This post isn’t a documentation of my car spec. I also forgot to take interior pics, just wasn’t thinking of that. I got EM interior with some CXX bits. The car is GT3 Touring 6 spd Signal Yellow on Cohiba. I was going for a retro feel, like in a longhood era 911. I think it worked well. I’ll post up my car details in another thread when I get the car and take some interior pics.

I wanted to share my experience with fellow enthusiasts and hopefully help people in the process. My trip was last week.

Stuttgart – Day 1

-Arrival day

-Rented via ED centre’s Avis contract to return car at Werk 1 at no extra charge

-Porsche Museum and Mercedes-Benz Museum

-Stayed at Steinberger Graff Zeppelin

Hotel was good, good dinner and great breakfast buffet selection. Well situated hotel if you plan to use Stuttgart Main Train Station. Arrived on a Sunday, stores closed. Didn’t account for that. Really easy to do both Museums in a day. This was an easy activity after the flight in and time difference. Choose to rent a car from Frankfurt as the train is set times and we wanted a car anyway while in Stuttgart. Didn’t choose a connection flight into Stuttgart because connections have issues, and the drive wasn’t bad. And, our flight was delayed out of Toronto due to incoming flight delay and slow boarding causing 7-8 missed connections on our flight in Frankfurt including people’s flights to Stuttgart and Leipzig.

Stuttgart – Day 2

-Delivery day

-Small breakfast items provided at Werk 1 in your seating area, while you wait for your delivery consultant to pick you up.

-I don’t want to spoil the experience too much, suffice to say the delivery experience was amazing. Just seeing your car in the factory delivery area is awesome. My delivery consultant was awesome, we had a good long chat about things other than cars while in the car.

-Factory tour – Taycan/718/911 lines. 1.5 hours. Our tour guide was very good at the tour and answering questions. Small group, 2 other people. Tour was amazing experience, especially if you are into manufacturing like I am. You really are right up against the line watching various steps of the production process. There was a prototype making its way down the 718/911 line. We had to stop short on 2 occasions as the car was making its way through. We also had to wait a little bit to enter as a call was made to determine the location of the prototype. Unfortunately, didn’t catch a glimpse. But got to see GT4RS/911 Turbo/Carrera 2S engine marriage process among many other aspects of the process. Along with where the precious final photo shot is taken that appears in your TYD app.

-I drove off as there was a shift change at the factory. Cool to see many of the workers stopping to look at the car, perhaps a sense of pride there.

-VIP Casino Lunch – Food tasted great and was a nice relaxing lunch overlooking the roundabout in front of the museum/factory/Stuttgart Zentrum dealership.

-Spent the afternoon driving to Baden-Baden onward to Freudenstadt back to Stuttgart for the night. This was via the B500 in the Black Forest, nice road with twistys and scenery. We stopped off to hike to see Geroldsauer Wasserfall. The short trail walk was a good break and peaceful enjoying the natural landscape.

Andermatt – Day 3

-Destination was Andermatt. Chose this location as it would be after a long drive and well situated to drive the mountain passes the following day.

-Stopped for a visit through Hohenzollern Castle. This was cool to see if you are into castles. Perched up high on the mountain. We took the shuttle up, made sense for us and probably the sensible thing to do unless you are looking for a good hike.

-Stayed at the Radisson Blu. This is not like the Radissons in North America, it was fantastic, new hotel. Blu I guess is their luxury brand. Parking is also very secure underground the hotel. It’s part of a condo development with shared facilities. The only amenities we made use of was the restaurant. Dinner was excellent in terms of food, service and atmosphere. The included breakfast buffet was also well done. Restaurant Spun is the name.
-Filled up 79.78 litres of 98, $194.66 francs or $257 CDN....ouch.

Travel to Lucerne/Mountain Passes – Day 4

-Left Andermatt shortly after 8am to drive the Sustenpasse, Grimselpasse and Furkapasse and you also drive the Gotthardpasse into/out of Andermatt.

-Drove the Sustenpasse to Grimselpasse through Furkapass back to just outside Andermatt. Decided on this direction first as the internet seems to favour the West to East Furka route being better. Then we drove all the passes in the other direction back to Wassen. What’s there to say? All these passes were freaking amazing drives, so fun. Susten was a bit rainy in parts on first go out, Furka was as well. On the way return trip through them Susten and most of Grimsel was dry, Furka was wet in parts. The scenery is simply breathtaking, the scale of everything is so huge.

