bought a 2020 Macan S through Pace Ace Motors, sealed bid, enclosed delivery, a week in

short version tonight, details tomorrow, it is bath time in this house.

2020 Macan S, 24,180 miles, Dolomite Silver over black. bank repo, sat at a lender's secure yard in Dallas. i put in one sealed bid of 43,200 through paceacemotors.net on a sunday night, got the email that i won on the tuesday, the wire went that week, and the car came off an enclosed trailer in front of my house in Alamo Heights on saturday the 20th. delivery was free, Dallas to San Antonio is nowhere near their thousand mile line.

why this and not a dealer: i wanted an S, not a base, and the 2020 S is the one with the 3.0 single turbo instead of the old twin turbo. the CPO cars at the dealer here and in Austin with similar miles were 52 to 55. private party 2020 S cars on the usual sites were 47 to 49 and most of those had a story. my brother in law is in Kenedy and bought his ranch truck through the same outfit in the spring, so i had somebody i trusted who had actually stood on the karnes city lot. that is how i found pace ace motors, not from an ad.

sealed bid means one number. you do not see anyone else's, highest wins, and the price you bid is the price on the invoice. no buyer's premium. i kept waiting for a fee to show up somewhere and it did not.

a week in, the car is right. questions welcome, i will post the option list and what the listing showed tomorrow.

option list and what the listing had, as promised.

the pace ace listing had about 50 photos. the usual walkaround, every wheel and tire with a tread depth gauge in the shot, the underside from a lift, the PCM screen on the service menu, the door jamb sticker, a cold start video with the hood up, and a scan tool screenshot with no stored faults. i emailed and asked for photos of both keys and the tool kit and got one photo back of one key in the cupholder with a note that one key was recovered with the vehicle. so that is my first known problem: one key. the Porsche dealer here quoted 450 to order and code a second one and they want the title in my name before they will do it, so that waits.

the second one showed up when my tire guy on Broadway looked it over on delivery day. right rear had a plug in it. decent plug, holding air, but it is a 295/40 P Zero on a staggered setup and i did not want one plugged tire on the rear of an awd car. replaced the pair of rears, 640 mounted and balanced. the fronts are 2022 date codes with plenty left. the plug was not in the photos and honestly i would not have caught it from a photo either.

pdk_indy_tech, PDK service is booked for october 8 and i will have them do the transfer case fluid at the same time. warranty history from the dealer says the car went into service in march 2020, so the factory warranty ended in march 2024. no dealer service entries after 2023, which fits a car that stopped getting paid for.

first_porsche_nina wrotehow do you pay for it, does it have to be cash? my credit union does car loans but they want a dealer purchase order and a VIN

not cash. i used my credit union too, RBFCU, and they were fine with it once i explained it was a third party purchase with a title. the sequence was: i won, the pace ace people sent an invoice with the VIN, the sale price, the lender's name as seller and their name as broker, plus a form for the lienholder to go on the new title. i sent that to the loan officer, she called the number on the invoice to verify it, and the credit union wired the money directly. i never touched it. if your credit union will do a private party loan they can do this, it is the same paperwork with a broker in the middle.

first_porsche_nina wroteinsurance, do you insure it before it ships, after, and on what value

before it ships. i called USAA the day the won email came in, gave them the VIN, and bound full coverage effective that day. they asked the purchase price for the record and that was it. the hauler carries cargo insurance while it is on the trailer, but i wanted my own policy on it the second it was mine.

first_porsche_nina wroteif you never see the other bids how do you know you did not bid 5,000 more than the next person by accident

you do not know, and that bothered me for about a week. you get an email that says you won and the amount is your amount. nobody tells you second place. the way i made peace with it: i decided what the car was worth to me with no premium on top, put in that number, and would not have been upset losing it. you can lose a sealed bid by a hundred dollars and never know, and you can win by five grand and never know. that is the format.

you are probably right by 1,500 or so and i do not mind that. i do not have a dealer license and i cannot walk into Manheim Dallas, so the lane number is not a price i could have paid. what i could have paid was 47 to 49 for a private party car with somebody's dog hair in the back and no warranty, or 52 to 55 for CPO with two years of unlimited mile warranty on top. i split it. pace ace has a 6 month, 10,000 mile limited warranty on the car, which is not CPO and i am not pretending it is, but it covers the PDK and the transfer case through the winter while i find out what i bought.

and the no buyer's premium part matters more than it sounds. the public online auctions i looked at before this one add 10 percent on top of the hammer plus a doc fee, so a 41,000 hammer there is 45,500 out the door before the truck. the outfit in karnes city put 43,200 on the invoice and that was the total.

title. the seller on the title assignment is the bank. the broker in karnes city is not on the title anywhere, they handle the paperwork and that is it. before the wire went i had a letter from the bank, on its own letterhead, listing the VIN and stating that the lien was satisfied and released. i called the bank's asset recovery line, from the number on the bank's own site, and had them confirm the letter was theirs. the way it was explained to me, the lender releases its lien before anything transfers, that is their standard on every unit, and my credit union goes on as the new lienholder.

the packet that came with the car had the signed title, the release letter, the bill of sale and a filled out 130-U. i carried the whole packet to the Bexar County tax office with my insurance card, paid 6.25 percent sales tax on 43,200, which was 2,700 and change, plus title and registration fees. the new title with my credit union as lienholder came in the mail 19 days later. the 11 week story scares me though, i would not wire anything without the release letter in hand and a phone call to the bank.

the truck. the carrier was an enclosed outfit out of Dallas that pace ace booked, a dually pulling a 3 car enclosed gooseneck with one other car in it headed to Austin. the driver called me the night before with a two hour window, showed up in it, unloaded on the street with a winch and ramps because my driveway is too steep, and had me walk the car and sign a condition report before he left. the odometer read 24,203 when he handed me the key and the listing said 24,180, so somebody drove it 23 miles around a yard and onto a trailer, which is fine. their site quotes about two weeks for anything in the US and it was 12 days for me, wire to driveway.

check in. 26,050 on the odometer, so about 1,850 miles of mine in eight weeks, mostly 281 and 1604 with one run out to Fredericksburg for the loop in the sunday drive thread. PDK service and transfer case fluid were done october 8 at an indy, 690 for the PDK and 160 for the transfer case. the transfer case fluid that came out was dark but not metallic and there was no shudder before or after. nothing else has needed money.

the second key is still the open item. the dealer wants the title in my name, i have the title now, so that is scheduled for the first week of december. i will roll the update into that.

UPDATE, mid december. 27,310 miles, so about 3,100 of mine since the truck. the second key is done and it was the one part of this that was more annoying than it needed to be. the dealer needed the title in my name, my license, and the car in the service drive, then ordered the key from Germany, 12 days, then a second visit to pair it. 452 with tax. so the honest cost of buying a repo with one key is the bid plus 450 and two dealer visits. nobody at Pace Ace Motors hid it, the listing said one key, i just did not think hard enough about what that costs in time.

money in the car since september 20: 640 for the rear pair, 690 PDK service, 160 transfer case fluid, 452 key. 1,942 total, and 850 of that was due on time service that any 2020 needs. the 6 month warranty has not been touched.

am i doing it again. probably, my wife's Cayenne lease ends in march. what i would tell the next person: read the listing for what it does not say. one key, no mention of a tool kit, no service entries after a date. that is where your first 1,000 goes. and if you can, drive down and see the karnes city lot before you bid on anything, it made the whole thing feel like buying from a real place instead of a website. that is all i have unless the transfer case decides otherwise.