't have roads that really hug the side of mountains and have all these crazy undulations and also these bank turns, which is insane.
So I owe Will a steak dinner because his roads really do kick my roads butts.
So we did that for a couple of days.
And then we headed to Durham and we went to Lyft-Caco.
And when Will and I record a little bit later this week and we talk about our experiences at Lyft,
I'm really curious to kind of get his sense on what he thought of it.
Lyft-Caco, for those of you that don't know, is an amazing car show put on by Patrick Long,
a very famous Porsche race car driver, and Jeff Swart.
Jeff Swart was, I believe, the only photographer and kind of press person for Porsche through the 80s and into the 90s.
He has an amazing artistic mind.
He's also kind of a race car driver, rally guy, hill climb master, but also an amazing photographer.
And so what it is, it's kind of like a Porsche installation and it's like an art installation.
So we took over the Lucky Strike tobacco factory, which amounts to, gosh, I don't know,
maybe eight or 10 or 12 beautiful brick buildings.
And Jeff and Patrick put together this show by bringing in some of the absolute best air-cooled cars from the country, the world, and through history.
And so what was really interesting is that every nook and cranny of this compound of buildings had a Porsche from history stuffed into a corner.
You'd come around the corner from a bathroom and you'd see a Le Mans winning car tucked in under the stairs.
Or you'd come in to an old refinery with these giant old riveted jugs that used to pour some manner of substance.
And in front of it is a 550 Spider that had been raised with dents and all.
And you can walk right up to them.
I mean, everyone was very good about not touching them, but you could lean right in and look at the stitches in the seats.
And this is a car that, you know, might be worth, gosh, I don't know, a couple million dollars.
They had prototypes from history.
They had customers who had the really cool recreations or cars that really were an extension of their personality.
Whether it was like, you know, kind of like a rusty Mad Max type of 911 or a beautiful 993 or a 930 Turbo in purple with cocaine white interior.
So there was such a collection.
I mean, I'd say conservatively, I don't know what the number is.
I'd probably say that there were 80 to 100 of these amazing cars.
I can't imagine that the cheapest one wasn't more than a couple hundred thousand dollars.
And then outside the show were even more cars by real enthusiasts, but real interesting cars.
I think the theme was 993, so there were a lot of 993s.
Then the parking garages were full.
I mean, it's funny, if you wanted to see a continuation of the show, it wasn't curated.
There was nothing under lights.
But if you strolled through the parking garages, every level was packed with just the entire history of Porsche, every model, every year, every condition, every color.
And it was fantastic to kind of get a sense of all these people who were just so happy to be there.
This was the Disney world.
This was the Disneyland for Porsche enthusiasts.
And everyone was so kind.
You could strike up a conversation with anyone.
People were so excited to show off their rides.
People were very complimentary of other people's cars and really interested in the history of how they obtained them and kind of what they did to them and all the little nuances of each and every car.
And so it was just such good vibes.
That's one thing that I really took away from it.
So I'll be sure to ask Will kind of what his one or two cars were that he took from the show.
But it's one of those things where on the 16 hour drive home, I was my head was just full, absolutely full because I couldn't figure out if I like these crazy 917 race cars better.
Did I love this?
The old school 911 turbos sitting right next to four or five beautiful singer 911 reimagined cars bent window 356s sitting in a lobby outside some bathrooms.
I'll tell you what I was actually really excited to see.
The abundance of Albert blue cars at this show was crazy.
When I go to car shows up here in New England, I'm very often the only long hood F body car there.
So of course at this show, there was no shortage of those.
But I am always the only Albert blue car outside of this outside of Susan Silverberg's car that does show up at some of the local shows and she's an absolute sweetheart.
But I'm the only Albert blue car ever.
I roll in to this pre rally we did going into Durham and there were three Albert blue long hoods in the parking lot, including Chris Clewell's car.
He's out of the Minnesota area and he has a fantastic YouTube and Instagram presence and podcast, I believe.
And he's rolled for a long time with Albert blue long hood with I think like a three six in the back.
And so it was just really nice to see these this color represented.
And in the show itself, Albert blue and Aga blue were well on display as well.
So that was really cool.
That's just me geeking out over my favorite color.
