It’s been a steady year for insurance claims: I’ve helped in several claims via agreed insurance valuations I supplied on various classic Porsche models. Some of these claims are still ongoing, so I won’t go into specifics, but a write-off claim for one client with a 1988 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2 G50 Coupe recently settled and he’s given me the OK to share details.
The car was a high mileage example that had been fully restored over time, with bodywork refinished in original Baltic Blue, rebuilt engine with a LSD in the G50 transmission, full suspension rebuild with Centre Gravity setup and front seats re-trimmed in correct linen leather. The car had certainly lived a life and the owner had toured extensively in it, clocking up 75k miles over ten years together, including a long road trip with mum as the navigator.
In a Danish ferry queue en route to Iceland this summer, the Carrera’s engine was started to move through check-in, then the engine cut out and smoke began to waft from the engine compartment. This was quickly followed by the stomach-churning woof of flame, as petrol from what is thought to have been a failed fuel hose ignited. Small flames became big flames and there was suddenly lots of activity, with fire extinguishers rushing in from cars all around. Here’s a video that no one wants to live through:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nE_WMBZ7vc
Engine fires catch quickly and can be difficult to extinguish. The owner disconnected the battery sharpish when the starter began to engage of its own accord, but fuel pressure kept the fire going. By the time the fire trucks arrived, the damage was done.
The car was insured with Classicline in the UK, with European breakdown cover by ADAC. Part of my insurance valuation service is to make myself available in an advisory capacity if something goes wrong while the valuation is valid, so the owner got in touch immediately after the incident.
A quick look at the pics told me the car would end up as a write-off (an uneconomic repair). ADAC inspectors decided the same and declined to repatriate the car to the UK, in line with their terms and conditions. The owner was then left to sort things out via his insurers.
Classicline was very sympathetic following the traumatic event and the loss of a treasured 911: the firm gets a huge thumbs up from the owner in every respect. The car was brought back to the UK and inspected by an experienced assessor. The cost to repair using all new Porsche parts was put at £34k including VAT and the additional costs of repatriation and moving the car around the UK – including to the owner’s preferred specialist for a detailed inspection on site – put the total claim value into the write-off zone.
Insurers usually hold agreed valuation certificates as valid for two years at a time, but given the up-and-down nature of the market in recent years, the owner had been careful to update his agreed valuation annually. My most recent insurance valuation was at similar money to a car with half the mileage, but this car had been cherished and kept in superb condition.
History has taught me to prepare for the worst case scenario, so my policy is to set agreed valuations in line with recent data and independent market observations at as high a level as I would feel comfortable later justifying in court. This honours my professional responsibility and is fair to both sides. Classicline did not dispute the agreed valuation I had supplied, so it all came down to the final settlement offer.
The offer to retain the salvage came in at around the level expected. The final decision to repair or to take the full payout was not made lightly: there were some lengthy late-night phone calls discussing other options, especially considering current market conditions. After ten years and many miles, the owner decided to let the car go and move on to the next chapter. I’m not sure what might arrive in the garage next: a very nice Saab 900 Turbo is currently filling the hole.
Total Loss: nightmare vs opportunity
I have regular conversations with valuation clients who are thinking of selling their cars, or whose cars are subject to a total loss or write-off claim, so thoughts of what I would do with an insurance payout or sale proceeds are never far from my mind. I don’t drive my classics all that often, but losing any one of them would be a heartbreak and the last thing I want in the middle of that is to be battling with an insurer, so I use agreed valuations on all of my cars and motorcycles for maximum peace of mind.
As someone who has been working with owners and insurers and valuing cars professionally for almost twenty years, it never ceases to amaze me just how many classic cars are insured on market valuation rather than agreed valuation policies and how many owners recommend market valuation. This is madness.
If this car had been agreed on a market valuation, the owner would now be in the middle of a battle to get the best settlement and the final number would likely fall well short of what was achieved. Market valuation may save a few pounds at policy start, but these pictures of the damage, the repair estimate and the swift, no-hassle resolution put the one advantage of going with a market valuation (saving a small sum of money) into perspective.
I cannot stress strongly enough that people should agree their insurance valuations from the start. Get an agreed valuation from a trusted, independent source and don’t add to the misery of total loss. Contact me via classic-car-valuations.com or use the links below if you need any help or advice.
