That did make me laugh! [
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I had hoped people take what I said in good spirits
You have to love the internet: it's great for lots of things, but there's a whole load of rubbish on there as well.
Youre bang on the money there Paul..
Jon, and I don't expect you to divulge trade secrets or anything. Would I be right in guessing most dealers would be looking for at least £3K or £4K out of a 944? Allowing for their overheads, a contingency in case they come back under warranty, and (dirty word here), a profit?
No trade secrets with me, I am willing to be completely transparent on this. In the past most of the cars I have sold have been at a complete financial loss, but like any enthusiast, usually the cars I sell have been owned by me for years.. So, I might have bought them cheap, and I will be honest about that, but over the years I will have spent a fortune on them getting them just right, because I would not have enjoyed them if there was anything wrong with them, it would be like a dentist dating a woman with rotten teeth!.. So when it comes time to sell, which is usually because of a combination of my family and friends ribbing me about how out of control my car collection is, and personal guilt because the cars are not getting used, I just want to sell them for as much as someone will pay for them, its as simple as that! But, to sell a car as a business, you need to take one of two roads.. Either be hard nosed, buy them cheap, sell them at a proffit, throw a warranty on them from a third party company which will sometimes not cover much and climb into the bunker and wait for the fall out every time you sell a car... Or, make sure you are selling cars which are not going to come back at you, make sure they are as good as you feel is reasonable and make sure there is enough proffit in it to make it worthwhile giving it space and having it cleaned and advertised constantly until it is sold. Selling cars I guess is a bit like any form of retail, it changes from dealer to dealer and over the years I have dealt with a lot of dealers... Some have low overheads, some have high overheads, so required margins change from place to place, but all of them will have built into their business model that sometimes they might sell a car, which may, through no fault of the dealer turn pear shaped... and in that case, there needs to be enough money in the kitty to put that car right one way or another... In the case of selling a 944 turbo, as a business you would need to know you can afford the occasional one to come back needing an engine, and one way or another, it will cost you an engine.. either you give the customer a refund and then have to buy an engine so you can try to sell it again.. Or you need to buy an engine and install it for the original buyer.. Or refund it and scrap the car. My probelm is, I am a Porsche specialist garage, so if I sell a car, what kind of faults would be reasonable? A perished bush? A small oil leak somewhere? A slightly juddery clutch? Or slow window motors?... The problem is, if I sell a car, I can not pleed ignorance and if a buyer took a car to another specialist they would probably try to make out that any issue with the car was outrageous.. So, I end up not being able to sell a car unless every single fault is rectified... And that is not me bigging myself up, it is me being totally honest. Then there is warranties... at the end of the day, most of the warranties I see customers walking into the workshop with are really poor... I kid you not that one of the biggest warranty companies out there will not cover anything that has worn out, died through age or is faulty due to a manufacturing or design fault.... which pretty much means that it will not cover anything.. ever... And this warranty is promoted and run by an ex member of the TopGear team! But then there are some decent dealers out there who stand by their cars... I have always looked up to one dealer in particular, which is Henry at 911 Virgin.. Never actually met him.. But I always quote a car he sold over 13 years ago, a 944 Lux which he sold for I think £7k on a "millenium bug deal" which was intended to be "No warranty you take your chances" and a couple of K less than the full asking price... The engine span a number 2 big end bearing after 4 months... I the buyer called me and asked how much it would cost to fix, and I told him to call Henry and just let him know what had happened.. Thinking Henry would say "Ok, it was on the bug deal, even if it wasnt it would only have a 3 month warranty" but that he might just also say "Here is a small amount of money towards a used engine"... I was blown away to have the buyer call me back to say that Henry wanted the car back so he could see what he could do.. I was even more blown away to find out Henry paid Ray Northway £5k to rebuild that engine and gave it back to the customer without even mention of wanting any money towards it. That buyer became one of my customers, and that customer sold it to another one of my customers who is still happy with it.. That engine may have cost Henry £5k, he might have only sold the car for £7k, but he sure as hell paid more than that £2k difference for the car in the first place, even without preparing it for sale or giving it space and advertising, so he certainly made a loss but never flinched at being honourable, even when the terms of the sale meant he had no reason to be.. At very least he could have asked the buyer for the difference between the warrantied price and the millenium bug price (£2k) but he didnt.. Ever since then, if anyone has asked me if I know of a good Porsche for sale, especially if it is a 993, 996, 997 etc, I will tell them to go to see Henry at 911 Virgin and I often tell them that story of the 944... It may have cost them money to stand by the car, but in the long run, with my story being told alone, you can bet Henry has made a profit on a few high end cars because of how he handled that one car all those years ago. So some you win, some you loose.. But this is why I steer clear of selling cars usually.. It is way too risky to stake your reputation as a garage