3.0L, 991.2 Carrera S, 24V DOHC twin-turbo flat 6 cylinder (VVT), 414 HP, RWD, 7-speed dual clutch (PDK)

Term driven: 2019 – 2019

This car is like my first born child–I hold it in especially high esteem and have tons of videos and pictures of it–moreso than any other cars I own or have owned. The car hits all the tickmarks I could have ever asked for–it’s fast, it is a work of art on wheels, and its an absolute track-focused machine. The car broke necks anywhere I went.

I purchased the car in March of 2019 (CPO with 7-8k miles–low for a 2017) and faithfully made on-time payments to my money lender for a total of 9 months. In that time period I ripped the city streets and have videos to prove it! I made it to every car show I could find. I really lived it up as much as I could. I also managed to visit the Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta, GA where I ran the track in a model identical to my car.

The roar of this twin-turbocharged flat 6 is unmistakable. This car is very in your face. It had an issue regarding loss of coolant similar as to my wife’s BMW M240i, so I topped it off with distilled water to push out until scheduled maintenance.

So here’s the funny thing–psychologically, I could not escape the Honda Civic Type R. Nationwide, dealerships were dealing in limited quantities of this car and successfully grew a significant buzz where I was looking for a deal in my free time. It did help that my monthly payments were more than my mortgage–even if I could sustain such payments, it was not very comfortable. My lifestyle would have to take a hit or at least adjust to the financial drain.

Additionally, what really put it over the top was the airbag recall on my specific 911 VIN with no known remediation path. I’ve hit some incredible speeds in this track monster and not being able to trust my airbag was absolutely terrifying.

With my friend’s help, I managed to identify a Honda Civic Type R in a nearby city for MSRP–no dealer markup! The color was Aegean Blue–similar to my BRZ’s World Rally Blue. This opportunity helped me make my decision.

As much as I absolutely loved this 911, the payments were hampering my enjoyment of the car. The airbag recall was making it difficult to even sell the car to cut my losses. On a hunch, I visited the dealership that had the Type R and had a friendly chat with them. I did not expect them to be able to make any kind of reasonable offer on my 911, but alas–they did. The offer they made seemed decent for what I owed versus the value of the car with the additional 10k or more in miles I added to it. As well, I paid zero for maintenance, whether wheels, brakes, or otherwise. I may have been provided a free oil change in the timespan from the Porsche dealership.

Between the dealership’s offer to take my 911 and the fact that I was able to fully negotiate away any dealer markup, we had a deal. My guess is they were able to make money on the Porsche alone without needing the dealer markup, because I still took a hit of thousands of dollars between my buy price versus my sale price–money I wrapped up in my finance agreement. Given we are talking about a 911 Carrera S, I am able to move on without a lick of regret. In the future, I might even buy another Porsche–who knows what the future holds?

This marks the end of my run with the Porsche, and the beginning of my time with my current daily driver as of February 2021: my 2019 Honda Civic Type R.