-Stopped to see the Rhone Glacier and walked into the glacier cave. Neat to see and a good break stop.

-Traffic was light at about 90% open road. Mix of other cars, local and tourist and motorcycles. Some cyclists. When there was traffic it was not invasive or an issue to driving, they moved out of the way or were actually looking to go faster (locals I think, not taking in the scenery). We were on the passes from about 8:40am to about 4pm.

-Saw some other Porsches along the passes and a Porsche Travel Experience group in a series of colourful 992s on the Furka.

-Had a late lunch/coffee at Gasthof Tannler on the Sustenpasse. Simple cold cut sandwich, coffee and house made apricot pie. All tasted good, nice pie! We had stopped earlier at the Grimsel Hospiz but lunch was closed for a companies business lunch. Thinking Gasthof was potentially better because it felt less touristy and more local.

-Then onto Lucerne. We stayed at the Burgenstock Waldhotel. Parking is underground and secure enough.

-Burgenstock was fantastic, great room, nice private balcony overlooking the mountains and valley. Dinner at Parisa was great along with the service. It’s all expensive, but you’d know that going in when booking. The included breakfast was lighter than others, but all quality food.

City Sightseeing – Day 5

-We made use of the Burgenstock Bahn into Lucerne for a half day visit into the city. Did a bunch of walking around to see some sites and just get a feel for it. Returned to the hotel via the boat shuttle.

-Decided to go check out Zurich since it’s about a 45 minute drive, arrived there for most of the afternoon into the evening. I liked Zurich better than Lucerne, larger city feel. Lots of hot cars driving around, few 992 GT3s and aircooled and lots of other top brands.

-Had dinner at Hotel Storchen in the plaza, nice view of joining footpaths and the river through Zurich. Good people watching. Food here was good. Service was a bit slow. They have been impacted by labour issues as many others. Reduced table count as they lost people last month.

Homeward Bound – Day 6

-Left Lucerne about 7am to head to Sindelfingen for GT3 drop then onward to Frankfurt for the flight home.

-Great way to end the trip, fast driving on the Autobahns to Sindelfingen. A last 3 hours with the car, from Burgenstock to Simovic Car Service.

-Simovic Car Service was excellent for the drop. Salvador was great to chat with. I would have no qualms about dropping the car off here. It’s outdoor secure lot. He said cars usually get picked up within 2-3 business days.

-Rented a car at the nearby Enterprise (15 min walk). Great rate for the one-way rental. Europcar which is closer is closed for June due to labour shortage, my reservation there was rebooked to a further away location, which I cancelled.

-Drive from Sindelfengin to Frankfurt was a nightmare. In that there was construction and traffic delays on every road we took. It took an extra 50-60 minutes to arrive. This was sort of not entirely accounted for in the planned travel time. The drop at Simovic also took a little longer than quoted and the car rental was a little slower than planned. We arrived at the airport 2 hours before departure. There are car rental returns in both terminals, so that helps. But there is a bit of a walk from the rental drop to the check-in area. There were no issues getting to our flight with some time to spare and make use of the lounge. But I don’t typically like cutting it close, especially in first time travel areas.

Other Comments

-Length of trip was decent and most things did not feel at all rushed or pressured to get through quickly to move to the next activity. The only stressful part was the trip from Sindelfingen to Frankfurt International.

-If I had to add extra time to the trip, I would add perhaps another day in Switzerland. Zurich perhaps. OR a day in Stuttgart/Frankfurt at the end. To make the airport transition more relaxed and cap the trip without stress. If you said, what if you had 3 more days. I would add 1 day as previously mentioned and visit another city with the other 2 days. I may also make Lucerne a passing through stop for half a day and focus more on Zurich.

-You could consider taking a domestic flight from Stuttgart to Frankfurt, but as mentioned earlier, connections don’t always line up well. A better option is the ICE train from Stuttgart to FRA, 1hr15min trip. I didn’t take the train as my mom was travelling with and it would be slower and luggage to manage. This being said, I think she would’ve been fine with the train as she did a ton of walking on the trip without issues (though at a slower pace).