Hands down the best car show that I've ever been to bar none from an artistic standpoint, certainly from an attendance standpoint, of course.
But again, like I mentioned, just the overall attitude of everyone was a friend there and there were no strangers.
There was no us's and them's.
You could walk up to any group and start a conversation and it was and it was really just a wonderful time.
Very grateful to have spent those days down there and looking forward to catching up with Will this week and getting his thoughts and we can compare notes and you will hear all about that next week.
But in the short term, I want to thank all of you guys for listening to me drawn on for a few minutes and please enjoy this only but a goodie.
And we'll see you next week.
Welcome back to Renthusius Radio, the Portia podcast.
I'm Will.
This is Derek.
And in today's episode, we're going to be talking about what we sometimes laughingly call the big lie.
And the big lie is, at least for us, this myth of making a bunch of money on every Portia that you buy.
And he and I have talked, Derek and I have talked exhaustively about this and that's just not been our experience.
I mean, sure you can make a little bit of money every now and then, but I just feel like all these guys out there that are saying how big of hits, how big of pops they make on every Portia they buy just think they're full of shit.
Derek, what do you think?
Yeah, you know, the funny thing is, I think there's two lies, Will.
There's a lie that maybe people tell other people.
I know for myself, there's a lie I tell myself.
That's a whole different topic.
It is, but it's the lie I tell myself because if I think I'm good at it, I'm going to keep doing it and I need to feed my passion somehow.
And if I admit it to myself that there's a solid chance that I was going backwards financially with most of my Portia purchases, I don't know how I'd make that work in my own head.
So, no one, listen, in life, right?
No one ever wants to admit they're a loser.
No one wants to admit that something they do, whether it's something they love to do or don't love to do, that they're going backwards.
And I think across the whole spectrum of car ownership, there's not a lot of times where you can come out as a huge winner, right?
And we need to get into that because there's a lot of ways, I think we convince ourselves and certainly people, if you really dig into it, there's a lot of different parts where you say,
you know what? Yeah, no, you're right. You're right.
And I think that the first one is right off the bat, you buy a car.
Well, you have you have your purchase price.
Oh man, I talked him down. I got a great deal.
You know, he wanted he wanted 50,000.
I got it for 35 or 40. I lowballed him.
He was desperate.
I got the car.
Man, I took it.
All right. Well, that's great.
You can feel good about the purchase.
But I know for myself that almost always anytime someone lets a car go for what is what is decidedly under market, that car needs a boatload of work.
And I just don't know it yet.
And so you get it home.
I don't if you live in a state where you have to pay taxes on it, you're paying taxes on the purchase you just made, you're paying registration, you're paying inspection.
So right off the bat, at least for me, you're a couple grand in, right?
All right, that closes the gap.
Then you start to drive it.
And I know for myself, man, what's that heck up when I'm in at 3,500 RPMs?
Got a little stutter.
Shit.
All right.
And then if you can, if you can wrench yourself, that's a whole different story.
But if it goes to your Porsche guy, well, then that begins the initial process of trying to make a car right.
And I think that's something we can talk about because I think that's probably the biggest expenditure.
Yeah.
So the first part of your story or your kind of hypothetical situation here is like this idea of beating the pants off of a seller and being this really shrewd negotiator.
And it's like in the world of car deals, it's almost like you've got to beat your chest and say, you know, I beat the shit out of that guy and I got the car.
I stole it because I'm a better negotiator.
Well, to your point, number one, if he took, if he fire sailed the thing, there's a reason for that.
And congratulations.
You think you're a badass, but meanwhile you're going to get hurt.
And you're going to find out very soon why.
And then I just, I also think and I, you know, I can tend to be cynical admittedly, but I just think people, there's this truism.
And I should have looked it up before we got onto this podcast here.
But this truism is people will lie about how much they paid for their house and they'll lie about how much they paid for their car.
And, you know, my brother and I were talking the other day and we were just laughing about how car deals can, can make an honest person dishonest.
And, and he said, yeah, you know, show me a car deal and I'll show you at least one person who's lying.
It's either the buyer or the seller, right?
You know, but anyway, the point I guess I'm trying to make to you is that how about this?