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support my work or engage with me in other ways, you can:
RM Sotheby’s end-of-year London sale takes place this Thursday at Olympia in Kensington. Fifteen Porsche cars are amongst the lots on offer and half of those cars are being sold without reserve. Here’s a look at three of the no-reserve Porsches that caught my eye.
1965 Porsche 356C LHD Coupe – estimate £50-60k
Chassis number 221132 is a Porsche 356 C 1600 Coupe. Finished in Light Ivory, Sotheby’s website doesn’t offer too many clues, but the car had previously sold at Goodwood Revival in 2008, so I dug out those details.
This ‘65 C Coupe began its life in California, where it was sold to a policeman from El Cerrito. In 1971, it passed from one policeman to another and stayed with him until it sold to the third owner in 1996. The third owner brought the car to the UK and kept it until 2008. It is offered for sale by the fourth owner.
The history includes an engine rebuild with 1700cc barrel and piston set at 112k miles, a transmission overhaul at 114k miles and a bare metal respray in its original colour, which was carried out in the UK. MOT history shows that the car has not been MOT’d since 2008, when it passed with a list of advisories including oil leaks and split CV boots. Interested parties should therefore proceed with caution, but a potentially solid 356C with sensible ownership since new and sold no reserve is worth a second look.
Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet – estimate £80-130k
Chassis number WP0ZZZ93ZJS020221 is a 1988 Porsche 930 Cabriolet with two owners from new. Presented in Diamond Blue Metallic with Cashmere Beige leather trim, the odometer shows 26k miles but, as Sotheby’s description doesn’t mention the mileage, assume it’s unwarranted.
I put this four-speed Turbo Cab on my watch list, not because it is a great example of the breed, but because 930 prices are an important benchmark for air-cooled 911s and the market has been a bit shaky.
The 930 had the highest cost new in period and open sale prices for these cars highlight real-time premiums for turbocharged vs normally aspirated 911s. The 930 market has been under pressure since the high water line of 2015, so this unrestored car in an elegant colour mix offered with no reserve will lay down a useful data point.
1992 LHD Porsche 968 Club Sport ex-factory press car – estimate £35-50k
The car I am most keen to follow is chassis number WP0ZZZ96ZPS815075: a left-hand drive 1992 Porsche 986 Club Sport in Speed Yellow. This 968 has a super interesting history that was recently shared in 911 & Porsche World magazine. The auction entry may have been encouraged by enthusiasm around the piece and that enthusiasm could be rewarded on Thursday.
Detective work by the current owner with assistance from the Porsche archive revealed that this 968 Club Sport was the factory press car used in several notable articles on the model. Walter Röhrl drove the car in a four-way road test printed in Auto Zeitung and called it ‘the best handling car that Porsche makes’. The history is very well documented and includes several Porsche factory service stamps, a top-end rebuild, clutch and flywheel at Parr and a huge list of work carried out by its current custodian over almost two decades.
I have a side interest in cars like this one that passed through the hands of well known racer and dealer, Nick Faure, as my early 944 Lux is one of those cars. Faure is a true devotee of the transaxle Porsches and those who love these cars tend to love them for life. I adore the 924, 944 and 968 models and there can’t be too many 968 Club Sports with such enjoyable provenance.
The light blue 930 has a fairly bullish estimate at £80-130k given the condition seen in the photos, while this apparently perfect 968 Club Sport at £35-50k feels relatively conservative in comparison. I suspect it may do slightly better: everything depends on who’s in the room when the cars come over the block in Kensington and whether there’s any hangover from the Type 64 debacle in Monterey. I would love to be there in person, but the dentist is calling…
Pics by Tom Gidden, Dirk de Jager and Adam Warner for RM Sotheby’s
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support this blog or to engage with me in other ways, you can:
Sweden’s Team Tidö Race4Health has entered three Porsche 911s on this year’s East African Safari Classic Rally. The lead car features the one and only Stig Blomqvist, with the other two driven by Race4Health patron, Roger Samuelsson, and a new man: Trey Lockey, from Miami. Asked to write some driver bios for the Safari Rally souvenir programme, I put in a call to Team Tidö chief, David von Schinkel (above), to learn about the first non-Swede in a Team Tidö car.
David is a passionate racer who founded Team Tidö in 2008 to race in Formula Renault Scandinavia and the Swedish Touring Car Championship. The team later moved into historic motorsport, running several historic 911s in the Copenhagen Historic Grand Prix, on the Midnight Sun Rally and on the Safari.
