The GTS Chronicles - Getting Two/True Sportscars - Lead-up - 2020-2023

July 2023 - DELIVERY Month

This was it. July. July! The month of our long-awaited Double Euro Delivery adventure. Our actual delivery day - July 20 - was rushing towards us at near-light speed now, and we scrambled to get a few final items in order.

On the Euro Delivery logistics front, we continued to work with both our salesperson Christina and with Michael, our Porsche European Delivery contact. We needed to figure out the specifics of our complimentary hotel nights. As part of the European Delivery experience, Porsche would cover one night at a premium hotel in either Stuttgart or Leipzig. But that was one night *per* European Delivery customer, and so that meant we actually had two complimentary nights to work with.

Because our itinerary involved a visit first to the Porsche Zuffenhausen complex near Stuttgart, and then travel to Leipzig to receive our cars at the Porsche center there, we directed Michael to book a night in Zuffenhausen/Stuttgart, and a night prior to our delivery day in Leipzig. We also indicated that we would have two extra people with us (our two crewmembers Brian and Jenn).

After transmitting all of these specifics, we were told that this would all be acceptable ... except for the bit about four people. As in, Porsche would not permit hotel bookings for a room with four people. Two was the maximum for any one room. Not sure precisely why that was a big deal (maybe the extra cost for a room that would officially accommodate four people?), but in any case, after a discussion with Luke, we just decided to tell Michael to make the booking with two people on the reservation. And then we'd simply figure something out for our two crewmembers (or simply "wink-wink" it, if you know what I mean).

By the fourth of July, all our Porsche-related accommodations were booked - we'd be staying at the Jazz in the City Stuttgart on the night of the 17th and 18th, and then in the Steigenberger Icon Grandhotel Handelshof in Leipzig on the night of the 19th. The night of the 17th was an extra night I had tacked on (at my own expense) for myself and crewmember Brian (we planned to arrive one day early in preparation to receive Luke and crewmember Jenn the following day).

Complimentary Hotel coupon for Stuttgart

Complimentary Hotel coupon for Leipzig

July 2, 2023 - A Most Exciting Unboxing

Although I had received our official Euro Delivery welcome packages in the mail from Christina at the end of June, I had not touched them. I felt it appropriate to wait for Luke to get back from his short trip to visit his parents, and open them together. It only seemed fitting that we would do such a thing at the same time, in the true spirit of The GTS Chronicles.

The boxes themselves were handsome, constructed out of sturdy boxboard finished in flat black, with black-colored "Porsche - European Delivery" embossed into the top. A flap lid opened up to reveal a welcome letter and various sheets of information and forms. Underneath that, a foam block with cutouts to hold a carbon-fibre inlay Porsche pen, a metal European Delivery memorial medallion, and - most importantly - an id card with our names, the our delivery date, and the Porsche center location (Leipzig). And underneath the foam block, a packet labelled "We'll give you the keys - the rest is up to you", along with a bunch of cards outlining various trip options. We'll take those keys, thank you, and yes - the rest ... Oh, "rest" assured, Porsche - that rest was going to be fully and meticulously executed by us!

In all fairness, the contents of the boxes were not that exciting. But what the boxes represented was very exciting. It was yet another tangible item that reinforced that our big trip was real, it was imminent, and it was going to be awesome.

July 3, 2023 - Time Syncing

I performed one final gear task before starting to pack my bags for Europe: a time synchronization test. I wanted to perform such a test because I had learned, over the years of recording video and audio for many outdoor adventures, that one of the tedious and tricky aspects of putting together edited media from multiple sources was to understand how the clips related to one another; which clips aligned with which other clips. It made life much, much harder when you did not have timestamps or timecodes across all media that were based on the same time. And so, before leaving on our trip, I wanted to time sync *all* of our devices. And I most certainly did not want to mess with the EXIF or timecode data of already-recorded clips and photos, to get them to match up.

