A missed flight, a “missing” Porsche, a 100-degree auction lot, a marathon, 119-degree desert heat—and why I’d rather buy after somebody else pays the first three years of depreciation.

When I first mentioned on Facebook that I had snagged a Porsche Macan at auction in California while Becky and I were headed there for another marathon, a friend of mine wrote:

“Maybe I need to start running more and maybe end up with a Porsche.”

My response was:

“The funny part is a lot of people will spend more on a new Honda Accord than an off-lease three-year-old Porsche with low miles. Somebody else takes the depreciation hit… I enjoy the drive.”

That pretty much explains how I buy cars.

The marathon had very little to do with getting the Porsche.

The Porsche had a lot to do with understanding depreciation.

And this particular Porsche?

Original MSRP was around $74,000.

It had a little over 20,000 miles.

About three years later, I bought it at the Manheim Riverside auction for around $40,000.

Somebody else got to enjoy the new-car smell.

Somebody else got to own it while a huge chunk of the original value disappeared.

I GOT THE PORSCHE.

Now all Becky and I had to do was fly to California, pick it up, run a marathon, and drive it home.

Simple.

What could possibly go wrong?

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THE PORSCHE WAS ALREADY MINE

Our son decided he wanted to get out of his 2013 Mercedes C300.

Becky looked at me and said:

“Why don’t I sell him my 2018 Porsche Macan S and you find me another one?”

I have been buying, selling, leasing, brokering, and owning cars for more than twenty years.

I owned a dealership in Colorado and still maintain access to buy and sell through a dealership connection there. I periodically broker vehicles for clients when it makes sense.

So naturally, a few days later I bought Becky a 2023 Porsche Macan at Manheim Riverside in California.

Her previous Porsche was a 2018 Macan S with the six-cylinder turbo engine.

This one was a base Macan with the four-cylinder.

That sounds like a downgrade.

Until you understand how Porsche sells cars.

---

BUYING A HONDA IS LIKE TEXAS ROADHOUSE. BUYING A PORSCHE IS LIKE SHANAHAN’S OR ELWAY’S.

Buying something like a Honda Pilot EX-L is a little like eating at Texas Roadhouse.

You order the meal and pretty much know what is coming:

• The steak.
• The salad.
• The bread.
• A couple of sides.

Probably enough food to require a nap.

Buying a Porsche is more like going to an upscale steakhouse where the menu says:

Steak — $58

Then the waiter asks if you would also like:

• A potato.
• Vegetables.
• Sauce.
• A plate.
• A chair.
• Possibly oxygen.

Everything is à la carte.

Porsche is famous for this.

You can find a Macan with what looks like a healthy original sticker price and somehow discover it is missing cooled seats, leather, the panoramic roof, and half the equipment most people assume would automatically come with a Porsche.

This particular Macan had the equipment Becky actually wanted.

That is how a four-cylinder Porsche Macan can end up with an original MSRP around $74,000.

For perspective, the 2023 lineup started roughly like this:

So when the base Macan starts around $57,500 and the sticker ends up around $74,000, you can see how quickly Porsche’s option list starts cooking.

“BUT IT’S ONLY A FOUR-CYLINDER.”

Yes.

It is.

And Becky was coming out of a 2018 Macan S with about 340 horsepower.

The base 2023 Macan uses a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder from the same basic Volkswagen Group engine family you will find in vehicles such as the Audi Q5, although Porsche has its own tuning and configuration.

The Macan made about 261 horsepower, around 295 lb-ft of torque, and could hit 60 mph in roughly six seconds.

Her old Macan S was quicker.

But how much horsepower does Becky really need getting onto Interstate 25 and driving around New Mexico?

Did I want to spend thousands more so she could arrive at Sprouts half a second sooner?

Probably not.

For around forty grand, with just over 20,000 miles and the equipment she wanted, the base Macan made considerably more sense.

And if somebody reads this and decides they now need a three-year-old Porsche Macan too?

Well…

I know where to look.

The Porsche was bought.

The deal was done.

All we had to do was go get it.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

---

OUR VERY SIMPLE PLAN

We got up at 4:30 Friday morning.

The plan could not have been easier.

• Drive about an hour from Las Cruces to El Paso.
• Catch a direct Southwest flight at 7:00 a.m.
• Land at LAX around 8:00.
• Grab a Hertz rental car.
• Drive roughly 62 miles to Manheim Riverside.
• Pick up the Porsche.
• Get an oil change.
• Continue to Camarillo.
• Done.