Blomqvist won the Safari Classic Rally in Race4Health colours back in 2015, and Björn Waldegård also drove for the team on several occasions, including on the 2013 Safari Rally. Björn rolled his car that year, but it was later reshelled at Tuthills. Now part of Team Tidö’s car and motorcycle collection, the crumpled shell hangs at Tidö Slott: David’s family castle.
Viking Siege Mentality
I’ve done a fair few miles on road trips in Sweden. My uncle (another writer) read English at Trinity College, where he met a Swedish girl. She took him home to Stockholm, they got married and had kids. My dad never needed much excuse for a road trip, so visiting his Swedish relations in Stockholm was perfect. That’s how we spent one excellent summer touring through Finland and Sweden, to the Arctic Circle and back.
One thing you soon learn when driving through Sweden is that the country is not short of castles. This came from bitter experience: the Vikings loved a siege and even held Paris under siege for a year. You were nowhere in Sweden if you weren’t within reach of a fortress, so there are hundreds of castles, chateaux and palaces across the country. Known collectively as Slott (castle), many are still private residences. Tidö Slott falls into this group.
Photo by Anders P [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]
Swedish Castles: Tidö Slott
Tidö Slott is one of Sweden’s best-preserved castles from its age of high empire, spanning 1610 to 1720. Axel Oxenstierna – King Gustaf II Adolf’s Lord High Chancellor and widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in Swedish history – built the castle between 1625 and 1641, with the help of architects, Simon de la Vallée and Nicodemus Tessin.
Paris-born de la Vallée (whose father was architect to Louis XIII) was brought to Sweden by the head of the army and appointed Royal Architect. Tidö Slott was one of his first works in Sweden, and Stockholm palaces followed. Tessin the Elder was another regal favourite, whose most famous work is the Drottningholm Palace: still home to the Swedish royal family.
Tidö Slott was built in a Dutch Renaissance style. A huge four-wing complex set around a central courtyard, the castle was owned by Oxenstierna’s descendants for two hundred years, until they sold it in 1840. The next fifty years were a time of decline, until Carl-David von Schinkel acquired the castle in 1890. Four generations of the von Schinkel family have since grown up in Tidö Slott. The castle was private until 1971, when it was opened to the public. Today, it serves as a home, conference centre and meeting place.
Inheriting a castle – becoming its custodian for a time – must be an incredible privilege, but it also brings with it a potentially crushing responsibility. My own house was built in the late 1800s and would fit into Tido Slott many times over. I know how much work my little house takes to maintain, so to manage the burden of an inherited estate, and then extend one’s responsibility to changing the lives of the less fortunate in distant countries is incredibly worthy. If one accepts some of the data available, that sort of extension is a rare thing in Sweden.
Sweden in the Global Giving Index
A 2010 study by the Charities Aid Foundation covered almost 200,000 people in 153 countries. The survey included questions on personal charitable donations, volunteering and helping strangers: how much of each were people doing? The answers were averaged and each country was given a score, ranking the nation’s ‘charitability’ in the World Giving Index.
Australia topped the list, with 70% of Australians giving to charity, 38% volunteering for an organisation in the previous month and 64% helping a stranger in the same timeframe. New Zealand (68/41/63) and Ireland (72/35/60) followed Australia. Sweden (52/12/47) was in the low 40s, placing it behind Chile, Somalia and Afghanistan in the list of giving nations. Several European countries ranked lower, but, across Scandinavia, Sweden was lowest.
I found this data at odds with my perceptions of Sweden and my experience of Swedish philanthropy. To me, the nation represents the pinnacle of social conscience. Sweden ranks first in the world for press freedom, fourth for democracy and lack of corruption and tenth for global peace and global competitiveness. Sweden also ranks twelfth in the world for Human Development: a combined index of life expectancy, education and per capita income.
The importance of a good education is ingrained in Swedish consciousness and the power of education to drive national progress underpins Team Tidö’s charitable programme.
“If you can’t see, you can’t go to school”
“If you can’t see, you can’t read. If you can’t read, then you can’t go to school,” says David, who was inspired to develop a charitable arm to Team Tidö Race4Health through conversations with the late Björn Waldegård. Hailed as a sporting legend in Africa, the serial Safari winner had limitless compassion. Long term co-driver, Hans Thorzelius, remembers how Björn would save clothes and shoes from his kids and hand them out in Africa: he wanted people to see that he knew, and that he cared.
