I’m totally agonizing over the choice of whether to buy locally, buy long distance (or try to get my dealer to trade) or push for one of the last build slots. Any advice offered would be much appreciated! I know I’ve posted a couple of questions about this already (and am super grateful for the responses I’ve already gotten) but I am still trying to wrap my head around the pros, cons and options here.

I’m new to 911 (have a Cayenne that has been great) and am looking for a new C4S and am wanting to get into a 991.1 before it’s too late. My local dealer had put a number of dealer and marketplace cars on boats etc. a few weeks ago. One of them I really liked, it was dark metallic blue with platinum satin C wheels and in terms of my options was really only lacking PSE which could have been dealer installed. In the following week that car sold and it slipped through my fingers. Now I have a choice to make, here are my options as I see them.

Option 1: Try to build. My local dealer told me that they could find ONE build slot remaining for a C4S that they thought they had a shot at bargaining for, if the dealer whose slot it was would trade for it. They said the build would have to be committed by mid-week coming up and they weren’t sure they could even get it. They expected delivery would be in February.



Option 2: Dealer Trade. Get the dealer to trade for another vehicle in new inventory from somewhere else. The dealer gave me a refreshed set of what they said were all of the build sheets on the available dealer and marketplace vehicles they could find currently in the system. They marked west coast ones they said would be easier to get but also others they could find. I’ve gone through them and not found much… though I did find one on a dealer lot near LA that looks pretty close to the build I would want but it wasn’t one of the vehicles they handed me a sheet on, and it had one thing I really didn’t like. The metal sunroof, I’ve always had moon roofs in other cars and my Cayenne has the panoramic moon roof which I love. I drove a Cayman for a couple of days a few weeks ago and while I loved driving the car I really missed the extra light and being able to look up in the car. I felt a bit claustrophobic without the moon roof, I should add that in Seattle things can be pretty light-challenged about eight months of the year so good interior light can be important.





Option 3: Buy long distance. If the dealer couldn’t trade for the car that’s closest to my spec that I found at another dealership (again, it wasn’t one of the ones they handed me a build sheet on) I could buy it myself and have it sent up to me. But I’d miss some of the benefits of buying from my local dealer.

Option 4: Buy from current inventory. I do like the way I was treated when I purchased my Cayenne, also the dealer offers good extras like free shuttles, good loaners (or they’ll make arrangements for a rental car if you need it) and they offer free car washes for life in their carwash. In terms of what they have, they do have a nice C4S on the lot now, I hadn’t originally been considering silver but I do like the way the GT Silver looks and it’s been growing on me the more I’ve looked at it. The car lacks PSE also which I could have dealer added (though they had said it might cost 5k to add but I was hoping to get them to do it for MSRP as a condition of buying). One issue with the one on their lot that is the closest for me is that I test drove this car and the PCM wouldn’t stay OFF during the drive! It kept coming ON and turning the volume up on its own.. We’d shut it all the way off then a minute later it would come back on. I expect updating or re-flashing the computer would solve this but still, it had a gremlin.



I plan to use whatever car I get as a DD and I don’t plan to baby it.. For example I don’t want sport fascia because I don’t want to have to worry about the nose of the car too much. I would be willing to take it through car washes and just USE the heck out of the car as a DD. Also, I have kids so it’s hard to be too attached to having nice things so one of my thoughts regarding option 4 is that I would just get into a 911 that’s close enough and enjoy the car, learn about it and then in a few years build one to order that’s exactly the way I’d want one then. Since I’ve been test driving these 911s driving my Cayenne feels like driving a marshmallow and I’m not sure I would want to do that for six more months! However, if in the future I already had one and was specing and waiting for a new one to arrive it wouldn’t be so hard to wait!

Any deep thoughts or sage advice?