-I think I have 3 speeding tickets coming. Not because I was intentionally speeding but because of hidden cameras and the really really slow city speeds. 1 was in Stuttgart, I was doing about 39 km/h in a 30. Camera in the centre median, saw a bunch of flashing reds is how I realized. Next was in Freudenstadt city, also something higher than 35 km/h but below 40 in a 30. Boom, a bright flash. Third was in a tunnel in Lucerne area. 60 zone but I was doing just below 70. Car behind me high beamed me, I thought they wanted to pass and moved into the middle lane while maintaining speed. Boom, bright flash. Turns out they were warning me of the upcoming camera. Needless to say heed the speed signs in the strictest sense, believe me, it’s hard to drive at 30 km/h, especially the GT3 in manual. It’s unnatural. There are no signs warning of speed cameras or anything, it’s also typically not obvious. Cameras are well disguised.

-You can take one license plate with you at drop off. They need one for transport to port. It was noted that other US customers have lost their fire extinguisher at port, they pull it out for transport. Simovic noted on the condition report that the car is with fire extinguisher, so if the port removes it Porsche should replace it.

-Forgot about European air conditioning, it’s weak and couldn’t deal with 35 C temps that we had in Stuttgart and it was a bit cooler in Lucerne. Porsche did say they intentionally maintain temps few degrees higher than normal (the figure escapes me now). So it was warm in the museum and the factory. It’s not like the 20 C house and work I keep here.

-Museums are closed on Mondays. This is why we did it on Sunday, Porsche Museum will let you in for free if you provide your name and tell them you are doing European Delivery.

-I will say I stopped looking at people’s picture posts about the delivery experience pretty early on. I did this because so much is easily available online, can easily “ruin” the experience. In that you can view everything online, which to me takes a bit away from how we experienced things in the past. With a little bit of surprise. I wanted some surprise on this trip, so kept the media viewing to a minimum so as to experience much of it for the first time.

-Luggage – We had a backpack (larger hiking size), expandable carry-on and a Dakine 85L Split Roller. My car has LWB, which is why I bought the split roller. The expandable carry-on and backpack barely fit into the frunk as some frunk space was used up by a gift. I had to unpack 2 items from the backpack to have it fit in this configuration. The split roller was always destined for behind the LWB. However, it did not fit through the threshold while packed (and I didn’t pack it to the max), this is because we don’t have foldable LWB. I had to unpack the top section to lower the height of the bag to squeeze it into the back area. One there, it wasn’t an issue. I just left the unpacked stuff on the floor behind the seat. Consider your luggage!

-Autobahn – Love it, the unrestricted zones especially. Lane discipline is great, even if delayed for some drivers. Fastest I got was just over 200 km/h for a sustained period, in part due to keeping engine speed below 5000. Mostly though, speeds were 130-180 km/h.

-Total driving mileage was 1339 km.

-Navigation – Paid for Ultimate Drives app, useless. Interface wasn’t great. All content disappeared from my profile in the app, app wouldn’t function. All before I left, contacted support…been 2.5 weeks now, no response. Don’t bother with it. I used TomTom and downloaded offline maps for Germany/Switzerland on my iPhone. Worked great.

-Initial driving impressions, handling is crisp, suspension not rough on the street, 6-spd manual is an excellent combination with this car for street fun. I had a 991.2 GT3 in PDK which I didn’t enjoy on the street, due to lack of engagement, it was for track use primarily. I want for nothing from my 991, 992 all the way! Can’t really comment on the motor due to not being able to wring it out. It is lively and feels like it's what we've come to expect from the GT3. Exhaust sounds great, better than stock 991.2. May not need to swap out, let’s see. My 74 year old mom with a rod in a leg and pins and screws in an ankle thought the LWB and vehicle ride was comfortable throughout the trip. Car came with Pirerelli Corsas, a bit disappointed, however the tires performed well for the driving I did, perhaps adding to street comfort over Cup2s. 2 outer most dials in the gauge cluster are useless behind the steering wheel. Shifter feels fantastic in the hand, purposeful engagement between gears. Clutch got me a few times as I drove for the first time around the factory, stalled. This got better as I got familiar with the clutch.

You need to do European Delivery if you are Porsche enthusiast. The delivery day experience was top notch, everybody involved was helpful and there to ensure you had the best time possible. I was on cloud 9 that day, such a special experience that I am thankful to have had. I mean visiting Porsche factory grounds, touring the production lines, driving off with your car and touring Europe. The icing on the cake to the delivery day, is if you love Europe like I do, enjoy food and the culture….what is the reason not to do the trip. I would even do the trip if I had 3-4 days to spare, just do less and stay more local. I’m so glad I went…did I say it was amazing?!