The most used greeting amongst Zulus is sawubona, meaning “I see you, you are important to me and I value you.” It is a deep and spiritual blessing, bestowed upon people one cares about. It voices respect for each other as individuals, with all our unique scars and flaws. Race4Health embraces this spirit with its eyewear redistribution programme.
Overseen by opticians from Balsta Optik, who travel with the rally as part of the team, the eyewear distribution scheme collects thousands of pairs of donated spectacles in Sweden and redistributes them to people in remote communities along the rally route. Team Tidö Race4Health established this project in 2013 and has since restored clear vision to hundreds of people with impaired sight in Kenya and Tanzania.
While I was on the phone to David yesterday, he sent me a link to a story in the Economist, discussing a recent World Health Organisation report estimating that, globally, at least 2.2 billion people have impaired vision. Some one billion people have an eyesight problem that is either preventable (e.g transmitted due to infection) or that could be addressed with spectacles. While David does not imagine that the programme will ever distribute a billion pairs of spectacles, he has seen with his own eyes that every person helped lifts the rest of society.
Anders and Ann-Marie Århlin are the opticians who travel with Tidö in Africa. Their first trip to the rally was in 2015, and they’ve been coming back ever since. “We don’t have a special group who we target,” says Ann-Marie. “We try to distribute to as many people as possible in the villages we visit. It is often quite chaotic as they don’t really have the same understanding of queuing that we do, but it usually goes well.
“What is most satisfying about our work with Race4Health is seeing how the help gets directly to those who need it. I have been to many African countries before and seen how aid organisations can suffer with problems due to bureaucracy or other hindrances. Direct help in situ is the best option: we immediately see the difference it makes to the people.”
Race4Change: Race4Health
Team Tidö Race4Health’s projects in Africa follow in the tyre tracks of Race4Change: an organisation led by the Canadian-American, Dr Steven Funk, who I worked with on a Safari Rally campaign in 2011. Funk’s work put microfinance at its centre, offering a hand up to budding entrepreneurs and giving them “skin in the game”. As an economic migrant once upon a time, Funk’s pitch had profound resonation with me. Race4Health takes a different approach, but the end result may be even more powerful.
Having spoken to Anders and Ann-Marie and seen the difference their work makes in person, I find the whole story incredibly powerful. Team Tidö Race4Health returns to Safari next month and, while all eyes may be focused on Blomqvist out front, the real value of Race4Health’s African vision will be happening way off the leader board: out in the bush, right where it’s needed.
Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support my blog or to engage with me in other ways, you can:
Details have just arrived for a rare 1995 Porsche 993 Ruf BTR 2 that will be offered at Brooklands’ Historics auction sale on Saturday, November 23.
Ruf chassis number W09TB0367SPR06006 is one of five 420hp RHD BTR 2s produced. First delivered to Top Marques in Singapore and sold to a local businessman, that aspect of provenance could make it quite an attractive prospect for re-importation into a famously locked-down export destination where Porsches command serious prices.
The original car was finished in Aventura Green, but a later owner refinished the body in Guards Red. Personally, I love dark green cars but red is quite rare and suits the 993 shape. Somewhere down the line, the engine was also rebuilt by a New Zealand specialist. The original Ruf EKS automatic clutch system (think Sportomatic-ish) has been replaced by a more conventional arrangement.
The Guards Red 993 came to the UK in 2015 and sold to a retired engineer who took it to his place in France and maintained it in-house. It is now back in the UK. The sales description says it has been MOT’d but the MOT database says the last test expired in 2016, so crossed wires somewhere. The mileage is low at less than 30k from new.
Offered for sale with history including the original book pack, the auction’s pre-sale estimate is £68-84,000. We’ll have to see what the market is like at the end of November and how the changes to the Pfaffenhausen spec – including a colour change and non-Ruf engine rebuild – affect the car’s desirability.
A factory 993 Turbo with less than 30k miles would be pretty good news, even in the current slow market. What’s the price jump (up or down) from a Ruf BTR 2 to a factory Porsche 993 Turbo, and what’s the net effect on that number of diluting the original Rufness through later modifications to an already modified car? Will we be able to look at the eventual auction result and say ‘that’s the correct answer’?