We made it about thirty miles before Interstate 10 came to a complete stop.

Not slow traffic.

Not crawling traffic.

STOPPED.

We sat there watching the estimated arrival time move from 6:00 a.m. to 6:30.

Then 7:00.

Then 7:30.

Our direct flight disappeared without us.

That was the official end of the simple plan.

Southwest moved us onto another flight.

Instead of:

El Paso → Los Angeles

we were now doing:

EL PASO → PHOENIX → LOS ANGELES

Our quick morning flight became a three-and-a-half-hour travel day before we even reached California.

This was rapidly becoming a TravelersFreak.com story instead of a CoolCarGuy.com story.

We finally arrived at LAX around 12:45 p.m.

Then came the Hertz shuttle.

Then the Hertz line.

It was going out the door.

At one point a guy looked at his wife and said:

“I’m out. We’ll get an Uber.”

I understood completely.

We did not leave Hertz until around 2:00 p.m.

On a Friday.

In Los Angeles.

Now that 62-mile drive to Riverside was showing about two and a half hours.

WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA.

---

“THAT VEHICLE LEFT THE LOT.”

By the time we reached Manheim Riverside, the auction had already closed.

If you have never been there, do not picture a dealership lot.

I included a few photos for context.

Manheim Riverside is more like a small city populated almost entirely by cars, trucks, transporters, security gates, buildings, and people who all seem to know where they are going except you.

There are thousands of vehicles spread across multiple lots and entrances.

We walked up to the window and showed the woman my gate release.

She looked at it.

Then she looked at me.

“That vehicle left the lot. You’ll have to come back Monday.”

Ahh.

NO.

That was not happening.

• I had already bought the Porsche.
• I had already paid for it.
• I had paid Manheim to inspect it.
• I had paid Manheim to detail it.

And I was reasonably confident a black Porsche Macan had not developed consciousness and escaped Riverside on its own.

This was a Porsche, not a Tesla driving itself around California.

The vehicle was somewhere.

I just needed somebody to figure out where.

Eventually she tracked down a manager.

---

CALL GEORGIA

The manager was helpful.

His solution was for me to call Manheim in Georgia.

Which made perfect sense.

I was standing at an automobile auction in California trying to find a Porsche I bought in California, so naturally the person who could solve the problem was sitting roughly 2,000 miles away in Georgia.

I called.

Somebody answered and quickly figured out what had happened.

Because I had paid Manheim to detail the Porsche, the vehicle had been checked out of inventory and then checked back in under a different stock number.

Same Porsche.

New paperwork.

So technically, their original stock number really had left the lot.

The Porsche had not.

Now I needed an updated gate release.

The problem was that the new release was showing under the dealership account instead of mine.

So I called my friend Travis.

He sent me the corrected paperwork.

The security guards let me use their Wi-Fi.

I printed the new gate release.

Problem solved.

Almost.

NOW WE HAD TO FIND THE PORSCHE.

---

WHERE’S WALDO WITH SEVERAL THOUSAND CARS

I pulled up the Manheim app on my phone.

The Porsche was showing about a mile away from the gate where we were standing.

It was over 100 degrees outside.

So Becky and I began our own version of Where’s Waldo?

Except instead of looking for a guy in a striped shirt, we were walking through row after row of vehicles looking for one black Porsche Macan among several thousand cars.

We walked.

And walked.

And walked some more.

Transport trucks were loading vehicles outside the gates.

Cars were everywhere.

The place was enormous.

Finally, after about an hour in the heat, we found it.

THERE SHE WAS.

The windshield had a crack.

The brake warning light was on.

And at that particular moment?

I did not care.

THE PORSCHE EXISTED.

It was still at Riverside.

It belonged to us.

And we finally had the paperwork required to leave with it.

We transferred our luggage and escaped the auction.

By the time we pulled into our hotel in Camarillo, it was around 10:00 that night.

We had started the day at 4:30 AM.

Buying the Porsche had been the easy part.

Actually retrieving it was the adventure.

And the weekend was only getting started.

---

HOW MUCH FOR AN OIL CHANGE?

The next morning, I called a local Porsche dealer to ask about getting the oil changed before we drove home.

Their price?

$795

I laughed and asked whether that included legal fees.

They did not think I was funny.

Then I drove to an Audi dealership because the four-cylinder in this Macan shares plenty of DNA with Volkswagen Group engines.

Their service adviser said to me:

“You don’t want to trust these guys to work on a Porsche.”

Really?

