69, although well intentioned, I think you missed the point that started the discussion.

The 997TT is the company's icon halo car. "Porsche" and "Turbo" are practically synonymous.

"Turbo" + "Automatic" equaling quickest car in their line up is not. And that is why people are asking, whats up about that?

It looks like a grab for BMW M6 and SL AMG customers and a second place offering to the usual Porsche Turbo hard core customer base.

Boss 69, FYI, The cars in the late 80's and early 90's were often each built twice. Once when they built them on the line, another when they got to final QC, found flaws and had to tear them apart and rebuild whole parts of them.

In 1990 Porsche tried building and selling 964 model 911s without headgaskets and without vented distributers. Those flaws were not the fault of the market, just engineering arrogance. By the early 90s the luxury sports car market was tepid and new Porsche customers were none too happy.

In the 80's,in the first big real estate boom and with hostile mergers and take overs rampant, resulted in many people in law, real estate and finance buying iconic cars to reward themselves with. Porsche decided to go after them. That is when Porsche expanded the options list to such tripe as $1800.00 leather covered air vent slats. When the real estate market crashed and the hostile merger era ended, Porsche sales crashed with them.

If they had not based their business plan then on the greed and self reward poseur buyer, but on their core customers whose reputation the company and its products were built on,
and also stressed quality, they would not have entered the 90s so weakly.

My info about this comes from Peter Schutz, ex Porsche CEO, who identified the trends between Porsche sales and real estate values, and from a friend of mine who was President and GM for two different Porsche dealerships in the 80's and 90's and from my own onwership of these sleds.