I’ve always loved cars, and in particular I have always loved the Porsche 911. I’ve owned an old air cooled 78 SC Targa. I had the pleasure of owning a rare air cooled M491 optioned Cab, an 87. I was lucky enough to be able to order a new 2016 911 GTS Targa. I had so much fun tracking it on the shipping route from Germany and even watched it live on a webcam as it went through the Panama Canal like a lunatic. For all the right reasons that I don’t regret for a second, I had made a major career move from the private sector to the non-profit world. Not surprisingly, it is much less profitable and as a result, I sold the Targa. After a few years without a 911 to call my own, I was feeling the itch. Time for some research!

I wanted to avoid taking the depreciation hit of a new car again so I spent a lot of time searching for a car that captured the true essence of Porsche, was still a bit modern, was at the bottom of the depreciation curve and would be fun to drive. After some initial research I narrowed my choice to a 2010 to 2013 997.2 TT or TTS Coupe with the PDK (manuals are actually much more expensive and for this car, I ideally wanted the TTS/PDK anyway. I had never owned a 911 Turbo and this model year seemed like the perfect fit!

I did a complete analysis of every car that fit that criteria available for sale in the US (this was in Nov/Dec 2019) and here are some interesting facts:

• I found 106 cars currently for sale
• Only 9 with a manual transmission with prices ranging from $80K for a high mileage tired looking Cab to $155K for a low mileage Coupe.
• Model year has little impact on price in this range, it is tied to mileage and condition.
• Average price for a Manual Cab is $98K with 30k average miles over 6 cars
• Average price for a Manual Coupe is $120K with 25K average miles over 3 cars
• Average price for a PDK TT Cab is $88K with 25K miles over 17 cars
• Average price for a PDK TT Coupe is $85K with 33K miles over 21 cars
• Average price for a PDK TTS Cab is $95K with 25K miles over 22 cars
• Average price for a PDK TTS Coupe is $99K with 32K miles over 37 cars

Here are the price and mileage trends followed by trends for just the coupes (click to enlarge)

With this data I had what I needed to evaluate all of the available cars and find the best deal that checked all of my must have boxes.

I created a thread on Rennlist which has this data and some additional data / viewpoints in the thread – Research thread