Quick Take: Porsche 911 Special Edition Sales
Well known quirk and feature enthusiast Doug DeMuro recently posted an article on Autotrader suggesting that special edition Porsche 911 cars maybe aren’t so special any longer. He writes in part:
A few months ago, I was a guest on Matt Farah's "The Smoking Tire" podcast and we were discussing Porsche models, and Matt mentioned to me that 40 percent of Porsche 911 sales in the preceding year were "GT" cars. Forty percent. I can't verify this number independently, but it seems completely accurate, just based on the sheer number of these things I see driving around. And not just driving around -- also at Porsche dealerships, waiting to be sold.
Here are a few quick thoughts about that.
First, as I noted to Doug, this mirrors the pickup market in which buyers keep flocking to the most expensive models and manufacturers keep inventing ever higher trim levels to keep up with demand. See, for example, the F-150 Limited at around US$70,000.
Second, as this linear fit trendline shows, 911 sales have been basically flat(-six?) since the late 1990s. This implies that GT editions aren’t adding to 911 sales volume, they’re maintaining it. (Data is from CarSalesBase.)
In other words, the 911 is quietly moving upmarket to chase where the buyers are located. This shouldn't surprise you if you've noticed how populated the US$100k+ new car market has become with so many offerings from Mercedes-Benz, Bentley, Aston Martin, Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, and so on.
As for what this says about allocation of wealth in society, that's a topic for another time.
(Note: This post originated as a twitter thread.)
