The 993 C4S Market Grinds To a Halt

February 07, 2023

Over the last 90 days 993 Carrera 4S’ have had quite a successful run with 12 out of 13 cars selling for a sell-through rate of 92%, besting the overall Porsche market by a little over 20%. But this run looks like it might be coming to an end as the 49,000-mile 1996 911 Carrera 4S 6-speed pictured above is now the second C4S to no-sale in the past week at a high bid of $134,993.

Falling on the lower end of the mileage spectrum, our Spotlight car is a pristine example sporting a rare factory Aerokit and Hi-Fi sound system. Finished in Black paint over Black partial leather, the car remains mostly stock except for a Fister exhaust and Porsche Classic head unit. What potentially hurt the sale however is a bit of paintwork on the front end, a paint repair on the rear quarter panel and passenger side door, and replaced headlights and marker lights although there is no mention of an accident and a clean CarFax history report.

Had this car been without paintwork we’d expect to see this C4S sold in the neighborhood of $175-180,000 as an example with similar mileage hammered down for $177,777 in June of last year. Given the fact that this example did have work done the final bid of just shy of $135k wasn’t unreasonable, especially knowing that other cars with around 50k miles have sold recently for $125,000 and $118,000.

This car should have traded hands and I’d suspect that the bidder wasn’t far off the reserve price as long as the seller didn’t have completely unreasonable expectations. Possibly there is a transaction to be had offline. If not, I’d suggest the seller wait for the market to pick back up if, in fact, we are seeing a slowdown in the 993 C4S market.