I carefully laid out every device we had - cameras, gopros, drones, microphones. I roughly configured them to the correct time and date and all to the same timezone. I then pointed them all to my laptop which was running a webpage that displayed the official atomic time. And I started recording on all of them. Afterwards I measured the difference in the "created at" timestamps on the recorded clips of the laptop on each device. If there was any difference between the "created at" timestamp in the clip and what was shown in the video for that clip, I further adjusted the device's time by that difference. You would think this last final adjustment step wouldn't be needed, but unfortunately some devices (e.g. the GoPros and the drone) had nonstandard behavior when it came to various time fields. This activity normalized all of them, so that when editing post-trip, I would be able to sort and position them by date, and they would all be precisely correct timewise, in relation to each other.

July 7, 2023 - A Final Ping on Courtesy Delivery

You may recall that back in June, Luke and I had informed our salesperson Christina of our desire to use the Porsche "Courtesy Delivery" option to allow us to pick up our cars upon return to Canada in Halifax (or more specifically, at the Halifax Porsche dealership). We wanted to do this because we wanted to incorporate a road trip from that port - representing the moment our two new Porsches touch North American soil - to Luke's parents' house in nearby New Brunswick. The idea was that we would surprise Luke's parents - who had been carefully fed the story that Luke was accompanying me to pick up my new Cayman GTS, rather than the reality of Luke having acquired his very own Boxster alongside my Cayman. We envisioned a filmed scenario where I would drive up the long driveway to his parents' farmhouse, but without Luke in the passenger seat. Moments later, Luke would pilot his shiny Carmine Red 2023 Boxster GTS 4.0 up the driveway, and we would capture all the dropped jaws and exclaims of disbelief. And probably tears. In a way, it would be the culmination of The GTS Chronicles Euro Delivery adventure - the completion of Luke and Andrew's journey from factory to grand adventure to home soil.

So yes, we really wanted to do this Courtesy Delivery. The application form didn't show any major obstacles, other than the willingness of the dealers involved to participate.

We then shared the application form to Christina shortly after that Euro Delivery discussion. Now, a month later, we had yet to hear her comment on the idea. We couldn't really focus too much on this at the moment, being only days away from our big trip, but Luke took the time to carefully craft one final email on the subject:

From: Luke - Fri, Jul 7, 2023, 3:27PM
CC: Andrew

HI Christina,

Speaking of my parents, as we mentioned before, one of the special things we are hoping to be able to do is pick up our cars in Halifax and drive them to my parents' place in New Brunswick to surprise them.

They know NOTHING about this adventure and I think it will be something truly special for them if we can do that. My grandfather was a huge 'car guy' and instilled that in my mum at an early age. She and my dad were rally racers when we lived in Malta and my mum always wished I'd known my grandfather better as he would have LOVED all the car adventures I have had over the years. My dax waxes lyrical at times about Porsches, sometimes saying things like "You know, I've never even sat in one"! Now come on - that's a perfect opening for me to unveil to them!

When Andrew picked up his M2 in Halifax, he drove it out to visit my folks and show it to them. They ooh''ed and ahhh'd all over it having followed us on our adventure together that time around through the photos and texts I sent them back in 2018. This time around, they know I am again going to Europe with Andrew to get his car, but what they DON'T know is my side of the car equation! I've managed to keep a lid on it for almost three years! I will send them carefully taken photos of me, Andrew and HIS car ... but not mine!

When the cars reach Canada, we'd love to have Andrew 'drop by' them again, with his new Cayman, have them ooh and ahh again, and THEN have Kate and I drive up their driveway in the Boxster.

I mean, talk about perfect.

Bringing them from Halifax would be a TON more convenient than fetching them from London and then driving them all the way to NB (1500 kms) and then back to Ottawa! it might even save Porsche some money NOT to have to transport them all the way to London.

So, I'm hoping that you will be able to reach out to Porsche Halifax and see if we can do our Canadian deliveries there, the same way Andrew did with his BMW.

Thoughts?
Luke

Christina replied the next day with this email:

From: Christina
Date: Fri, Jul 14, 2023 at 7:08 AM
Subject: Re: Special day for my parents?
To: Luke

Hi there,

I had spoken to management about this arrangement and we are unable to do it. Reason being is a couple of things. With us being paid the VAT and the price of the car, the European Delivery stipulates the ordering dealership needs to have the car come back for the VAT to go back to the customer. Also, the cars will need to be re-PDI upon entry back to Canada which we have already accounted for in the price of the vehicle, Halifax cannot pay this. I do apologize that this is not able to be done.