So should I trust them to work on an Audi?

Then he quoted me approximately:

$595

Apparently the technicians were not qualified to touch the Porsche…

…but they were qualified to charge almost six hundred dollars if they tried.

Hard pass.

We still had a marathon to run and a lot of desert between us and home, so I decided to deal with the service in Phoenix.

But first, there is another reason I went all the way to California for this particular Porsche.

---

SOMEBODY HAS TO PAY THE DEPRECIATION

This is where people see the Porsche badge and misunderstand what actually happened.

I have bought, sold, financed and leased cars for more than twenty years, and one of the simplest things I have learned is this:

SOMEBODY IS GOING TO TAKE THE BIG EARLY DEPRECIATION HIT.

The question is whether you want that somebody to be you.

Take this Macan.

Original MSRP:

$74,000

Let’s use $42,500 as an illustrative used purchase price even though I paid less.

That means roughly:

$31,500 OF THE ORIGINAL VALUE HAD ALREADY DISAPPEARED.

That is about 43% of the original MSRP.

The Porsche was only around three years old.

It had about 20,000 miles.

It was still within the manufacturer’s warranty period when I bought it.

Somebody else had already lived through the expensive early part of the depreciation curve.

SOMEBODY ELSE PAID FOR THE EXPENSIVE YEARS.

I BOUGHT THE CAR AFTERWARD.

That is what I meant when I told my friend:

“Somebody else takes the depreciation hit… I enjoy the drive.”

---

SO WHY NOT JUST LEASE A NEW ONE?

You can.

I have done plenty of leases for people over the years, and there are times when leasing makes sense.

• Maybe you cannot find the used vehicle you want.
• Maybe you want the exact color and equipment.
• Maybe you want the new-car smell, full warranty coverage and a new vehicle every three years.

For some businesses, leasing can also make practical sense.

But for an individual consumer?

I WOULD USUALLY RATHER OWN THE CAR.

Here is the part people sometimes miss.

When you lease a new vehicle, you are essentially paying to use it during the years when it is normally losing a large amount of its value.

Then, three years later, you have a decision to make.

Turn it back in and walk away.

Or buy it.

And if you buy it, you still have to pay the residual value that remains.

In other words, you paid to drive it through the expensive early depreciation years…

AND THEN YOU STILL HAVE TO BUY THE CAR IF YOU WANT TO KEEP IT.

That is one reason I generally prefer to arrive after that early depreciation has already happened.

Instead of leasing the $74,000 Porsche when it was new, another buyer might show up three years later and buy it for around $42,500.

Now the buyer owns the vehicle.

• They can finance it however they want.
• They can pay cash.
• They can structure the financing differently.

And when they decide they are done with it?

They control the exit.

If the vehicle is worth more than what they owe, they have equity.

If they want to keep it, they keep it.

If they want to sell it, trade it or wholesale it, they can.

THE OWNER CONTROLS THE EXIT.

That is the difference I care about.

I am not saying leasing never makes sense.

It does.

I am saying that for the way I buy cars, I would rather let somebody else enjoy the first three years, the new-car smell and the biggest early depreciation hit.

Then I show up.

If Becky wants another Porsche in three years?

Well…

I know a guy.

---

THEN I RAN A MARATHON

We still had one other reason for being in California.

On Sunday morning, I ran the marathon.

Then, because apparently running 26.2 miles was not enough entertainment for one day, Becky and I climbed into the Porsche and started driving toward Phoenix.

That was when California decided to turn up the heat.

---

THE DESERT WAS 119 DEGREES. PERFECT PORSCHE WEATHER.

We headed east toward Palm Springs and Palm Desert.

The temperature eventually topped out around:

119 DEGREES.

At some point near Palm Desert, I stopped for gas.

Filled the Porsche.

Got back in.

Started it.

And now we had another souvenir from California:

THE CHECK-ENGINE LIGHT CAME ON.

Of course it did.

At that point I had just run a marathon.

We were hundreds of miles from home.

It was 119 degrees outside.

The Porsche already needed brakes.

And we still had roughly four and a half hours of driving ahead of us to reach Phoenix.

The car was running normally, so there wasn’t much to do except pay attention to it and keep moving.

Across the desert.

Through the heat.

Toward Arizona.

We finally reached Phoenix that night around 10 PM.

The temperature outside had dropped to a balmy 98 degrees.

Now I needed somebody to service a Porsche that apparently required a second mortgage if I took it to the dealership.

