High-Rolling Scalper Selling Porsche 935 Build Slot for Nearly $1.7 Million
Porsche is only making 77 of the limited-edition track cars for $817,000 apiece, but a buyer has decided they want to sell theirs for twice the price.
Last September at the Rennsport Reunion in California, Porsche announced the return of the 935 as a track-only sports car. Inspired by the historic 911-based racer, the neo-935 will be built on the basis of the 911 GT2 RS in limited numbers, with the 77 planned cars each selling for $817,000 apiece.
And this Tuesday, someone holding one of the 77 build slots turned around and betrayed Porsche's trust, listing their reservation for sale at Race Cars Direct for €1,500,000. That's more than $1,670,000, or over twice the amount this seller paid for their build slot.
To hide their identity, the contact information listed for the seller is that of the website's owner, Mike Walters. This was likely done out of fear that Porsche would exclude this buyer from the 935's production run—make no mistake, this behavior hacks off some important people at Porsche. Its director of GT-branded cars Andreas Preuninger revealed back during the 911 R and Cayman GT4 flipping debacle that he and others at Porsche found it distasteful for customers to immediately resell their cars at a profit.
"I don't like this business of people buying our cars to make money on them. That was never our intention," Preuninger told Car and Driver back in 2017. "The purpose of limiting a car is not for it to gain value. We don't want to be laying money on each car's roof when they run out of the factory."
Porsche addressed the problem of 911 R flippers by releasing a wingless, three-pedal version of the 911 GT3 called the Touring Package, but repelling financial speculators isn't as easy when the car in question is effectively an entirely new model.
Preuninger has explained that those caught trying to scalp its limited-run cars run the risk of being unallocated from the production runs of said special-edition vehicles, or being excluded from future offers to buy such cars. Let's hope that Porsche catches up with whomever this is trying to make a quick buck at Stuttgart's expense.