Well, I've just gone through two transactions on 968's in that I purchased a 93 coupe and then sold my 93 cab. I would agree with most of what has been written here, but feel that things may not be quite as bad as all seem to paint them. Of the two cars, my cab was in better mechanical condition in that it has fewer miles (84k) vs the coupe which has 92k. The cab also had a relatively new flywheel and clutch and had been maintained well. Neither car had any rust and were both east coast cars. Cosmetically, the cab was in great shape but was running on its original paint. The coupe has been repainted.
I purschased the coupe from a North Carolina independent dealer and the cab from a North Carolina private owner. When I purchased the cab a little over 2 years ago, I was able to negotiate a price of $13.5K. The car had 78k miles on it, but had been on Autotrader for several months. The owner had started out at $18.5k and lowered it several times to $15.5k when he and I began to negotiate.
When I put the cab up for sale early this month, in AutoTrader, I decided to offer it at a lower price than most of the cars being advertised, since most of the pricing was unrealistic (in my opinion). I offered my cab up for $12.6K, and surprisingly did NOT get very many calls (4 calls to be exact). Fortunately, one of the callers were local, came to see the car, had a PPI done, and we settled on $12.2K.
My purchase of the coupe was a similar saga. The dealer had had the car in inventory for 5 to 6 months. Had started out advertizing it in the high teens (16 or 17k), and apparently had no takers. When I contacted him, he was at $13k on Ebay. We negotiated over a two week period and I ended up getting the car for $11.2K. Though the car is in better cosmetic shape than the cab, it is a little bit rough mechanically. I believe that I'll end up putting about a thousand into the car to get it mechanically in shape.
The bottom line is that our cars suffer from several constraints.
Since Boxters are very rapidly depreciating, they now compete with the 968, with the nod perhaps going to the Boxter since it is newer technology. Then there is the fact that the 968 is really not known or understood by many folks in the market for a sports car. I had finally gotten to the point of telling folks that my 968 was a later version 944! Most people know what a 944 is since there are so many of them running around.
Not sure if the rest of the market for sports cars is suppressed, but wouldn't be surprised to find out.
But, in summary, I was able to sell my cab for about $2K less than I paid for it a little over 2 years ago.....which is great. Over that same time period, my 2001 Toyota has lost about $6k in value. So, it is definitely a buyers market (great for someone looking to get into these cars). And, if you buy right, you should be able to sell your car, when the time comes, without a huge loss.
