I had a call from a chap interested in a Porsche I’m selling. However, when I told him the car had had eight previous owners, he said he wasn’t interested.
It’s long puzzled me why the number of owners a Porsche has been through should be a problem to some people. Sure, there’s something nice about a car that’s been with the same caring family from new, but that’s rare and, realistically, does it make any difference?
The Porsche in question is 14 years old and is otherwise in great condition – it’s obviously been cherished – and it’s not uncommon for Porsches to go through a lot of owners.
Let’s look at a typical scenario. A brand-new Porsche is an expensive purchase and many are bought by company directors, who put it through the company. A year or two later, their accountant advises them to transfer the car to private ownership, which they do – so that’s two owners in the logbook already. Then, after three years, they get a call from a salesman at Porsche offering them a good deal on a new car, so the old one gets traded in and sold on. Three owners in three years.
The Porsche is then in the big wide world of second-hand cars. So often I talk to people who have bought a Porsche because they’ve always wanted one, only to find it doesn’t fit in with their lifestyle (family is the main issue) so they sell it within a year or two because it’s just not being used. You only need this to happen a few times (and it will) for the number of owners to crank up.
No, the number of owners a Porsche has had doesn’t really matter. What’s far more important is how well the car’s been looked after by those owners.