---

WE FIX IT

I started calling repair shops in Phoenix.

You would think saying:

“I have a 2023 Porsche Macan.”

would be relatively straightforward.

Apparently not.

A few places didn’t even seem to know what I was talking about.

That did not inspire confidence.

Eventually I found an independent shop called:

WE FIX IT.

That name was already considerably closer to what I was looking for.

Remember what the Porsche dealer in California wanted just for the oil change?

$795.

We Fix It changed the oil for about:

$130.

Way better.

But we also had that brake warning light.

They checked the brakes and replaced the rear brakes and rotors.

After applying a coupon, that portion came to roughly another $700.

So for approximately:

$800 TOTAL

I got the oil changed and took care of the rear brakes and rotors.

The Porsche dealer in California had wanted almost that much…

JUST TO CHANGE THE OIL.

I considered that a victory lap.

And after actually running a marathon that weekend, I felt qualified to recognize one.

---

YES, OWNING A PORSCHE CAN BE EXPENSIVE

This is where somebody inevitably says:

“See? That’s why I would never own a Porsche. They’re too expensive to maintain.”

Sure. Parts, tires, brakes and repairs can be expensive.

But there is another side to vehicles like these.

A few years ago, before our son in Colorado ended up with Becky’s 2018 Macan, he hit an antelope going about 75 mph at night on I-25 in New Mexico while driving his BMW X3 coming to visit us from Wyoming.

The X3 was destroyed.
He walked away.

Could that story have ended differently in another vehicle?

Absolutely.

What you’re sitting in matters when things go very wrong at highway speed.

Come to think of it…

THAT BMW X3 PROBABLY NEEDS ITS OWN PARKING SPOT.

But that’s another story.

You’re also not buying Honda Civic components or engineering in a Porsche or a BMW. These cars use higher-end brakes, suspension parts, tires, fluids and other hardware. That costs more—and it’s part of what you’re paying for in the first place.

Sure, if something major breaks outside the warranty, Porsche ownership does not suddenly become Toyota Corolla ownership.

Still, you don’t have to accept the first price somebody puts in front of you.

Porsche dealer oil change: about $795
Audi dealer quote: about $595
Independent shop in Phoenix: about $130

The independent shop also handled the rear brakes and rotors.

That does not mean taking a Porsche to the cheapest guy with a wrench. It means finding a competent mechanic who uses the right parts and fluids.

BUYING SMART DOESN’T END WHEN YOU BUY THE CAR.

It continues when you maintain it.

---

AND WE STILL HAD TO GET HOME

Once the Porsche was serviced in Phoenix, Becky and I still had roughly 5½ hours to drive back to Las Cruces.

By the time we escaped Phoenix and headed south toward Tucson, the temperature had cooled down during the drive to a refreshing:

112 DEGREES.

After 119, apparently 112 qualifies as a cold front.

We pointed the Porsche toward New Mexico and kept going.

Eventually we made it home.

The Porsche made it home.

Becky got her new car.

I got another marathon.

And somewhere between Riverside, Camarillo, Palm Desert, Phoenix, Tucson, and Las Cruces, what started as a simple automobile purchase turned into one heck of a road trip.

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SOMEBODY ELSE TOOK THE DEPRECIATION HIT. I ENJOY THE DRIVE.

That Facebook exchange at the beginning really does summarize the whole thing.

This Porsche originally stickered around $74,000.

I bought it a few years later with barely more than 20,000 miles for around forty grand.

Somebody else absorbed a giant piece of the early depreciation.

Then, when it needed maintenance, I didn’t blindly hand a dealer $795 because the building had a Porsche sign hanging on it and their mechanics have a Porsche patch sewn on their sleeve.

I shopped around.

That is how I look at cars.

Not just:

“Can I afford the payment?”

But:

“What does this vehicle actually cost me to buy, own, drive, maintain, and eventually get out of?”

Those are very different questions.

THE BADGE DOESN’T NECESSARILY MAKE THE CAR EXPENSIVE.

HOW YOU BUY IT CAN.

And how you maintain it can too.

Does that make owning a Porsche cheap?

No.

Can it make owning one far more reasonable?

ABSOLUTELY.

Sometimes the guy driving the three-year-old Porsche paid less than the guy sitting beside him at the light in a brand-new car nobody will ever turn around to look at or actually enjoy driving.

Maybe that’s why my clients originally branded me:

The Cool Car Guy.

Cars aren’t toasters.

The right one becomes part of your life – for a while.
Sometimes before you even get it home.

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