When Honda first introduced the Accord in 1976, one of their big selling points was what came standard on the car that other manufacturers considered options. In fact, Honda didn't really offer any options at all, since the car was so well equipped from the factory. Over the years, they became famous for not only their build quality, but also their content.

Last year Autoweek ran a survey of Boxster owners as to what they paid for their cars. The average was in the mid fifties, with the highest price paid for a freakin' Boxster S at over $80K. Love those options!

 

Another great post, Eltianti ... Makes one wonder you always see an old fart driving a Porsche at 25% less of the posted speed limit. Absolute pathetic, I would never buy a Porsche even without reading this although they make great cars but most certainly still not the best money can buy for bargain and bang.

 

Here are the reactions from some of the Boxster owners:
http://www.986.org/boards/986/main.pl?read...d=427480#427480

 

Honda. We appreciate the guts it took to do the Insight, the S2000 is sensational, and we can't wait to drive the new Civic SI. Other than that, they just keep rolling along doing great things as part of their SOP (standard operating procedure).

Well they seem to have some nice things to say about Honda. They also mention how badly the NSX needs upgraded...

 

This is so true.

My sister was looking for a second hand Boxster and couldn't understand why they were all advertised at about 10k pounds over list price. It wasn't until I showed her the Porsche web-site where you can enter the spec and options and get a quote for the car loaded, that she realised the list price was for a very basic car, and that it would cost something like 15k to spec it up to something reasonable.

They really sound afforedable until you start looking into it.

Porsche aren't the only ones that do this though, BMW have a similar pricing strategy as well.

 

we have dealer markups. Porsches have 200 different options to markup.

 

honda used to option the basics on their cars as well. Way back in the 80's and 90's you couldn't buy a honda with air conditioning standard. It was always added on by the dealership, for $800 - 1200 extra. Now this certainly isn't the optioning that porsche does, but I always wanted my a/c and was shocked that honda didn't have it installed. Every car company does or has done something. Porsche has always been expensive...now the question is, will they become off-road champs in their new "pepper" suv?