The coronavirus pandemic has upended how people buy cars and also upended what kinds of cars people are buying. One throughline has been that demand for used cars is through the roof—even for used Porsches, a part of the market you might think would be a little less impacted by the economy taking a nosedive.
Porsche’s certified pre-owned sales program—called Porsche Approved—has only been around for 17 years so the fact that it set an all-time record for CPO sales in June doesn’t carry too much weight, but that’s still remarkable in a time when auto sales, in general, have plunged, and only in recent weeks have begun to recover slowly.
From Automotive News:
Porsche’s U.S. dealers sold more certified pre-owned vehicles in June than they have in any month since they began marketing them 17 years ago.
The brand sold nearly 3,000 CPO vehicles last month, vs. 5,000 new vehicles, Porsche Cars North America CEO Klaus Zellmer told reporters last week.
CPO activity “is at absolute record levels,” he said from his home via video conference.
Zellmer goes on to speculate that Porsche buyers are just as cautious as the rest of us:
The uptick in CPO sales “signals a certain [price] sensitivity in the market,” Zellmer said. “There’s a certain part of the market that says, ‘I want to have a Porsche, it’s my dream ... but I want to be a little bit cautious because I don’t know what’s coming.’ “
This stands to reason since most people live according to their means, and so if you’re the type of person (not me) in the market for a new Porsche, you might be patting yourself on the back right now for going used. That’s probably also because the kind of person that is in the market for Porsche’s volume cars have money on a level just below fuck you money.
For those people, a dealer outside of Philly has a 918 Spyder listed. Extremely low miles. Just $1.2 million.