2004 550 fs

[BIGJake111]

Originally Posted by Perfectlap

That being said, I'm not a fan of these limited production "special edition" Boxsters and Carreras that come with basically the same old engines found in all the other mass produced cars but arrive with outlandish price tags in some cases.
I see these special editions like the 550, the 40th and 50th anniversary 911's as a marketing product intended to drive up the price of car without really providing you substantial performance increase. Ditto for all these "black edition" cars.

The last model year of the body style, they didn't always do it, but starting around the time of the 550 986 there has always been a last model year special edition. Not sure of the real numbers but isn't a fair portion of all the 04 986s a 550, at least 1/5? But yes they keep this tradition to today with the black edition 987 cars, and the 911 sport classic. The cayanne had a titanium edition last year before the restyle.

I personally see it as a decent strategy though, it provides something a little bit different to buy once a model has gotten fairly stale. This goes alongside porsches strategy of staggering the release for types of the 911. First we got the 991, then we got the c4, then the gt3, then the turbo, then the targa, and now the GTS. Some executives lease just ended on his 2012 c2. Time to get a targa! A new car but not a new car. This allows for porsche to hold onto the same body styles for upwards of 6 years, while companies like Honda refresh every 2 and redesign every 4.

[Perfectlap]

Originally Posted by BIGJake111

I personally see [special editions] as a decent strategy though, it provides something a little bit different to buy once a model has gotten fairly stale. .

Yes I should have stated that I'm not a fan from a marketing point of view but the cars themselves are tremendous. unfortunately Porsche have to nickel and dime every option and we end up with all these barebones looking Boxsters and Carreras which was never the designer's vision and imho really reflects poorly on the brand. When I see the Boxster concept car from '93 and the 550 11 years later it makes me wonder why they didn't make the 986 look like that from the start. They would have saved themselves all the negative press about how the first 986's looked dull.

But admittedly it's not just the Boxsters, even in a center piece car like a $100+K 996 Turbo, once inside you'll look around to find that it's missing all these trim options found on a 550 Boxster.