Last week, I had dinner with a very nice fellow who told me a very long story about finding and purchasing the Porsche of his dreams. Insofar as I am both an automotive journalist and a long-time Porsche Club of America member, I hear stories like this all the time. The difference in this case? My dinner companion’s dream Porsche wasn’t a 356 Super or a 964 RS America or even a 991 GT3 RS. It was a 914 2.0, the infamous Vanagon-engined misery-mobile that wasn’t even considered worthy of a Porsche badge in its home country. Instead, it had a Volkswagen-Porsche badge in Germany, and was derisively called “VoPo”—the nickname given to East German police.

These cars were about 15 years old back when I was in high school, and could be had in good condition for three or four grand. In a straight line, they were easy meat for a 2.8-liter Chevrolet Citation; in a corner, they were prone to behavior that was by turns fascinating and terrifying. The smart money bought an old BMW 2002, which could also be had dirt cheap and which would blow the proverbial doors off the VoPo.

Twenty years ago, when values for the flat-six-powered 914-6 started to rise above $10,000, I shook my head in disgust—those cars combine the raw pace of a Cutlass Ciera with the repair costs of an ‘87 930 Turbo. The market didn’t pay any attention to me, and pretty soon any 914 was worth serious money.

Things have now gotten officially out of hand. My dinner companion paid somewhere north of 30 grand for his 914 2.0. For that kind of cash, you could get a five-liter Mustang, capable of towing a 914 down the quarter-mile in less time than it could complete the task under its own power.

There are all sorts of lessons to take away from The Case Of The $32,000 914. The lesson I would encourage you to ignore goes something like this: Given enough time, all Porsches will eventually become super-valuable, no matter how unwanted they are today.

Some people are spending a lot of time advising the rest of us to “invest” in a 1999-2004 Porsche 911, internally known as the 996 and given the nickname "fried egg" for the shape of its Boxster-sourced headlights. I strongly suggest that you do not follow that advice, with two potential exceptions we'll get into later. If you want a “fried-egg” 911 just for the hell of it, or because you have a $15,000 budget and you really, really need to drive a 911 to your high school reunion, by all means, have at it. As my friend and club racing teammate Christian Ward said right here on R&T, it's a killer bargain. But if you think you’re going to make money on the deal, or even break even, you'll be sorely disappointed.

Let’s start by understanding the reasons that fried-egg 911s are dirt-cheap right now. Porsche made quite a few of them; they were far more popular than the air-cooled 993-generation cars that preceded them. So the supply is high. The interiors did not wear well and the paint was subject to fading, so many of the 996es out there look pretty crummy nowadays. This is particularly true of the 1999-2001 models. The M96 engine that powers these cars is subject to complete and total failure due to a weak intermediate shaft (IMS) bearing, a valvetrain component that fails often and requires a total engine teardown to replace, leaving the owner with a 3,100-pound paperweight and a $15,000 bill. Not all of the 996 cars will have the IMS problem, and it can be rectified for a few grand if you’re concerned, but it’s on the mind of every buyer out there.

IMS problems aside, the 996 is absolutely stuffed with fragile, fast-wearing and expensive components, many of which can't be reached without dropping the engine. Don’t believe the fanboy myth that calls the 996 "the first Porsche built to a price;" with the possible exception of the Carrera GT, every Porsche since the Gmund Coupe has had some corners cut. But the 996 does seem to have a larger-than-average percentage of lowest-bidder parts. The stereo and HVAC systems are nothing but trouble, and the repair costs will reflect the inflation-adjusted $100,000 MSRP, not the $13,000 you paid for the car.

The 996 is not rare. It will never be rare.

The Fried Egg Investment people will readily stipulate all of the above difficulties. But they believe they'll be rendered irrelevant by skyrocketing resale, as happened with the 2.7-liter air-cooled 911, whose 15-fold value increase between 2001 and 2007 wiped out the nontrivial costs of dealing with its magnesium engine cases.

I recently read an article that said something like this: Eventually, the supply of 996es will contract as the bad ones are put in junkyards and the good ones are restored. At that point, everybody will fix the IMS problems and the prices will start rising, helped by the fact that galvanized Porsches don’t rust and most of them will have relatively low miles. Buying a 1999 911 in 2017 is just like buying a 1983 911SC in 2001. You’re at the bottom of the market.

Sorry, but it ain’t necessarily so. To paraphrase a great Vice-Presidential candidate, I know the 1983 911SC. I’ve driven the 911SC. And you, Fried-Egg-Mobile, are no 911SC. To begin with, the air-cooled cars have character that no modern car has. They are relatively simple to repair. Most importantly, they are rare.

The 996 is not rare. It will never be rare. Bad examples will haunt the buy-here-pay-here lots from now until the end of time. The cost of maintenance and repair will always exceed any resulting increase in value, because you will always be competing in a resale market flush with maintenance-deferred fright-pigs with noisy wheel bearings and metal shavings in the oil pans.

The Loofa-Cult vintage-Porsche movement is nostalgia-driven, but nobody will be nostalgic about the 996-generation 911. It was an unloved interregnum between two round-headlight superstars. At best, you’ll have same kind of kitschy appeal that you’d have with a 1977 Monte Carlo—but you can get parts for a 1977 Monte Carlo for pennies on the dollar at a junkyard.

There are only two truly desirable 996-generation Porsches in our market: The 2001-2004 Turbo and the 2004 GT3. They have the effectively bulletproof split-cased engine, and they're both fast enough to keep up with modern performance cars. Values for these cars are already on the upswing. Feel free to jump on the bandwagon, if you have the $40,000 or more that’s required to get a good example.

For everybody else, I would suggest buying a 997-generation Porsche instead. Although the pre-facelift 997s continue with the troublesome M96 engine, they are much nicer-looking inside and out. If you squint a bit, a 2005 997 looks quite a bit like the current car. That matters to people regardless of what they say or write on the Internet.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that fact that the Electric Singularity is probably going to arrive within the next 30 years or so, at which point owning a gasoline-powered car will become a difficult and expensive pastime for a relatively small number of high-net-worth people. Overnight, the collector market will collapse to a blue-chips-only situation. The Red Barchetta that your uncle puts in his country place will be a ‘77 Turbo Carrera or a ‘13 997.2 GT3. It won’t be a fried-egg car.

Feel free to ignore all of the above if you just want a cheap 911 to kick around until the repair costs become too annoying. There are worse ways to absolutely blow $15,000, I suppose. But don’t think you’re going to get rich doing it. You might get lucky; think of all the people who finally got around to selling their old two-liter 914s and found they're worth ten times what they were in 1988. As far as I’m concerned, however, you’d be better off flying to Vegas and putting all your chips on the black square at the roulette table. You would have a 49-percent chance of not going home broke. And you’d never have to explain to your neighbors why you bought the ugliest Porsche since the 914.

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