Thank you to all who chimed in as I prepared for the trip. A big thank you goes out to Porsche AG, Porsche Canada and Porsche London for making the delivery possible.

Feel free to ask any questions, I’ll always be happy to help with opinion or fact…whichever I have

Pics or it didn't happen....I have lots, here are a few.

 

Hold for more pics etc.

 

Fantastic write up! Thank you for posting. Interesting they are still using Sindelfingen for drop off. I had to use that place in 2017 but that's because they were building the Mission E factory at the time and the Euro delivery area was out of service.

 

Thank you for taking the time to write about your trip. It gives great insight and shares ya experience. Lovely spec ! I especially like that you kept the standard silver on the wheels.
enjoy
matty

 

Fantastic write up, indeed! Learned a few that should help me with my own ED in a week and a half from today, so, thanks!

 

Fantastic

 

Main takeaway for me reading about your experience is tons of respect to your mom for being ok with the LWBs

Glad you had a good time. The unrestricted Autobahn stretches of the A81 near the Swiss border, pretty decent, right? An alternative (longer) way of coming down to Switzerland from Stuttgart is via the Black forest, via the B500 and ideally some detours from the 500 to explore some incredible roads, and entering Switzerland through the Bad Zurzach area. Speed limits outside the Black Forest villages are more tolerant compared to the Swiss passes. I've recently started exploring this area, and I consider it drivers heaven, its definitely a nice way to experience the incredible steering of the GT3

Your driving day in Switzerland definitely included some great choices. As you said, these choices pretty much depend on the amount of time one has at his/her disposal, there as so many scenic routes around here, its impossible to get bored... Davos to St Moritz is another favorite of mine, yesterday I drove around the Säntis area with some friends for the first, stunning... Even Zurich has a few small passes nearby if one gets the occasional itch I don't know, maybe all roads seem great because the GT3T is so bloody awesome, who knows haha

Seeing you guys travelling half-way around the world to pick up your cars is really inspiring, if anyone needs any info on routes, hotels restos etc, happy to share any knowledge I might have

 

Great write up - actually saw you coming up the Furka Pass on Wednesday morning, the car looked great.

I was in the Forrest Green 992 Touring travelling towards Andermatt

 

Fantastic! We did this in 2018 and it was one of our all-time best vacations.

 

Wonderful write up and one of my favourite colours. Our delivery date is in September and plan on dropping the car off at Simovic as well. They open at 8:30 and we have a 11:20 flight out of Stuttgart. Do you think we can make it? How much time did you spend at the drop off? Thanks!

 

That will be tight, but possible - organize your drop-off with Salvador in advance and arrange your transportation to the airport prior to drop-off. It only takes a few minutes to review any damage to the vehicle (or lack thereof) and sign some forms. Figure on 20-30 minutes in Sindelfingen. Salvador may meet you a little before opening time, if necessary (or you could choose to leave the car the evening before).

 

No prob!

Thanks!

Taking it back to silver! Where it all began.

 

No prob, enjoyed summarizing the trip. Thanks!

Only if fitted with winter tires can you drop at Zuffenhausen.

 

Amazing! Yes I recall seeing you as well, I believe we exchanged high beam flashes. Your car looks awesome as well.

 

Thanks!

Seems doable, assuming for a domestic flight. It's about a 20 minute drive between locations w/o traffic. Since you will take a taxi, you don't have the rental car return to be concerned with.

I was told drop would be about 20 minutes when I emailed to book my drop time. This being said, I arrived 1 hour earlier than the time I gave earlier. No issue. Salvador had to do some entries in the BLG Logistics portal which required a print out signed by me. In addition to making copies of the paperwork Porsche gives you and completing the condition report. Mine was about 35-40 minutes because we were chatting for a bit and I had to pack my split roller luggage. He was the only one there and another vehicle was being dropped, so while I was packing he went to assist them so waited a few minutes for him to complete them (non ED drop off, so was quick with them). Keep that in mind, sounds like he might be the only person there some days. So if he's helping somebody else, then you may be waiting a tad longer.

He can call you a taxi as he offered to do so for me, might be worth doing that once you get your process started so it arrives as the check-in process completes. It's not a high traffic area where you can simply walk to the street and hail a taxi.

See if you can drop a bit earlier before 8:30am, to give yourself more time. Less stress.