It has recently come to my attention that you can buy a used Porsche Panamera for approximately the same price as a Lego set. This is a neat trick, considering that a used Porsche Panamera runs and drives and steers quite well, plus carries a bunch of people and generally makes your neighbors think you're rich, whereas a Lego set can be entirely destroyed by a medium-size dog.
Before I get into Panamera pricing, let me first give you a rule about the cost of used Porsches: They are very, very expensive. When I was a wee child, during an era we thought George W. Bush saying "misunderestimated" was the greatest embarrassment a politician could perform, a used, air-cooled Porsche 911 was roughly the same price as a new Dodge Neon. (This is not an exaggeration.) Today, buying all of the Dodge Neons in the entire world would be cheaper than one single 993 Carrera 4S. (This might be a slight exaggeration.)
Over the last decade or so, there's been this amazing surge in demand for used Porsche models, and prices have skyrocketed for basically any 911, 914, 912, or 944, or any other three-digit number starting with "9" that makes as much sense to a regular person as the layout of airplane crash debris. So, when the Panamera came out, there was sort of this question of whether it would depreciate like a Porsche, meaning you won't be able to afford one unless you're the sort of aging man who watches golf on television. Or would it depreciate like a luxury sedan, in the sense that people will abandon theirs at their local service shop once they discover a new set of tires costs more than the car's worth?
Well, the Panamera has just entered its 15th model year, and now we know the answer: luxury sedan. Because a used Panamera is cheap!
I present Exhibit A, from my lovely car auction website Cars & Bids: We've now concluded auctions for 11 Panamera models that ended below $25,000. That jumps to 21 auctions if you raise the cap to 30 grand, and 33 if you go to $40,000. And at that point, you're getting into some fairly low-mileage Panamera Turbo models, and even a few V-8-powered Panamera GTSes. In other words: This isn't an outlier. A used Panamera is cheap.
The winner of the Cheap Panamera Trophy so far on Cars & Bids is a bit of a sorry one. It's this first-year 2010 model that sold in November with small wheels, a bad Carfax report, a sagging headliner, and 120,000 miles on the odometer. But viewed another way, this car is also also a clean-titled modern Porsche with a PDK dual-clutch automatic transmission—and it's a 4S, which means it has a 400-hp V-8 and all-wheel drive. The selling price was just $12,850, which is squarely in the territory of Dodge Neon money. No, really: Just three weeks earlier, Cars & Bids sold a 2000 Dodge Neon (OK, a Plymouth Neon, but the same thing) for $10,300, a few Lego sets shy of that Panamera. Admittedly, the Neon had just 6 miles on the odometer, and the seller was the Petersen Automotive Museum, but the point remains that a used Panamera is cheap.
If you're the sort of car enthusiast who's searching for a nice bargain, this is especially interesting for two reasons. One, a used Panamera may be cheap—but it is not bad. A 2010 Panamera 4S like the Neon-y bargain pone has reasonably strong acceleration, sharp handling, seating for four, and the ability to make other people think you're tremendously successful, even if you're really only successful at buying heavily depreciated used cars that were sold new to people who understand what cufflinks are for. Moreover, I generally hear good things about Panamera reliability from the people I know who own older ones, a point made further by the many used Panamera models with high mileage we have sold on Cars & Bids.
The other nice benefit of a cheap used Panamera is that it's practical. How many times have we all heard someone say they wish they hadn't sold their old Porsche, but then they had kids, they needed to buy a house, and their spouse hated it, and then this person pulls out their phone—with the flashlight always on for some reason—to show you the old Porsche in question? This conversation topic is such a mainstay at car events that it deserves its own class at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Élégance, right next to "Prewar Automobiles from Manufacturers With Unpronounceable Names."
But such regrets are unnecessary with the Panamera, since you can have it all: a Porsche and a practical, reasonable family vehicle. It even has a hatchback, which I think is one of the Panamera's greatest tricks; it's called a luxury sedan, it competes with luxury sedans, and people think of it as a luxury sedan, yet Porsche managed to sneak a tiftgate onto its rump. Imagine if the S-Class had a liftgate. Anarchy. Porsche pulled it off, and nobody seemed to care.
So, you really should buy a used Porsche Panamera. You won't regret it—particularly when you're hauling around your whole family, cargo area packed to the gills and a hole in your bank account no larger than a Dodge Neon. And if you're afraid of pulling the trigger, well, you can always buy enough Lego sets to make a Panamera instead. Except that it might just be the same price.
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March 15, 2024 at 07:54PM
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Why a Used Porsche Panamera Is a Great Idea! - MotorTrend
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