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I have only had one SA in the 17 years since I first thought about buying a Porsche.
I was not a lifelong Porsche fan at all, being a BMW M enthusiast. However, when I was at the Nürburgring in July of 2006 my instructor had murmured that I might want to try a GT3. I have never even been in one so I got a few passenger laps in a full race prepared GT3. On my way back from Germany I picked up a copy of Total 911 in the airport. It has a review of the upcoming 997 GT3RS which was new at the time, written by some guy called Chris Harris. "Well", I thought..."I am going to order one".
I have no idea about all the allocation stuff etc, so walked into Downtown Porsche near where I live. There I met Antje Grey in sales and ordered an RS.
Or so I imagined.
I had no idea about allocations and the like, so Antje politely told me that the entire 2007 allocation was sold. "No problem" I thought..."I can wait for a 2008".
There was a waiting llst for them too. For the next fifteen months I would go and moon over the few RS that came in . Clearly this was not on. Walk-ins were unlikely to get a car.
Then one November afternoon I got a call. There had been a cancellation and the car was on the floor. Every rep wanted it so Antje told me I had only minutes to make a decision. I bought the car on the spot in November 2007 and I have it still.
Delivery day in Nov 2007:
Today I took delivery of my seventh Porsche and my fourth RS:
I wanted every car to have it own adventures. The 997 went back to Germany next year and was tracked at Spa and the Nurburgring. The Canadian plates attracted much attention from the Polizei but all stops ended up in good humour.
Shortly afterwards my company car lease was up on a Touareg V8. VW had decided they would only bring in six-cylinder cars after mine, so I need to figure out how to get a Cayenne at a reasonable price. Antje found me a demonstrator with a V8 and a very stripper spec, not even a nav system. It as still a bit over the limit but I was having a good year so my boss OKed it.
The car did over 300,000km , towing , off roading, dog-hauling and winter voyaging.
By that stage I was hearing about the 997.2 RS and went for factory delivery. One of the things I did not love about the 7.1 was the thin steering wheel. Antje found an obscure option for a thicker wheel which was perfect. Factory delivery was excellent and I had arranged to go to the Nüburgring 24 to see the race and then have some track time afterwards. Porsche agreed to hold back the identical car to mine which ad been raced by the same Chris Harris....and it was amazing to see how much damage a 24 hour race does to a brand new car:
However, then the 991 was showing up in dispatches and Antje got me an allocation. The problem was that I had no space so the 7.2 had to go. I still regret that.
Still, the 991 looked very good but there was a serious problem. I wanted factory delivery to attend an event a Zell am See that was sponsored by Dr Wolfgagn Porsche. Porsche said they could not make the car in time. The event was three days after the August shutdown. Antje worked on this
for quite a while. Eventually Porsche asked for a copy of the invitation to the event , which we provided.
I got the car two days before the event. It was rallied at Zell am See and autographed by Dr Porsche. I still have that car.
Then in 2018 the Panamera ST Turbo was announced and it looked ke an ideal high-speed cruiser. This was in the middle of diesel gate stuff and Euro deliveries were cancelled.Still, I got the car and shipped to back, ran it up to Denmark and around Germany was well as tracking it at Spa and the NS. Not exactly its native habitat but it was much better than I thought . It was also great for wandering around the desert in the US Southwest:
By this stage the old Cayenne was still going strong but it was obvious that it would not last forever, so I said goodbye and added a GTS which is solid and very comfortable . The Great Dane loves it:
And so to today . The 992RS is wildly impractical but I think it will be an amazing drover- it will go to Zell Am See next year and I hope to add Monza to it track experience. I will post something separately about my first impressions but it is early days:
Of course I am aware of the delays and shortages and have wanted for a long time from some cars, but I do not think it is unique to Porsche. I do not pay any premiums and have not been pressured to build silly specs on cars, though I generally do a reasonably complete spec. I am not a special customer, no PTS,limited cars like the 911R, Speedster, Dakar, etc. They are more for collectors and that is another level of customer, but from being a walk-in to today I have had only positive experiences. I have seen many posts from people who have had different and more negative experiences but thought it might be an idea to show my own more positive results.