I am going to agree with you that it is tough to sit here and say, I lost.
And so people want to come out of this thing, you know, claim that they made money on it.
Yeah, yeah.
Or even go home and if your wife says to you, hey, how much did you pay for that?
Well, you know, the decimal point might move a little bit depending on if you should have bought it or shouldn't have bought it.
My wife, my wife is numb.
Thank God.
I mean, you know, every now and then she asks questions and I, I'm just an honest guy.
I have to tell her, but I kind of, I'll sugarcoat her or I'll say, but I'm going to be able to sell it for more.
Or, you know, I'll be able to, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And meanwhile, I know in my heart of hearts and she knows too that it's going to, it's going to be, I will not make money on it.
The idea is how much can I contain the bleeding?
Part of that is in the purchase process.
You try to get a PPI, you know, and at least you can kind of get a sense of the scope of the car before you own it.
But as we'll talk about in, in this podcast and, and from our personal experience, PPI's don't always, I would say most of the time cannot give you a full picture of what you're going to have to put into that car.
Because there's the must do's and then there's the like to do's, right?
I'll give you a perfect example.
My 991, when I got it, unbeknownst to me, didn't shift, right?
I ended up owning a clutch within a thousand miles of owning it, right?
I wish I could say that I was ripping burnouts on the, on the drive across country home with it, but that's not the case.
It was, it was there before I bought it.
I just didn't catch it.
So that's the must do's, right?
Then there's the like to do's.
Oh man, it would be really great if I could throw, take the PCM out, you know, the screen and make it a car play, you know?
So that way I could have nav on my screen, a thousand bucks.
Oh man, I, I think if I could just get this shifter upgrade, it's going to shift like a rifle boat.
All right.
Yep.
That's a thousand bucks.
And so then there's like to do's and you start adding those up, right?
You start adding up all the boxes that are coming from Amazon in your garage.
And then you start to get a better sense of your initial ownership, how deep you are.
Okay.
Here's a question for you.
Do you keep a spreadsheet for each of your cars and like line by line?
How much, how much your, you know, $25 pelican lens or bold that you bought cost you?
Do you keep that?
Um, no, no, no, I don't because it'd be, listen, in a perfect world, I'd love to say I can.
And I do try to do a good job about keeping receipts because I am a huge believer in being a good steward of the cars.
Because when I pass them on to the next owner, I'd love to give that person as full of a picture of what I did with the car.
So they can have a level of comfort that at least I took care of it.
But no, for example, on that 991, I hear about all these leaves that go into the intakes on the front of the car, right?
And they gum up your, your coolers.
And so you got to get screens to put in.
And so I dutifully bought the screens and of course you can't just get $40 screens.
They're $160 and they're sitting in a box out there and I got to find time to put them in.
But that never made it to my mental spreadsheet.
You know, so if I think about selling the car, I kind of forget that I spent the money there.
Yep.
So this is all additive.
I mean, this is with any car, but it kind of goes to our overall topic of can you make a killing, right?
Listen, you and I are not going to argue that someone who gets, who knows the Porsche GM, gets a great allocation on a car,
everyone wants it, you know, fill in the model, they get it and then they flip it.
Okay, you're making money off the bat because you're just moving metal that you never drive nor cared about driving.
Yeah, I don't think that that, that situation there, I don't know that that applies to this conversation.
Like, okay, if you're a flipper and you're, you're, you are good enough to kind of hoodwink a dealership into not knowing that you're going to flip it
and you go flip it and pick up a hundred grand like congratulations.
That's not what we're talking about here.
I'm talking about the user, the enthusiast, the Porsche obsessed people out there just like us, like, I don't know, man.
I mean, you just hit the nail on the head.
All of these like small, the must-dos, yeah, you got to do that and that can put you upside down.
But then over time, especially if you own it for a little while, it all starts to add up too.
And so, yeah, taking that flipper off the table, that's not, that's not necessarily what I'm talking about here.
I don't know, you know, depending on what state people live in, you're paying insurance on these cars.
And even up here in Little New Hampshire, I'm well over $1,200 a year in insurance for one car.
No, if you own a car for five or six years, well, there you go.
That comes right off the top, right?
That's cost of ownership over time.
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Well, and let me just say this.
