Phil Farrell
At the time of writing, here in the UK we are on our flight path out of lockdown and discussions amongst my motor-loving friends have started turning, albeit over cyberspace for now, to plans for getting the cars out and about in the coming months. Our local group landed on a plan to attend the rearranged Bicester Scramble event on the Saturday and Simply Porsche at Beaulieu on the Sunday with an overnight stay on the Friday. I hope others are planning
similar trips and experiences with their cars over the coming months.
This month the GTS went in for a service. Just a minor one that had been triggered by age rather than mileage. The car just needed a new set of wiper blades and I got a heads-up that the rear brakes are showing signs of age and only have 40% still on them. Enough for another few thousand miles so I thought I’d leave that for a while, as unless I manage to get a track day in this summer I doubt I’ll be pushing the brakes to their limits on the public roads. And nor should I.
Prior to the service I had the opportunity to take the car for a quick detail. It had started to form a bit of a layer of grime as I’d been dailying the car since Christmas time, but with ongoing building work at home I haven’t had the kit on hand to do a proper job on the drive. And I’m very much of the mindset that, unless the car’s covered in bird mess or salt, a quick and rushed wash will do more damage than leaving the paintwork with a layer of road dirt on it. I must admit that oddly the car felt that much more special again once it was clean and hoovered out. Less daily run around and more weekend toy. The morning I picked it up it was clean and newly serviced and I was able to get the roof back and enjoy some pops and
crackles from the exhaust, and just get that feeling for a few miles of being free to enjoy the car as it should be again.
Being a bit of a numbers man by trade I do like to keep track of how values are holding up of the cars I have, and the GTS in particular. With the new GTS unlikely to be too far away, I wonder what impact that will have on 991 GTS prices. If I were a betting man I would perhaps say it might impact the Gen2 cars more than Gen1, as those who are in the .2 GTS trade up for the newer version with the newer toys. I’m not knocking them for that. The GTS is ultimately more of a tourer so to have the latest improvements makes real sense.
But I think as the .2 prices continue to converge down towards the .1 prices, I’m going to be really interested to see whether the difference in price between the .1 and .2 remains and both cars will drop when the new one comes out or whether, with the .1 being the last non-gt NA car, we’ll end up with that odd scenario where the .2 depreciates past the .1. Looking at the 981/718 market it has happened already, so it is a possibility. Only time will tell. One thing’s for certain though, whatever the price might be in the future on the market, the car will continue to offer perfect value to me for some time to come.