This article was first published on Dollars and Sense
Porsche is a luxury sports car brand known for making some of the world’s best sports cars. Its flagship car, the Porsche 911, is widely regarded as one of the best sportscars in the world.
But let’s be clear on one thing. Though it typically does not cost as much as Lamborghini or Ferrari, Porsche does not make affordable cars, even at its entry level.
Thanks to high COE prices in recent years, Singapore has been unofficially recognized as the most expensive country in the world to own a car. So how much does it cost to own one of the world’s most desirable sports car brand in the country where it’s most expensive to own a car?
We decided to choose the most “affordable” car that Porsche currently sells in Singapore – the Porsche Boxster.
To own a Porsche Boxster, you can either purchase it brand new or get a pre-owned car. For this article, we will compare both the cost of a brand new car and a pre-owned car.
Cost of buying a Porsche Boxster
A brand new Porsche 718 Boxster (PDK 2.0) currently sells at $258,788 from Stuttgart Auto, an authorized Porsche dealer in Singapore. This excludes COE. Once we include in the cost of a Category B COE, we can expect to spend about $316,000 to buy a brand new Porsche 718 Boxster.
If we were to opt for a pre-owned 10-year old Porsche Boxster 2.7A (2007), we can expect to pay about $116,000 based on a listing that we found on sgCarMart. So that’s a difference of about $200,000.
There are two common methods of calculating how much it cost to buy a car in Singapore. The first method is by looking at its purchase price, which is what we have done above. The other way would be to base it on a straight-line 10-year depreciation. This assumes that car owners were to deregister the vehicle after 10 years.
Here’s a look at the expected depreciation.
Other costs of owning a Porsche
As any current and former car owners in Singapore would already know, the purchase price is far from the only cost that we will be incurring. Here are some other cost areas for us to factor in.
Road tax
The road tax of a new Porsche 718 Boxster (PDK 2.0) is $1,200 per year.
Road tax for vehicles over 10 years incurs an additional road tax surcharge.
That means our pre-owned Porsche Boxster 2.7A (2007), with an existing annual road tax of $2,018, will incur an average annual road tax cost of $2,825 (after surcharge) over the next 10 years.
Road Tax: $1,200 per year (New Porsche), $2,825 per year (pre-owned)
Insurance
Actual insurance cost depends on your driving history, years of experience, your No Claim Discount (NCD) and of course, the insurance company you buy it from. On average, you should expect to pay about $2,000 per year.
Insurance: $2,000 per year
Parking and petrol
We will make an assumption here that a person who is rich enough to buy a Porsche is likely to be staying on a private property. As such, those living in private properties will not incur additional parking cost.
If you were to drive your Porsche to your office at the CBD, you should expect to pay about $200 a month for season parking.
Petrol cost depends largely on how often you use your car. On average, if you were to pump once a week, you should spend about $400 per month.
Parking and petrol: $600/month, $7,200 per year
Servicing and parts replacement
This one’s tricky to calculate. Performance cars need much more attention when it comes to maintenance and servicing.
Logically, brand new cars should cost less to maintain. At the same time, it also depends on how well maintain you want your car to be. If you are intending to own a Porsche, we suggest setting aside at least $2,000 per year on servicing and parts replacement. You may not need parts replacement every year, but when you do, it’s will easily cost you more than $2,000.
Servicing and parts replacement: $2,000 per year
Total cost of owning a Porsche
Here’s the total cost of owning a Porsche Boxster in Singapore. Figures shown are annual cost:
Based on our calculation, you should expect to spend about $2,000 per month for a pre-owned Porsche Boxster 2.7A (2007) and about $3,000 each month if you prefer a brand new Porsche 718 Boxster (PDK 2.0).
Over a 10-year period, you will be spending about $236,000 for a pre-owned Porsche and a staggering $370,000 if you buy a brand new Porsche.
As the saying goes, if you need to calculate how much a Porsche would cost you, chances are that you really shouldn’t be buying one in the first place. But hey, no harm dreaming a little right?
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