Thank you,

Christina

Um, say what? What the heck were they talking about? Had they *actually* investigated this fully, or were they just feeding us some lines so that we would drop the matter....

Obviously, we were disappointed in the answer. But a couple of seconds of thinking about this and ... I'm sorry to anyone who is reading this, but ... the above were simply not valid reasons for denying us Courtesy Delivery. I had done some background reading. Regarding the VAT claim, the Porsche Canada website directly contradicted it: "The VAT payment is fully refundable when your vehicle has cleared customs in Canada". In other words, no requirement for the cars to reach the ordering dealership. Regarding Euro Delivery, I had come across this: "All vehicles (U.S. and Canada) will be return shipped to the ordering dealership, unless otherwise specified (Courtesy Delivery)". So Courtesy Delivery in conjunction with Euro Delivery was possible. Furthermore, Courtesy Delivery was cost-neutral to the dealers involved, and that in the event of any extra applicable transport costs, they would be borne by the customers (i.e. us). And yes, PDI needed to be done by the dealership which received the cars. Obviously. But that also was part of every Courtesy Delivery. Heck, even if the Halifax dealership was being difficult about PDI, at least consider the option of letting us pay PDI to Halifax ourselves ($995 or similar). Did anyone actually do legwork on this? Or did they just have no motivation and instead hastily put together some poorly thought-out excuses...

From: Luke Ward - Jul 14, 2023, 6:59 PM
Very annoyed and unsatisfied with Christina's BS response to my email. I feel like I want to escalate to Tim even though she claims she "talked to management".

From: Andrew Lavigne - Jul 15, 2023, 12:43 AM
Oh I'm sure she already talked to Tim and Steve

From: Andrew Lavigne - Jul 15, 2023, 12:44 AM
I'll have to reread the document or the related background information that I read. I'm pretty sure it says something about how the re-PDI costs are transferred back and forth and the dealership doesn't lose money, or if there is some extra charge there, the customer can pay for a portion of of the PDI costs. [One thing was obvious, there was a labor cost to doing a PDI that Porsche Centre London *wouldn't* have to incur in this scenario, since the cars would be prepped at a different dealership]

From: Andrew Lavigne - Jul 15, 2023, 12:45 AM
I believe they wrote a response that sounds plausible but is not really accurate/telling the whole story.

Indeed, we were pretty irritated. In fact, downright mad. Not only did the explanation given in the response seem distorted with respect to reality, it also felt quite dismissive. To us, it was another example of what had now become a long line of denials to inquiries or requests, when the particular inquiry or request was something that they didn't want to address. And the response tactics in these cases seemed to be either silence, or obfuscation. And we weren't liking it. It is one thing to express a reluctance to perform a task, but please, for the love of God, give it your best effort. Show us that you actually tried, instead of just summarily dismissing or ignoring our requests. If you're running an upscale dealership where elevated customer service is supposed to be your watchword, your touchpoint, then how can you justify these kinds of responses?

We clearly were not going to resolve the matter of the Courtesy Delivery before our trip, which was now literally days away. It was time to bottle it up, and start thinking positive. Despite all of the hurdles, troubles, and irritations, we were about to embark on an car enthusiast's ultimate dream trip. And we needed to now focus on that.

The Quest of the Plaques

As mentioned at the tail end of the accounting of what went down in June, our Porsche champion Dave had arranged for Luke and I to deliver a large batch of Porsche 75th anniversary commemorative plaques to his Porsche contacts in Stuttgart. He had shipped them to a UPS store in the small town of Ogdensburg, New York, about a forty minute drive from the city of Ottawa, where Luke and I lived.

While we waited for the plaques, Dave filled us in on the details that he had arranged for us. We would be delivering the plaques to the head of the FLB fan club, a gentleman by the name of Bernd Stadler. The FLB stood for the Freunde Luftgekühlter Boxermotoren, or the Friends of the Air-cooled Boxer Motor. It was a fan club for current and former Porsche employees dedicated primarily to air-cooled flat-configuration Porsche cars, but surely also had some members with more modern water-cooled flat-configuration motors as well. They had a clubhouse, and Luke and I were to meet up there with Bernd, get a tour of the club, and distribute the plaques to him.

