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The Story Behind the PTS 'Signal Green', 'Arena Red Metallic' & 'Fashion Grey' gt3s!
Chapter One - The 'actionable' part of this story begin on Friday March 6th at the lobby of the Hilton hotel on West Century Blvd, just a few blocks from the LAX airport. I am there to attend the annual LA Porsche Lit & Memorabilia Meet the next day March 7th, an event I have seldom missed attending since the late 1980's. By now, I know most of the old-timers - vendors, the visitors from Europe & other parts of the United States, Canada & Mexico and the hard-core Porsche enthusiasts from Southern California! I had just spent the day visiting a number of open houses sponsored by Porsche-related businesses in the LA area who encourage early arrivals to visit their premises on Friday. Together with a group of friends from Northern California & Colorado, I had done a full day of touring, including a visit to Callas Rennsport, Steve Hogue Enterprises, Bill Perrone's Part Shop and Wilhoit's Long Beach operation. Now we were relaxing in the lobby of the hotel, waiting for a few friends, including four that had come all the way from Düsseldorf Germany, to join us so we could attend a dinner at a popular Manhattan Beach restaurant. The last thing I expected to hear in that hotel lobby that late Friday afternoon was a story that would set me in motion non-stop for the next two days and end with a purchase of a PTS 'Signal Green' MY2015 gt3 just 48 hours later!
In my group of friends sitting in the lobby was Bob S. from Arizona. He is both a 356 & early 911 enthusiast, plus a fellow R-Gruppe! I have know Bob for nearly 30 years & it was he who four years ago sold me a stunning MY2007 PTS 'Signal Green' 997S he had purchased new from P of San Diego. I felled in love with the color at first sight (it was code W25, slightly different from the 'Signal Green' 22S currently approved for PTS) and I pestered him for 3 years until he relented & sold it to me in March of 2011!
Unfortunately I crashed the car three weeks after I bought it & totaled this gorgeous 'Signal Green' 997S! As a result, I have been looking for a replacement to my crashed Porsche ever since, always hoping to do it with another PTS 'Green' 911. So I started a conversation with Bob about the disappointing behavior of P of San Diego on my last contact with them. As some of you might recall from previous threads in Rennlist at Calpolo17's thread, I (plus a few other Rennlisters) learned about a supposedly 'Birch Green' gt3 that surfaced in San Diego a few weeks before. It was reported to be a canceled order which was going to be available at MSRP. I talked to one of San Diego's salesman twice after a Rennlister (Kyrocks) provided me his info via a PM and communicated with this dealer by email too. Then silence...and I assumed (correctly, as it turned out) the car was sold to someone else!
As I was almost finishing telling Bob my 'sad' story, the guy sitting next to him interrupts my conversation & blurts out that he is getting a 'Signal Green' gt3 shortly! This fellow is not a regular member of our group, but he is an acquaintance that comes to the LA meet each year as a vendor. He is a partner in a Porsche sales & restoration shop in North Carolina. He then proceeds to tell me that he recently had learned that Porsche AG (PAG) had agreed to build a batch of 30 PTS gt3s and allocate them to US dealers. They were to be done only in three colors - 'Signal Green', 'Arena Red Metallic' & 'FashionGrey/Modegrau'. This fellow, like many of you here at Rennlist, had requested PTS on his MY2015 gt3 allocation last Fall & was turned down by Porsche. He settled for a 'Guards Red' gt3 which was delivered to him at the beginning of this year. But when he heard of these last minute 30 available PTS gt3s, he called Detlev von Platen and members of his staff at Porsche Cars North America (PCNA) to complain. He made enough of a fuss that, at the end, PCNA decided to allocate him a PTS car - and he chose 'Signal Green'. He said he didn't even know the specs and that even if he knew, they couldn't be changed. The car would be air-freighted to his dealer sometime in April or so. He had no idea why Porsche had build these 30 gt3s in these three 'odd' colors. And that when his other business partner tried to get the allocation for a 'Fashion Grey/Modegrau' gt3 from this group of gt3s, but was turned down!
Say what? Thirty PTS gt3s, all extra allocations late MY2015...and only in three colors - 'Signal Green', 'Arena Red Metallic' and 'Fashion Grey/Modegrau'? You must be kidding?
I sat there astounded; slowly letting all his words sink in & register in my brain. Although surprised, I was not totally shocked by the news. We at Rennlist had already been exposed to bits of news here & there. Later, as I went back and study the various threads & posts on the subject, some of these factual 'dots' reported in Rennlist in the previous month proved to be extremely valuable to piecing together this story. But that came later when I started connecting the dots together and analyzing 'all we knew' & 'when we knew it'. Because I was already was participating in Calpolo17's thread, I already knew the existence of a 'Signal Green' gt3 allocation at McKenna and another one at P of Beverly Hills.
Back in those days (just weeks ago), I was quick to explain away these late PTS gt3 dealer allocations as 'cancellations' of an existing customer's PTS order, probably one of the MY2014 gt3s that were never started due to the 'Stop-Sale' and got pushed into MY2015. Because I know all too well that Porsche likes to do PTS in batches, I didn't surprise me that these (I incorrectly assumed 'customer') PTS gt3s were starting to show up now at US dealers. So I was content to repeat the story that sounded to me the most plausible. And one that also mirrored what I was told about the so-called 'Birch Green' gt3 at P of San Diego, explained to me by the dealer as a cancelled order. Looking back, I was so naive in trusting Porsche's explanation of the PTS moratorium. That was only two weeks ago...but it seems like an eternity now! Back then I still lived in this fantasy land of make believe & trusted the PTS Fairy Godmother at PAG! I was in for a very rude awakening!
To my chagrin, at that late hour on Friday afternoon I couldn't check on the veracity of the information I had just been given by the fellow from North Carolina. I had a full schedule of events for that night (March 6th) including dinner with my Porsche friends. And the next morning I was showing up at 6:30 AM at the Hilton with an expensive 'Early Bird' admission ticket for the LA Lit Memorabilia Meet! So I knew I couldn't start tracking down the story immediately. But I also couldn't contain my excitement at the news of these PTS gt3s! So I posted the following at Calpolo17's Rennlist thread on the 'Signal Green' gt3 at McKenna just before I left for dinner that night (March 6th). The time was 5:46 PM Pacific.
But I quickly made up my mind then and there that I would try, like my story teller from North Carolina had done, to locate one of those 'Signal Green' gt3s for myself. But I didn't have time to do anything about it until the next day, March 7th at noon. That is when I would be totally finished with the Porsche LA Lit & Memorabilia event at the Hilton that I had driven all the way from Carmel to just to attend! That part of the story, Saturday March 7th, is coming up next....
The last thing I expected to hear in that hotel lobby that late Friday afternoon was a story that would set me in motion non-stop for the next two days and end with a purchase of a PTS 'Signal Green' MY2015 gt3 just 48 hours later!
03-22-2015, 03:19 PM
The Story Behind the PTS 'Signal Green', 'Arena Red Metallic' & 'Fashion Grey' gt3s!
