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nberry said:
Not so fast. here is an informative post on the study.
Actually this "study" is based on a comparison of MSRP to the 36 month residual PREDICTION, which, as it states, could be high or low (no foolin'). It seems this is more of an advertisement for their forbesauto.com partner site than a scientific study. Nice to see Porsche on there, but alas I think the study is likely not very reliable (it would be better if they published past records of how precise their models were).
Well first, let's agree that using predicted residuals assumes to know an unknown future quantity. So what? The figures may be inexact, but the leasing banks are not in the business of losing money. How about the porsche depreciation curve looking even rosier when you consider the fact that Forbes is basing the predicted residual % on MSRP! Which means that -- using their method -- because discounts are easily obtained when buying a new 997, the argument could be made that Forbes is
understating residuals in this article!!!!
If that doesn't trip your trigger, let's attack this empirically-- not with predictions, but with reality. What does a four-year-old 911, reasonably optioned, sell for these days? Jump online to Autotrader which shows over 400 model year 2002 non-Turbo 911's for sale nationwide ( I know the next comment "...flooding the market blah blah blah"..sounds like a lot of cars, but it's 8 cars per state). The
average asking price is over $56K. The
lowest asking price is $38K. So let's grant a plaid-sportsjacketed-dealer fudge factor of $10K per car and we are down to $46K.
An '02 996 C2 with $10K in options sold for abt $80K.
That's 58% retained value over 4 years. 42% depreciation over 4 years. Even if you peg the current '02 resale down at $40K you're still at 12% per year depreciation....ain't no prancing horse, but not a disappointing number. What am I missing here, counselor?
Of course the overriding caveat remains that anyone buying a 911 with serious concerns about value retention probably has no business buying a Porsche 911 or any other frivolous $100K toy !!!!