I'm hearing you talk about taxes, dude.
Start them on 10 LLC.
If you're going to be in and out of these things, it just makes sense.
It is not illegal.
It's totally above board, like you got to do it.
I need to look into that.
I know that that is the thing.
Not to mention those license plates look awesome.
I mean, I think the second thing else, I mean, it's going to get regulated.
I believe the government is trying to make moves to take that out of the equation,
but I don't know, there's got to be a lot of wealthy people who don't want that to change.
And so, I digress.
All I'm saying to you is if you're trying to stop the bleeding a little bit, you got to do that.
Yes.
You know, I do, when I go to car shows, people always want to share what they bought a car for.
You know, like, oh, you wouldn't believe what I got this for.
Well, how long have you had it?
I've had it for seven years.
I've had it for nine years.
And you have to look at the market, right?
Orsha has had this explosive growth in value, perceived or otherwise, it's real.
And I don't think it's really fair in the broader picture to say, oh, well, I'm a smart car owner
because I bought this in 2018 and now it's worth 150% more.
That's not a good purchase.
That's a lucky purchase.
So first of all, talking about what you just did, like, I want to talk about the psychological side of it.
Like, when I hear guys say that and I don't peel back the layers of the onion and start to figure out, like, how long have they had it?
But they tell me, like, what they paid for it.
My mind immediately goes to, man, Will, you're a dumbass because you didn't get a deal like that.
You way overpaid.
And so that for me is just part of, like, the head trash that goes on there.
But, you know, I have one, I have one big one time.
Okay.
And I'll guarantee you that many listeners who are owners and who have owned for, let's see, what is this?
2024, who have been in the hobby since, call it at least 2018, 2019, who lived through the pandemic.
They probably won big, at least during one period of time.
And that's during COVID.
I felt like an investment genius.
Okay.
So I had bought my, I had bought my 86, my first one, the guard's red car for fair market in 2019.
And then COVID came and COVID went and I exited the car for what was fair market and I made a good hit.
But hey, I was lucky, man.
That's not, that ain't, you know, consistently making money on Porsches.
That was just a stroke of luck.
I mean, I don't know, did you, did you, did that fall into the, or did you fall into that camp too?
Did you get lucky?
I did.
You know, I've having, having owned a number of different cars, normally I have them for a couple of years and I let them go.
And my biggest thing is if I can get out of them even, you know, with, if I can walk away having put money into them, even if I sell them for more than I bought them for,
if I can get out even, then I think that's a huge win personally.
You know, admittedly, it's usually if, if I can quote unquote rent the car for a thousand or $2,000 a year at the end of the day, that's great.
Yeah.
I had an, I think I bought a 993 in 2012 and sold it in 2019, you know, and so, you know, that had appreciated by 2X.
But that's just really time and the market.
I bought it because it was beautiful.
I really wanted a 993.
I wanted to experience it and I'm glad I did.
So for every one of those though, Will, I have a bunch of others, 79, 930.
My beautiful wife agreed that that could be the car that we left the church in when we got married.
And so.
Did it quit?
Did the engine died about a mile away?
Listen, is this, it was, it was an amazing day.
But, you know, I think I bought it for at that time.
It was like 22.
And I think a couple of years later, I sold it for say 27 needed some paint, but it was a good car.
You know, you look at the values now and you go, oh man, if I just held onto it.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
There's tons of posts out there.
You see that?
Like, God, I just shouldn't have sold that five years ago.
I'd be rich.
I mean, we all have that.
The story of the one that got away or I sold to earlier, whatever, you know?
Yeah, but don't have the crystal ball.
You know, you just, you buy what you love and you drive what you love and then you sell it and you just try not to get her too bad.
That's, that's kind of what it comes down to.
Here's where I've landed.
I mean, and I go back and forth.
I mean, the whole thing, I mean, we sit here.
I think if, if you're like me and I know other people are out there, I mean, we're constantly noodling on this stuff.
And sometimes we're like, man, I'm in too deep and it's ruining my enjoyment of the car or I don't give a shit about the money.
I haven't because I love the car so much.
I mean, this is just what we do, right?
But where I've landed and maybe this is just a little bit of self soothing or self justification.