Now, as it turned out, Bernd was not just the head of the FLB club. He was also the head of Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur - the very upscale division of Porsche responsible for special models and custom builds of Porsche automobiles. Further, you may have heard of the uber-exclusive Sonderwunsch (special request) program at Porsche. That was a special sub-area of Exclusive Manufaktur also residing under Bernd. All that to say ... Bernd was a very notable upper-level figure in the company. And it was going to be an honor to meet him.

Before contacting Bernd, however, we wanted to be sure we had the plaques in hand, so we held off while waiting for Dave's shipment to arrive in Ogdensburg. The only problem was ... it didn't arrive. What should have been a couple of days for the package to go from Michigan to New York stretched into several, then a week, then more. We found out through tracking that the package had actually gone to California instead of New York. Dave was pretty confused with what had gone wrong, but after he contacted UPS, he managed to get the plaques re-routed back to Ogdensburg, NY. The question was, would they get there in time for us to pick them up and get them into our luggage before Luke's departure date? (which, thankfully, was later than my departure date).

July 15th arrived ... but the package had not. This was becoming a real race against time! Luke's flight left on the evening of July 17th - less than 48 hours away. The plaques were still in transit, but scheduled to be delivered later on the 15th. Fortunately, the delivery followed the prediction, and the tracking page showed the plaques as delivered at the end of that day. Luke headed down the next day, on the 16th, crossed the border, grabbed them, and whisked them back to Ottawa to be incorporated into his luggage for departure the next day. We had cut it very, very close!

Upon examining the package, Luke discovered why it had gone off to the west coast instead of directly to New York state. The outside of the package still had the previous address visible on it - and that address was in California. The handler at UPS had obviously seen that address first, rather than the correct one to Ogdensburg. A close call, to be sure.

July 5 - Luke's Final Thoughts

On July 5, Luke pens his final thoughts before the Euro Delivery Adventure:

Luke's Thoughts

[Luke's final thoughts before the ED trip...]

Two weeks from now I shall be lying awake in anticipation of the BIG DAY. Pretty sure I won't sleep much on that night in Leipzig.

I have butterflies in my stomach already. Nervousness, excitement, self-doubt, anxiousness that it all goes as planned, you name it. There's been a lot of work to get to this point - a great deal of it by my leader in this escapade (Andrew) and I'm eternally grateful for all of his efforts and attention to detail.

With just a couple of weeks to go, I'm finding it's a real stomach-knot-churning time. Hopefully (likely) all these unsettling feelings will be replaced with jubilation when the time finally arrives. I think I will have a hard time putting into words what that moment will feel like.

It will be fun to find out.

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

July 7 - Final Pints

On the day before I left for the Dolomites pre-trip (see below), Luke and I got together for one final celebratory Porsche pints. A quick get-together to toast goodbye to three years of waiting and in anticipation of great things to come. The last official function of The GTS Chronicles Pre-Trip. The next time Luke and I would meet would be in Europe. Bon Voyage!

July 8 - Andrew Departs for the Dolomites

On July 8th, I and crew-member (and friend) Brian headed off from Ottawa on a flight with Air France to Paris. He and I were joining another crewmember (Chris) and his family to do a nine-day mountain adventure in the Italian Dolomites (an exceptionally beautiful mountain range in Northeastern Italy), where we would hike, climb on fixed climbing paths, and stay in scenic, rustic huts. I had of course also packed my portion of The GTS Chronicles trip gear, but that stuff would be carefully set aside while Brian, Chris and I enjoyed some beautiful time in the mountains. Here are but three pictures from that wonderful time in the mountains.

If you like the outdoors and the mountains, or simply reading about them, then I encourage you to read my full 2023 Dolomites Trip Report. (Afterwards, of course, be sure to return here to this point and continue to read about our GTS Chronicles Euro Delivery trip).

The End of The Lead-up

Well, dear reader ... I don't know how you did it. If you've gotten this far, bravo! You've read through over three years and hundreds of pages of lead-up, all the way to the start of our grand Euro Delivery adventure! Should you have the stamina, please continue on to the main story - "The Euro Delivery Trip" - where I'll narrate the actual journey itself. Even in retrospect, I'm a bit nervous and excited. It's gonna be great!