Few cars have managed to drive customers so mad that they would pay many times over its list price as the Porsche 911 R did, but apparently, not everyone in the company is happy about it.
When the Porsche opened the 911 R order books, quite a few customers saw the opportunity of a healthy profit instead of buying into one of the best driver’s cars of the era.
It’s this kind of actions that Andreas Preuninger, Porsche’s GT Division boss, sees with very little sympathy as he revealed to Pistonheads.
“We are not a hedge fund,” he says. “We are a company that produces cars, we live because we sell cars and we have to make a profit to go on. So we cannot offer cars with a built-in promise to keep value for a small amount of chosen people, this wouldn’t be fair.”
He then points out that whatever Porsche is planning down the line, the 911 R will always hold a certain value. The R will stand on its pedestal forever, as with the 997 GT3 RS 4.0,” he says. “With that car it didn’t hurt that there was a 991 GT3, it didn’t hurt that there was a 991 RS, it didn’t hurt that there was an R with a manual gearbox – RS 4.0 values are sky high. It is the same with the R.”
Of course the whole topic has been raised after Porsche made known that they will go back into building GT models with a manual gearbox, like the upcoming facelifted GT3 model.
After the initial rumors of 911 Rs being swapped for seven figures, prices in the used market are a bit hard to track down, with one UK dealer listing an example sold for £459,995 ($576,000 in current exchange rates).
If the R indeed follows the example of the RS 4.0, then owners will have nothing to fear of but as ever with every Porsche that’s that good to drive, we wish more of them would enjoy their car for just what it is and not for its value in the market.
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