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January 1, 2023 - The Year has Arrived (aka "Confirming the new reality")

Well, dear readers ... welcome to making it all the way through to the start of 2023, in this, this ... this "pre-report" report for The GTS Chronicles. You've so far covered twenty-plus chapters and over two-and-a-half-years of real-world elapsed time. Your reading stamina is both noted and appreciated! But, we're not done yet. Nope, not by a long shot.
Luke's Thoughts
[on things feeling more real...]
You know, it gets a little more official feeling as the weeks pass. A little more real. I assume that's just going to continue on and on as we march towards delivery day, sometime this summer. I should go back and graph the ups and downs; there would be a lot of them. But now, the feeling is one of a corner turned - and a hope that perhaps the graph will now show a smooth upwards path to the high point of the day in Germany that we walk into the showroom (or wherever they do it) and see our cars finally revealed to us in the sheet metal.

(to read more of Luke's thoughts from this moment, check out his blog post)


To recap, it was now virtually assured that 2023 would be the year that the much-anticipated GTS Chronicles Euro Delivery adventure would happen. We had verbally received our allocations and discussions regarding Euro Delivery dates were already in progress.

Luke and I were both up late when the clock struck January 1, 2023, and quickly sent back and forth a couple of messages of congratulations regarding reaching this momentous year:

From: Andrew Lavigne 1/1/2023, 12:00:52 AM
Welcome to the year of deliverance!
Sounds alternately exciting and creepy.

From: Luke Ward 1/1/2023, 12:01:26 AM
Haha you too. This is OUR year finally.
Can't think of a single person I'd rather be doing it with.
Thanks for everything to date.

From: Andrew Lavigne 1/1/2023, 12:02:06 AM
Many thanks same here.
Luke's Track Your Dream
We got a couple of items checked-off on our to-do lists within the first week or two of the new year. We successfully set up our orders into the Porsche "Track Your Dream" app and we now both saw accurate reflections of our cars and their builds. Very good. Interestingly, though, we noticed that the date of our orders was "May of 2022" ... which was a long, long way off from July of 2021, when we had actually placed our orders. Curious, but we put that point aside for the moment.

The other thing we got checked off was proof of our order status advancement, as Porsche Centre London had now provided us with order status details on our car, which you can see below. I've highlighted the important fields in yellow (at least for us). Current order status (at V200, indicating allocations given), freeze date (indicating absolute cessation of any changes to vehicle configuration), and delivery location (Leipzig, confirming European Delivery). You can ignore the desired/estimated arrival at dealership, as those are estimates based on cars not doing Euro Delivery.

Order data showing our Boxster / Cayman vehicle order statuses, as of January 9, 2023.
About a week after our official V200 status confirmation, we received the ceremonial certificates that our salesperson Christina liked to give to her customers when they received their allocations (you may recall she had intended to have them ready back when we visited before Christmas, but some problems with printing prevented that). A nice gesture, and nice keepsakes to add to our growing pile of GTS Chronicles journey memorabilia.
courtesy LWard
Luke's Celebratory Allocation Certificate
Andrew's Celebratory Allocation Certificate
January 6, 2023 - The GTS Chronicles Instagram Post #064 - "The Configurator"

On the 6th of January we released another official GTS Chronicles Instagram post, this time a fun little poke at how addictive the Porsche configurator can be and to highlight some of our recent build changes (wheel types, caliper colors, etc). We had kept this one in our back pocket for a few weeks, because we had wanted to stagger the posts so that they were coming out somewhat regularly and not too bunched up.

You can watch the post directly on Instagram here, or inline on this page below:

The GTS Chronicles IG Post 064 - "The Porsche Configurator"


You may at this point be wondering about our continued promotion of the GTS Chronicles Instagram page, now that we had received our allocations. The answer was multi-part: one ... we wanted to keep the idea of "The Pitch" and of possible Porsche media collaboration alive. Just because we had received allocations did not mean we suddenly wanted to drop the idea. We still felt it was a great opportunity that had mutual benefit to both us and to Porsche themselves; a grassroots-to-corporate media crossover that would be fun to work on and which we were convinced would result in a really enjoyable end-product. We also wanted to keep the instagram channel going because, well ... it's a social media feed and it was turning out to be a fun way to communicate and disseminate to the [admittedly scattered] fans that were following us. And, it was fun. Although time-consuming.
Mid-January 2023 - A very nice little "Thank you for waiting"

In the middle of January, just in time to keep a nice little fizz of excitement going, Porsche Canada sent both Luke and I two copies of a fun "while you are waiting" gift. The card read:

While you are waiting...

We are delighted to present you with a Porsche buildable model kit. Hold a part of Porsche history in your hands as you assemble the detailed pieces together to build your very own special model. Thank you for your patience and continued passion for Porsche.

The little kits were models of a Porsche 718 RS 60 Spyder - a lightweight but extremely successful racecar that was sold in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Like that original 718, the current incarnation (known as the 982 generation) of the Porsche 718 was launched with a mid-mounted flat-four engine, just like that original 718. To pay homage and to create a link to that successful racing model, they christened the 982 generation of the Cayman and the Boxster with the 718 designation. Some later models of the current 982-generation 718 were eventually fitted with flat-six engines (like our on-order GTS 4.0s), but Porsche stuck with the 718 designation.

The models (which were 1:43 scale) were technically "buildable models", but there were very few parts, so it only took a few minutes to assemble them. To Porsche's and to the model's credit, however, they were of fairly high quality. The proportions were spot on, the major pieces were made of metal and there was good, fine detail. A definite cut above the crude stampings of a Hot-Wheels car.
courtesy LWard
A little while-you-wait surprise
Detailed 718 RS model
Detailed 718 RS model
These little models weren't much, but that didn't matter. As is usually the case with customer care, it doesn't actually take that much to keep waiting customers happy and in the loop; you don't have to make big promises; you don't have to guarantee outcomes; small touches and communication are generally all that is needed. (oh, and responsiveness and transparency don't hurt, either).

Basically, we were tickled pink to have these models and it further gave us the nice fuzzy feeling that our orders were "real".
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