The last RHD BTR 2 to come through a UK auction was a one-owner example with 68k miles that was offered in September 2018 but failed to find a home. The market has been on a bit of journey since then, so it will be interesting to see how this one gets on.
Regular readers of my former column in GT Porsche magazine will know about the psychological struggle with my Honda CR-V. How can it be that, after more than thirty years of buying and selling cars and with several beautifully engineered German classics in the fleet, my daily driver is a grey Honda CR-V? Wrong as that feels, thoughts of selling it feel even worse.
My first experience of Honda ownership was a silver Ballade that I took as a trade-in back in the mid-1990s. While it had all the appeal of beige nylon trousers, my daily driver at the time was a Renault 21 Turbo with an engine that had been balanced and blueprinted by a friend who built McLaren F1 engines for a living. It was a great car to drive, but, if one started the car and attempted to move it before the oil was fully up to temperature, the cold oil pressure was so extreme that it would bend the filter body and eject the engine oil out through the remote filter housing.
This would invariably occur when I was leaving for work. I would then be an idiot car salesman in a Jermyn Street suit, replacing a bent oil filter on the side of the road with the soles of my smart shoes immersed in used Mobil 1.
The arrival of the boxy but reliable Honda Ballade was a revelation. After ten years of running Renaults – mainly because they were a bit quirky and I had served my apprenticeship with the Régie – the Honda’s ability to deliver a life entirely free from mechanical breakdown was so transformative that I could not bear to part with it. When I left London, the 21 Turbo was sold to help raise my house deposit and the Honda came with me to Northants. Only when someone offered a crazy amount to buy the Ballade did I eventually part with it, but it left a big impact. I have maintained a bland but bulletproof Japanese backup car ever since.
The CRV is the latest of those machines. Bought as a one-owner car with front end damage, I repaired the bodywork and converted it to run on LPG. I change the oil more often than I wash it, but it has never failed an MOT. Even when it does need some attention, the parts are affordable and it is fairly easy to work on.
Recently the reliable Honda has started to cut out when cold. I’ve checked the obvious things and there are no fault codes yet, but it may be oil that is slightly too thick for the VTC solenoid, or maybe the timing chain has stretched, causing the timing to drop out when the engine wants a lot of advance during warmup. While changing the timing chain is not impossible, adding it to other things on the Honda’s current to-do list means I have a few quid to spend, as well as several weekends in the garage.
Deciding whether to spend the money and sort the Honda, or stick it on eBay and sell it in in favour of a newer CR-V involves an internal dialogue. If the car was newer and I was anything like most people, it might be time for a trade in. Manufacturers are currently offering thousands of pounds for cars like this in part exchange against a brand new car, but I as would never spend my own money on a new car, that is a complete non-starter for me.
A friend is selling a very smart 2010 CR-V diesel that might make a nice upgrade, but a Honda mechanic tells me to steer clear of diesels as the engines are prone to detonation and the steering gives trouble. Buying a later petrol would need another grand spent on an LPG conversion and the engines are low on torque vs the diesel. My friend’s 2010 car is up for £6k, but I’ve found a couple of later 2012 models with better spec and in fairly good colours up for closer to £5k. Styling/spec/presentability is not a concern: the decision is all about cost.
Let’s say that buying a later diesel with 100k miles is going to cost £5k plus £300 road tax up front. I’d budget £100 for a small service on purchase and £700 for a clutch and flywheel early next year. I would expect the car to cost roughly the same to run over two years as my current CR-V and for the value to lose maybe £2.5k over that time, as I take it to 150k miles and the later models get cheaper to buy.
Keeping my current known-quantity 150k-mile CR-V and preparing it to a level comparable to the other car is perhaps going to cost me five days in the garage (call it £1500 in time that I could spend doing client work) and maybe £600 in parts and paint. I end up with a car that will probably need nothing more done for three years, but would likely be ready to scrap at that stage. Value now is maybe £1500 cleaned up and sold in an eBay auction. The maths therefore look like this:
Keep old CR-V
Buy new CR-V
Value now
1500
5000
Upfront costs
2100
1100
Total
3600
6100
Value 2022
0
2500
3-year cost
3600
3600
So: it will cost me £1500 to keep the old CR-V, as I could get that now if I sold it. Adding £1500 in time plus £600 in bits is another £2100. So to keep that car and prep it for three more years is £3600.
