Not the ultra rich, but the well connected ones.
It's the same deal with Ferrari and in a way Lamborghini. The Limited Editions are just symbols for the factory, perhaps to reward their most loyal customers, perhaps to celebrate something.
Yes the 918 owners have first dips, even without the PCNA VIP programs, but consider they each paid Porsche a million, it's not a surprised that they get preferred treatment. But for the non-918 owners, some also spent close to a million on regular 911s or other products over the years, and if they bought them all from the same dealer, I am sure the dealer will put them in the same category as the 918 owners too with respect to allocations.
For regular Joe Smiths, who perhaps only wanted the Limited Edition cars for their 'appreciation' value, why would the dealers, or in a way the factory, gives them the 'benefit'?
Of course not all Joe Smiths are like there, there will be people who genuinely WANTS a manual GT3 level car, but it's just part of the capitalism system that they won't be the first choice for allocation, as they do not have previous relationships with the dealers. Not saying it doesn't happen, but it's rare. It's like me with Ferraris, I never had one, never wanted to even walked int the dealership to even try and spec one cause I wasn't on their radar before. But as it happened, by pure luck I ran into a Speciale, one of Ferrari's specialty car, that was available for purchase, and that's how I got into the door and then benefits from that.
Sales figures don't lie, car companies can see how thing goes, with Ferrari, then had already noticed that people buying manual cars are the very minority, there was no point in even trying to build one anymore, losing a handful of customers is acceptable. Pretty much same with Porsche, they had been offering manuals in the regular 911s for the longest time, those buyers are also in the very minority, very vocal, but very few in numbers, had to justify blending the manual cars within the regular production line. But they still know there are a tiny minority section of the market that WANTS a manual car and props to them for even trying to build one.
Not all the connected owners will buy the 911R. The fact that it's a manual is already enough a negative to put them off. I am one of those. It's like why would I want to buy a carburetor car or a car with a hand crank starter, now in the year 2015? It doesn't make any sense. I admit I still ended up ordering one, but that car is already spoken for, I ordered it for a good friend of mine that probably has no chance to secure an allocation by himself. I am not even going to make a penny off it, might even get him a discount even.
A GT3 is a race car in street trim. It only make sense to go with progress and produce cars with paddle shifts as all race cars are already using them, that's called continue the racing heritage, a proper Porsche tradition.
--
