Mar 28, 2006 9:56:04 AM
- easy_rider911
- Rennteam VIP
-
- Loc: London , United Kingdom
- Posts: 22190, Gallery
- Registered on: Nov 8, 2004
Porsche: the investment banker's commuter car...
I walk to my office in Canary Wharf each day. It's only 10 minutes walk. Each way, I see at least 3-4 Porsches every day, day in day out, rain or shine. Even split between Boxsters and 911s. Makes me feel great to see this is a car that on weekends you can drive fast all day long on the twisty bits or around a track or cruise high speed on the motorway and then come Monday, you use it to ferry you to and from work. What a car!
Investment bankers are notorious for wanting the 'latest this' or the 'latest that'. Yet, despite the obsession with having the latest technology in anything and everything, one thing (for so many of them) stays the same...the car they drive....made in Stuttgart...and I don't mean Mercedes Benz.
Investment bankers are notorious for wanting the 'latest this' or the 'latest that'. Yet, despite the obsession with having the latest technology in anything and everything, one thing (for so many of them) stays the same...the car they drive....made in Stuttgart...and I don't mean Mercedes Benz.
....in my expce, investment bankers tend to be decidedly non-car guys (aside from a rare M&A banker)....in NYC, 99%+ of inv bankers ride a train/subway to office; in more car-oriented Menlo Pk, the senior GS/MS tech bankers tend to drive beat-up 3yo BMW 7-series....and the pkg lots of the much wealthier VC's on SandHill Rd in Menlo typically have a dinged-up, sloppily parked 997Cab (often w/o SC)/SL55/CL55 as the most interesting car 
....I'd be shocked if London's inv bankers are notably different from their US counterparts.... 
. 
Also, guys at more blue-chip firms tend to more often drive underwhelming cars, even for wkend drive to country club (perhaps the old-money, got-less-to-prove ethos 
). 
....one of my sharper former NYC colleagues (who was single) would rent an upscale FtLee, NJ condo for about 50% of its Manhattan-equiv rental cost...and avoid a chunk of the NYC resident wage tx (some 4 percentage points in late '90s); drive into NYC in his CL55/996TT (new car every yr) every AM, arriving at his Midtown trading desk by 6AM, after a mere 20-25 min drive (incl an 80MPH blitz down WestSideHwy); and would simply get a rm at FourSeasHotel for those Fri/Sat eves when he needed a place in NYC....net, net his total housing and commuting costs were even vs the conventional banker/trader living in an expensive tenement in Manhattan and still enduring a 30min door-to-door subway/taxi/walk commute to office, esp fun during the ugly heat&humidity/rain/snow/cold that one faces 330+d/yr in NYC.... 
) actually commuting in new 997S/997TT to office every day...even on rainy, gloomy days? In NYC, many single (and more senior married) traders/M&A bankers own P's, but cars hibernate in Manhattan garages 8 mos/yr and sit in Hamptons for summ wkend use to go get grub....while 99%+ of P owners daily-commute via subhuman subway/cab modalities.... 
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