Buying a newer CR-V at £5k and spending, say, £1100 in time and parts in the next few months on sorting the reasons why the current owner is selling means £6100 up front. If we assume that the newer one will have a likely value of £2500 in three years, we see that it has cost £3600 over that time.
With running costs of both likely to be fairly identical and the cost over three years apparently exactly the same, all of this suggests that I should probably sell the old one and take the benefits of a newer car with better spec and lower miles, as it will cost me nothing extra to drive that for the next three years.
However, as David McRaney’s book “You Are Not So Smart” points out, this analysis does not account for the fact that humans make flawed decisions based on biased logic, sunk costs, the ‘Availability Heuristic’ and more. Part of me wants keeping what I already own to make more sense than changing it, to preserve my sense of wellbeing at having bought wisely in the past.
Man Maths arrives
Before I start the analysis, I already know I will probably persist with the old car as although it might have a bit of work to do, it has been reliable to date, it has good memories and I have invested some money in it (sunk costs) with the LPG conversion, towbar fitment, set of spare winter tyres and Apple Carplay head unit. So, when the numbers come out looking identical, I move them around to suit my earlier presumptions. This process of moving numbers around to confirm a presupposed narrative is often referred to as “Man Maths”.
Removing the cost of my time, as I try to convince myself that five days is unlikely and it will probably take one lunch break to sort this CRV, it now costs £2100 to keep the car vs £3600 for the new car. I also convince myself that I dodged a bullet with the later car’s alleged reputation for exploded diesel engines and the running costs of dearer diesel versus the LPG the older car burns, plus I get to keep £5k in the bank. A change to the status quo stands no chance against all of these tools.
When Loss Aversion meets Porsche 996/997 bore scoring
Decisions made around Porsche 996/997 engine bore scoring issues can also show man maths at work. Several of the Porsche 996 and 997s I value for insurance have had their engines rebuilt due to bore scoring and some of these cars now stand their owners close to £30k, while the cars are worth maybe two-thirds of that.
I admire people who choose to repair their cars, but part of me feels the pain of the money they have lost by sticking with them. Owners may react by saying that the failure rate of these engines is very low and only unlucky people get caught by the problem, but I don’t know anyone that spends a lot of time around the water-cooled cars who feels the risk is low enough to take the plunge into 996 or 997 ownership.
The 996 C4S is one of my favourite 911s and I’ve considered a purchase several times, but the risk is too great for me. It would hurt to spend £18k on a 996 and then have another £8-10k to spend on an engine rebuild somewhere down the road. This is a classic example of how humans allow the perception of risk to deny the potential rewards.
In his book “The Creative Negotiator”, Steven Kozicki points out that many (if not most) of us are ruled by loss aversion, where avoiding a loss is more preferable than making a gain. When loss averse people consider the purchase of a Porsche 996 or early 997, the risk of potential engine failure and the subsequent financial loss outweighs all other aspects: we gloss over the joy we might get from driving a beautiful, affordable 911.
It’s a magnified version of what is seen on the Honda: I lean towards maintaining the old one (i.e. risking £1500) than putting £5k into buying a newer one, even though they are likely to cost the same to run over three years and I will end up with a lower-mileage, higher-spec daily driver that needs no work at all. When one considers what those benefits might be worth in pound notes, the decision not to risk does not entirely add up.
Loss Aversion in Litigation
Most of the court cases I work on involve a perceived financial loss. All of them go through mediation to try and find a settlement, and those sessions are always very interesting. Even when there is a strong case that will likely result in a strong judgement in their favour, people will often settle well below the potential court award if continuing is felt to involve even a modest loss.
The video below illustrates our innate tendencies for loss aversion. Even when the expected value of a risk (a bet in this case) is a return of £500 with the odds against success of a mere 1 in 2,300, most people will refuse to take the risk.
Those who have been on the fence regarding the purchase of a Porsche 996 or 997 should watch out for man maths and the power of our hardwired aversion to loss. We’re only here once and it’s important for our mental wellbeing to take a risk now and then. As Goethe said: “boldness has genius, power and magic in it”. I may go and see that new CR-V after all.
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Ferdinand blogs my freelance adventure with Porsche at the centre. To support the blog or engage with me in other ways, you can:
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