986 2.5L vs 996 3.4L Comparison

[Perfectlap]

A two seat roadster or 2 seat coupe outselling a big comfy, plush, iconic Carrea?
I don't see that ever happening in the future. In fact at one point I was convinced VW would pull the plug on the Boxster if they took over.

The Boxster might have been the bigger initial hit, but the 996 as car was still a history-making success for Porsche. The Boxster simply brought a bunch of first time Porsche buyers out of the woodwork who never had any interest in air-cooled 911. Two different types of buyers for the most part, the initial Boxster fever cooled eventually. Meanwhile the 996 sold more than 30K units in the U.S. in 2002 alone, and were generally over the 25K mark annually. Now compare that to barely 2,600 993 Carreras sold in the U.S. in 1998! During a booming U.S. economy to boot! No wonder 993 are so valueable now they're like Ty Cob baseball cards...a rarity. 200K total 996's has been its ultimate undoing as far as resale. Ditto for the 986.

And it took a little while for the usual Porsche 911 buyer to warm up to a water-cooled Carrera, I don't think it was so much that they prefferd the Boxster, but even with that Porsche still sold 10X's as many 996's in 1999 than that last year of 993 production.
p.s.
The fact that we are saying that a 320 HP 981 Boxster at those prices is a relative bargain tells you what havoc a near zero interest rate policy has wrought on pricing of luxury items. Not to mention corporate profits and stock market all time highs. Porsche, Ferrari, Bentley, Merc know the deep-pockets have gotten deeper and their customers have no qualms with nose bleed pricing accelerating at absured levels. But to say that these sub $100K Porsches are good value isn't really based on their performance or expectations based on proven reliability. Look at the new Stingray Corvette at $50K, it will beat nearly every Carrera, including the new 991 S and the old GT3 and 997 Turbo. You can't even buy a used Cayman R or Boxster Spyder for that pocket change.