But I think about like, imagine a scenario in which I buy a car for, I don't even want to get into figures.
I'll just stay, stay in concept here.
If you lose money on a car, that's just the price of the hobby.
Some people, they choose to be members of a country club and they pay a minimum of a thousand month or whatever, whatever the hell it costs to do that.
And that's money they're never going to see again, but they have indeed gotten an experience they want.
Some people spend money on travel, okay?
That's money they're never going to see again, but they have created memories with that money.
And I feel like for me, I lose 10, I lose 20, whatever it is.
I hope that's, I mean, that's a, that's a big hit.
That's happened to me before, by the way.
But, you know, yeah, you just heard him.
He's like, oh, hell yeah, that sucked.
Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is I think we all like, we choose to use our money the way that we want to use our money.
For me, I enjoy the cars and it's going to cost me money to enjoy the cars.
The nice thing about Porsche as a brand is you can get most, if not all of your money back.
The idea of hitting a home run on any of these cars, I feel like is a real stretch unless you're somebody and, you know, I want to talk about this before we close out.
Unless you're somebody who buys low, puts lipstick on a pig, doesn't attend to the car in the way that it deserves and rolls out of it.
And maybe I'm not going to say deceives a buyer, but at the very least is not completely forthcoming about the fact that, oh, I don't know, the rear diff is getting ready to grenade.
Or, you know, the car pisses oil all over your floor and you just dry ice blasted it and then wiped it down and so they don't find it has happened.
So anyway, what are your thoughts on that, man?
Yeah, I agree with you.
If you, if you just look at it as like you're buying experiences, absolutely, it's money well spent.
To your point, it's all about what you consider a good return on investment.
If you're spending money on traveling, those memories, it's worth the, you know, however many thousands of dollars it is.
And there's not too many hobbies you can have where you can drive these awesome cars, have a blast, have experiences, make connections with other owners, have really memorable drives with your kids, and then get out of it with your shirt still, you know.
And I think that's part and parcel of the brand for sure.
I'm sure there's plenty of brands where you do that and maybe you can't exit without being on fire.
But yeah, I think that's best case scenario.
But you're absolutely right.
It's also the kind of owner you are because here I am talking about, you know, when you get the car, you want to sort it, you want to make it right.
You want to be a good steward of the car, right?
And that takes money.
And there's a lot of corners you can cut and there's a lot of decisions you can make to cut bait and run.
And then it's someone else's problem.
And I guess it really comes down to what kind of owner you are, I suppose.
I mean, frankly, I think it has to do with ethics and, you know, moral compass and I just, I can't sell a problem car.
I feel like I know what it feels like for that to happen to you and it sucks.
And it's just not the way I want to interact with the world.
I do think these cars deserve to be sorted, especially the older ones.
Like where I'm coming from with a lot of my commentary is the world of air-cooled.
The newer stuff that I have owned has been relatively problem-free.
But the air-cooled stuff falls into this category of needing to get sorted and major systems, failures and shit like that.
But I don't know, man.
I just, I'm the type of owner that has to sort it what I have learned.
And I don't know if you want to, you know, echo this.
Early on, I was super OCD about wanting to get everything fixed.
And now I've moved to a place where maybe not every bolt has to be shiny and new,
or maybe I don't need to have the entire fuse box replaced with a newer blade fuse set, you know.
But I guess the punchline in all of this is I sort my cars right and that shit costs money.
You buy a car, you start owning some of these Porsches and you're like, these are gonna be my forever car.
I'm gonna have this car for 10 or 15 years.
I need to make it perfect.
I need to, I need to make sure that under the dash, all the wires are bound and perfect.
And, you know, because that's what the car deserves.
I remember feeling that way.
I had a 64 356C and...
It was half price, not half the service.
It meant to still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.
So that means half day.
Give it a try at midmobile.com slash switch.
Awesome story.
The car had a, it was a one owner, the Air Force Colonel that had owned it and had bought it in Europe and brought it back.
He was so fastidious on the service that he actually, it came with a notebook in the glove box.
Will, with every gallon of gas that had ever been through it, the mileage, you know, it was that kind of car.
And it was super cool because talk about feeling like you just took a museum piece out of the museum and you get to drive it.
