SciFrog:

Our almost 12 year old daughter is almost hitting the roof of the California in the rear seats. This summer might be OK (we only use it in summer) but next one might be a real issue. For short trip it is fine but sometimes we drive 3 hours the same day to visit some nice local town, and this is going to be tricky. There is simply no car on the market today that would be a solution. Of course we all fit nicely in the manual 612 but it is not convertible.

Maybe the only thing that makes sense is to sell the manual 612 (if someone pays a good price for it as it is very rare, only 80 in the USA, but it is a niche car) and get a late FF with panoramic roof or a used Lusso. We can keep the 10 year old California for fun to complement the AM Roadster.

RC, with the lack of good lease from Porsche, you are realizing what many of us have for a few years: Porsches are now too expensive for what they offer (Macan and 911 GTx models aside). They are stuck between lightly used exoctics that depreciate a lot and mainstream very good but much cheaper cars from luxury German automakers (like Mercedes). Even worse for Porsche is that not only the performance gap has shrunk from the cheaper competitors, but as performances go up you can use the marginal performance increases less and less without getting in trouble (France is lowering regular road speed limit from 90kph to 80kph for example. Also congestion in metro cities in the USA is getting worse and no money is invested in infrastructure to solve it, no wonder semi autonomous electric cars are the latest craze...

Why should I lie? Money is an issue. While I'm ready to "suffer" for a weekend toy, not so much for a daily driver and/or family car. 

I love Porsche but lately, I do not get the feeling I get what I am paying for. The R8 was a real eye opener (and I still think that many many people are underestimating this car) compared to the 911 Turbo S, even if performance is basically the same.

Me and my wife had a tax audit recently (last year, took over 7 months, was a pain in the ass) and surprisingly, the cars were no issue at all. Actually, we negotiated a few improvements for us but we still have a certain limit with have to go with. So the C63 and the E63 are OK with the tax advisor (and the tax office), my current 991.2 GTS Cab is borderline (for my business). The R8 is of course a private lease, no way to use it as a company car at my (business) income.

 


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RC (Germany) - Rennteam Editor Porsche 991.2 Carrera GTS Cabriolet (2018), Porsche Cayenne S Diesel (2017), Audi R8 V10 Plus (2016), Mini JCW (2015)