on a car which in the case of the average 944 might be 30 years old with something hidden which could go wrong and not only cost me money, but also could risk my repuation. A good example I often tell people when they ask why I dont sell cars is this.. If you were admiring a Porsche at a club gathering or show, and the you got talking to the owner about his Porsche experience and he said it has been a wonderful car that he loves, he bought it from Jon at JMG and other than the engine needing a rebuild last year, it has been great. What would you think? Some people might think "Holy cow, Jon sold them a car and the engine went pop!", but the real story would be in what had not been said, which might be that this car was sold by me 10 years and a hundred thousand miles earlier and the engine went bang on a trackday because the oil was allowed to get low... But that one conversation could tarnish my name with not one person, but loads of them because of the internet... So I stay away from selling cars, until I really have to. In this case, I have decided I could do with a Cayman S as a product development car and mad scientist projects... But already having too many cars, and several 944s (2xLux 2.5, 1xlux 2.7, 2xS2, 4xTurbo and not to mention 968's and 924's) I know I will get a massive amount of "stick" from friends, family and employees if I buy a Cayman or any Porsche... So I need to come back at them with "I sold two and bought one.. Im trying!" If Sharky is ThrottleShop, he has balls of steel to be selling 944's as there are much easier cars to sell out there, which have less risk of biting him in the backside through no fault of his own.. There is a ThrottleShop car at my place at the moment, not because it is a wreck, but because the owner wants a few things improved, I'm not even sure who the owner is to be honest, as I seem to be dealing with a company that refer to the owner as their client... Which normally I only see my customers refering to the owner of the car as being their client when it is actually a £100k car, whcih might be a sign of the times for the 944 where people with some real money are appreciating them.. I don't know, it certainly seems that way. There used to be a lot of 944s out there, now they are getting pretty damn rare in reality.. I don't know how to price one, other than based on what others are selling or asking for them. I could advertise this car at £4k... I bet it would sell really quickly... Probably not even to someone looking for a Silver 944, or even a 944, but someone looking to buy a classic car for £4k. On the other hand, the red 944 2.7 on pistonheads might sell for £12k.. To someone perhaps in 1989 had a boss who had a red 944 that made him envious and ever since then he has wanted one.. A blue one might not cut it, nor would a turbo, but a Red lux that looks just as good as his bosses new one did in 1989 will fullfil his dream, and for that person £12k out of his pension fund might be a drop in the ocean and will make him happier than the person who will loose £20k on his new 991 Turbo in the first year of depreciation. So selling a 944 is not so much like selling a can of beans, if it is then it will be competing against every other can of beans and you could therefore argue that no one would spend more than £5k on a 944 lux because they could buy a Boxster for that.. But many Porsche buyers are not buying a just a car based on performance or handling, but they are buying a car they have wanted for some time, in many cases decades... The person who buys a 944 will have his reasons, mostly attached to wanting a 944... Not a Boxster, an Audi TT or even a 944 Turbo... and that person will tend to have a budget and will be happy to travel.. So if the right car is out there, as long as the price is not completely mad and the car is good, they will buy it regardless of what a Boxster is worth. For some mad reason people buy thatched cottages... God knows why, I hate the ideas of having a flamable roof riddled with insects, which by default will probably have really low ceilings and a preservation order stopping you building that 4 car garage next to it... But people do... and they pay through the nose for it.. Some of them will buy one in the south of england, even though the same kind of cottage will be available for a fraction of the cost in other parts of the country.. But its because they are buying with their heart and soul, not just on the basis of sensible specifications... The same I think is true with the 944 world. There are several things which have changed in the 944 market.. The recession has culled a lot of them, where people did not want to spend money on maintaining them which resulted in many ending up getting beyond repair.. Pre 89 cars can be imported into Australia, who did not have Yuppies buying Porsche cars in the 80's like we did, but are still right hand drive... So many Pre 89 Porsche have been going there, where they also have a really strong currancy versus the rest of the world having a recession.. Then you also have banks offering poor interest rates on savings, causing some people deciding they can put their savings into a car and enjoy their money in a way which may increase in value whereas their savings recently may not have. But I think also the 944 is now old enough for the absolute clap trap of "Poor mans Porsche" or "isnt that the one with the VW engine?" has died off and people realise back in the day these were not something any poor man could afford, they were the price of a small home in the days when far less people owned their own home. Anyway, I still don't know what to price this 2.7 lux at.. My gut feeling is and always has been that surely that 944 2.7 on pistonheads was "HOW MUCH???" but at the same time, every time I think that, I do end up thinking "well actually...hmmm.." and then that makes me wonder if my one could achieve more than that price as it is sold with some backup from it coming from a specialist and that it may not be as good as mine.. But then again the other one has less miles, but its only 30k less miles, how much difference does that make? It's still a stupdly low mileage for a 25 year old car.