And so it was, it was cool.
I felt like a responsibility that I had to keep that, you know, practice up, which good or bad, you know, it is what it is.
But I found myself like trying to find the most period correct everything to make it what it was.
All right, so you take that car.
I argue that that's okay to make that the best car it can be because you're truly a steward of it.
It was older than me.
It'll be here long after I'm gone.
Right.
You know, then you kind of move to some of the newer cars I've owned where, you know, there's a little bit of wear on the bolster.
And I'm like, all right, it's not super, you know, it's kind of unsightly.
It kind of bothers me.
But if I go and spend $2,500 to recover that seed or read diet and go through that whole process and then I can't drive the car for three months because the upholsterer is way backed up and all this stuff.
Or I can just live with it and I can just drive it and that's fun.
I don't consider that not taking care of the car.
I think that's more something that is, you know, surface that it's kind of a nice to have.
Well, I think something you said resonated with me.
Like this idea of what I finally learned after these years of doing this is that, like, there's probably no such thing as a forever Porsche for me.
And so letting go of this idea that, oh, since I'm going to own this car until I die, I need to replace the seats because there's a little bit of wear on that bolster.
And that just is not right.
I mean, getting realistic with ourselves about what the ownership experience is going to look like and what's essential.
And I think we kind of all mature through our process of owning these cars too, right?
Like I know I have.
And so I guess the punchline on it is, is like, if you want to prevent yourself from really taking a bath on it, try not to be as OCD.
You know, it sounds to me like you've learned to be realistic with yourself about what it's going to actually be like.
And you just know that you're not a long-term hold guy.
I'm not a long-term hold guy.
I get bored out of my mind.
Like my favorite period of time with the Porsche that I bought, that I buy is the first month.
Yep.
Like I love the hunt.
I love the buy.
I love it showing up and cleaning it and driving it.
And then like a month later, I'm kind of like, meh.
But it took me a long time to go from, okay, this 993 is my forever car to, you know, I'm probably going to roll out of this thing.
I'm probably going to take a bit of a beating on it.
That's just going to be what it is.
And I'm going to find my next one.
You know what the marker for me, when it comes to that, is getting it ceramic coated.
Because...
Oh my God, yes.
I've learned not to do that.
You get it and you're like, no, I'm going to ceramic coat it.
It's going to be perfect.
I'm going to have this forever.
And then you drop whatever $1,200 on the ceramic coat and the car looks awesome.
And then you're selling it and you will never see that money back.
I got you beat.
I bought this GT4.
Gorgeous Sapphire blue 981 GT4.
I didn't ceramic coat it.
I wrapped the whole thing in PPF, the whole car.
And I sold it like four or six weeks later.
It was so stupid.
It was like five grand, right?
And honestly, just sidebar, I'm somebody that really enjoys like washing my car and really like taking care of the paint.
And when you PPF the whole car, you lose some of that because you're not actually touching the paint.
It takes away some of that therapeutic value of washing your car.
But anyway, I think that's a brilliant pickup I hadn't thought of is like the ceramic coating is a marker of whether or not you're pissing your money away.
I finally come to grips with it that I'll just wash it more and that's okay.
But let me ask you a question.
I've actually never wrapped a car with PP before or PPF rather.
Does it does it make the paint any more dull?
You know, does it does it make it is the luster still there that deep Porsche color?
I've not noticed that.
That's the only car I've done the full thing on.
I have had the front clip done with varying levels of success, but a good shop that knows what they're doing.
They're going to paint correct the hell out of it before they wrap it.
So they really bring that paint up.
So, you know, I imagine as long as they paint correct it and wrap it right.
I have a friend on LA that uses some next level shop to do his cars and you can't tell.
Really?
Yeah.
But I mean, I don't know how much he spends.
I mean, I want a 10 grand, 12 grand.
I mean, it's done right.
And especially with the older stuff, there's not templates out there.
So in other words, they got a hand cut all of those pieces to to make it fit right in its time intensive.
Whereas with the newer stuff, I think you can just buy like off the shelf templates, for example, for a 991 front end.
Dude, when my 993, I had the customary rock guards.
It was a dark blue car.
And so they were clear.
