Let me correct that a bit, it was actually $500 refundable to get on the waitlist but they actually have the RWD allocation available when I visited so I put in the $5k non-refundable to secure the RWD allocation and got the email from Porsche NA the next day.
I can add more color to this. When I got on the waitlist for Bellevue for a CT4 last month, I needed to put in a refundable $5k deposit. Sales said there were 15 on waitlist for CT4 as well as 15-16 on CT4S (may be shared pool as 4S sedan?). They also mentioned receiving 16 (IIRC) RWD allocations which was more than they had on their waitlist.
Yes my prior dealer Porsche Hawaii...ordered a 2022 Taycan CT4 at MSRP with a $2500k deposit I believe it was in July 2021....car delivered Jan 2022. No issues other than wife took it from me and now am waiting on a new Audi SQ8 Etron as a replacement...even that was just $1k deposit for wait for allocations once released for late Apri/May 2023 builds and summer 2023 deliveries. I even had a 2023 BMW i4 M50 waitlisted at MSRP that only cost $1k for deposit and spot for next allocation....so yeah $20-30k for a waitlist is crazy even still. OP needs to search around.
Wow.. looks like the non-RWD allocations got progressively worse now than earlier in the year!
~June’21
New car market is always affected by used car market. I wonder if the demand for higher trims seems higher because Porsche released a large wave of RWD recently (in another thread someone reported one of my local dealers just a lot of 16 RWD allocations, which emptied their waitlist leaving available allocations, but CT and CT4S waitlists have 16 and 46 people waitlists still. If they got the same number of allocations for the 4S, they would have emptied that list too, making it look like RWD is in high demand. So perhaps this is not higher demand for higher trims, just lower availability (i.e. same number of people waiting for all trims, but a recent RWD wave of allocations cleared out the queues).
I don't have hard figures about my SA's order demands and allocations...but I have always felt that more people are interested in a 4S and above. This entire year, I've likely received more messages about 4S and above than RWD, though more RWDs were available. There was still strong demand for RWD, and they've typically sold quickly (we might be seeing a little lull right now because of the weather and people wanting AWD). Of course, this is an enthusiast forum, so it might all be skewed towards the more performance-orientated variants.
This could be because RWD allocations were easier found at people's local dealers (I know there were a few since I've waited, I heard they have a couple still available as of few days ago). If your dealer has the allocation you want, you won't be placing demand orders with out of state SA's. My point is that your personal experience is a bit skewed not just because this is an enthusiast forum (that I think has some effect too btw) but also because you're likely to see people who couldn't find an allocation locally to them. This is just a theory of mine, I have no hard numbers proof. I like hard numbers, hence my original question to you whether or not you know the distribution of allocations over the past year. I have a feeling there hasn't been that many Turbo/S allocations in the past year which caused a perceived high demand, but I suspect the queue depth is nowhere near as deep as 4S demand for example.