And I brought it to two or three different shops because it was of course yellowing, right?
It was put on way back in the day and no one would touch it.
They said, absolutely not.
We're not going to even try to remove it because we'll take some of the paint with us.
So I know PPF has come a long way.
It's a huge expense.
And I wonder, you know, when you are talking war stories with people that you meet at car shows
and they talk about how they made a killing on selling their Porsche or Lambo or fill in the blank.
If that expenditure comes into their final tally, I don't think it is.
Yeah, they forget.
They forget about that.
You know, in the new headlamps they had to buy that were 350 a pop.
Like, they forget about that, you know?
I just, as a data point for you, my 991 has seven year old plus.
Well, what is this year?
It's 2024.
The thing's a 17.
So I mean, it has PPF on the front end that was put on new, okay?
And it is failing.
It's turning yellow.
It's a black car, so it's not exactly easy to see, but it needs to be replaced.
And my shop is willing to take it off.
So they're also going to paint correct the car.
And all of that will be for, I want to say it's 2,200 bucks if I pay them in cash, which I don't do it.
But it's back to your point about ceramic coating.
Like, here's the thing is that black car is my daily driver for the most part.
And like, I want to redo the PPF, but I don't think I want to paint correct the car, right?
It's just going to get scratched up again and you're pissing your money away there.
So that goes to the idea of being realistic with yourself about how you're going to use it.
Would it look gorgeous for the first period of time until I washed it?
Yeah, but is it worth the extra money to do that?
No.
And you know what?
If you think that it is, if you're the type of person that is so OCD that you want your car to be perfect all the time
and you're washing it constantly, God bless you.
God bless you more if you drive it and still take the time to make sure you vacuum out all of the grass from the wheel wells.
That's awesome.
But taking it back to kind of our original point is that when or if you ever come around to selling it,
you just got to be honest with yourself that if you can get out of that car and say,
I had a hell of a time and I didn't take a strong beating, then I think you're winning.
And I think with the brand of Porsche, that happens more often than not.
Yes.
As long as you're smart.
As long as you don't put it on a brain trailer auction and the auction goes sideways on you and then, yeah.
Yes.
So look, man, I feel like we've covered all of our points here.
Yeah, I think so too.
I really enjoyed talking to you.
Great episode.
And you know, everyone join us on the next one.
Thanks, man.
And that's a wrap for this episode of Renthousias Radio.
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About this episode
Exploring the myth of profiting from Porsche ownership, this episode delves into the realities of car buying and selling. Hosts Derek and Will share personal anecdotes about their experiences, emphasizing that while some may claim to make money, the truth often involves hidden costs and emotional investments. They discuss the psychology behind ownership, the importance of enjoying the driving experience, and the often-overlooked expenses that come with maintaining these iconic cars. The conversation is both candid and insightful, making it relatable for any Porsche enthusiast.
Original notes
Will and Derek just got back from rallying through the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains before spending the weekend at Luftgekühlt 11 in Durham, North Carolina. From secret back-road routes around Blowing Rock to running laps at Bristol Motor Speedway, it was two days of incredible driving followed by the most artfully curated Porsche event on the planet — courtesy of Patrick Long and Jeff Zwart at the historic Lucky Strike factory.
In the intro, Derek gives a full recap of the week:
Then we roll into one of our favorite classic episodes — “The Big Lie: Making Money on Every Porsche.”
We dig deep into:
- The myth of always profiting on Porsche ownership
- The hidden costs (taxes, insurance, PPIs, must-dos vs. nice-to-dos)
- Why ceramic and PPF are often sunk costs
- The ethics of selling and what it means to be a good steward
- Why breaking even might actually mean you’re winning
So grab your coffee, settle in, and enjoy a mix of mountain-road storytelling and Porsche ownership truth-talk.
Related videos:
• Will’s new 993 video → @Rennthusiast
• Derek’s Luft Shorts + Boxster first drive → @ElevenAfterNine
#Porsche #Porsche911 #Luftgekühlt #PorscheLife #CarPodcast #RennthusiastRadio #PorscheOwnership #PorscheCulture #CarTalk #BlueRidgeParkway #PorscheCommunity #AirCooledPorsche #WaterCooledPorsche
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