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October, 2023 - Bringin' it home

Our cars - our Boxster and Cayman GTS 4.0s - had arrived at our home dealership in London, Ontario, forty-nine days after we had dropped them off in Sindelfingen on August 10th, on the outskirts of Stuttgart. We were in a holding pattern, waiting for the necessary preparatory activities to be done on them. Christina and Porsche Centre London kept us nicely up-to-date on the progress of everything over the course of the first few days of October.

While we waited, we started to accumulate some minor accessories - probably the start of a long sequence of accessories over the course of the years to come: We ordered some 3D-printed license plate spacers from the carpokes forum; a Carlinkit wireless Carplay/Android Automotive display adapters; and obtained the super low-profile / no-drill Carbonio quick-disconnect front license plate holders (Carbonio 718 Front License Plate Holder).

We also both sent a quick email to Porsche Centre London, starting the process to organize a day for Luke and I to come down to receive the cars. We specifically asked them not to bother with an "official ceremony" (covered with black silk covers, champagne, balloons, whatever), reasoning that we already did that sort of thing over in Leipzig and we were hoping for a quick, short visit. We also asked for nothing more than a simple wash and vacuum. Luke and I are both not fans of shiny, glossy dashboard or upholstery or tire/wheel finishing products.

October 13, 2023 - Reunification day

We'd been directed to Susan - the Financial Services Manager, rather than Christina or Tim, for our dealership delivery logistics, so we started emailing back and forth with her in the loop. Everything proceeded generally as expected, and our cars were inspected, licensed, washed, and made ready for pickup. We scrambled about to figure out the best way to get ourselves from our home city of Ottawa (in eastern Ontario) to London (in Southwestern Ontario). We went through a number of options - a shuttle from a friend, renting a car one-way, and eventually, had to fall back on a one-way train ride (the ride hadn't panned out and the car rental place ran out of cars). So the train it was.
Pre-dawn Train
We drove to a train station on the outskirts of Ottawa in the pre-dawn hours and waited for our train - which I dubbed in my mind "The Train of GTS Chronicles Destiny" - to arrive.

The train ride was nothing like the high-speed TGV and the efficient Deutschebahn had been back in the summer while we had been on our Euro Delivery trip. Still, it was a most pleasant ride through the Ontario countryside. It was a beautiful morning, with the landscape now tinged with the colors of autumn.
Luke's Thoughts
[on another train, headed for another delivery...]
Sitting on the train writing this I'm reflecting on that journey and the fellow beside me; my long-time (and long-suffering) companion on this adventure, and on many others over our 38 years of friendship.

Feels to me like I'm kicking off the next 'great adventure' - that of owning this car here, at home. Not some far-flung (and amazing) highways and byways of Europe, but here - on the streets where I live. There will be new avenues to explore. Like the first drive to work. The first outing to Calabogie Motorsports Park. The first day trip to the Adirondacks. The first wash in my driveway. The first trip to New Brunswick. Or Wolfville. Or California.

Friends to share this with. Family too. Sharing this is what makes it, and I can't wait to get on with it. Three plus years ago Andrew started this, and I'm indebted to him for the experiences to date. His encouragement, gentle prodding, outright direction - all of it has brought me to this point. Sitting on a train heading to pick up MY Porsche. If I go back and look at that first note I made after I committed to the endeavour:

Nov 13, 2020: Wow. Can't believe it. I just bought a Porsche. A Porsche. I. Just. Bought. A. Brand. New. Porsche. Wow.

Yep, the feeling still holds true. Wow indeed. So much lies ahead. This is just the beginning.

(to read more of Luke's thoughts regarding this moment, check out his blog post)
Soon, soon
We arrived at Union Station in the heart of Toronto around 10 a.m. We took a break and went up into the busy city center for a bite to eat and to stretch our legs between the legs of our trip (that sounds a bit weird, doesn't it)
Chillin' in TO
We then went back down underground to the train platforms, and soon boarded our train from Toronto to London. This was a much slower, more clunky (even by the poor Canadian standards of rail routes) ride, from Toronto west to London. The tracks are not particularly smooth and the overall speed of the train was quite slow. Nevertheless, we arrived at the London train station early in the afternoon, well in advance of our scheduled 3pm pickup time. We were starting to get a little nervous.....! Soon we'd be reunited with our awesome, nimble, beautiful Porsches!

The plan was to take the local bus service to get to the dealership. I know that it probably seems weird that a couple of guys going to pick up a couple of Porsche sports cars would take public transit to do so, but... it felt like the right way to do it. We didn't love our cars for status reasons, or because they had been expensive. We loved them for more pedestrian reasons: because they were a pure distillation of our crazy enthusiasm for rowing through the gears on a leafy, twisty, perfectly-paved snaking road. And pedestrians took buses. The logic is a bit thin, I know. Also it was cheaper and we had time to burn.
Arriving in London
The Bus to the Dealership
We got on the bus and started our journey. Now normally I'm pretty decent with public transit, but somehow, after the second transfer, I picked the wrong bus, and by the time I noticed, we were pretty far out of line on our way to the dealership. We debated on the side of the road, now a little wet with the onset of some unwanted afternoon drizzle.

Ultimately, not wanting to be late for our appointment, and not wanting to walk in the rain to an appropriate bus stop, we simply decided to call an Uber. So much for arriving at the dealership via "the people's route".

We were dropped off at about 20 minutes before 3pm. And look! There was the Cayman, sitting in a parking spot next to the door! oooo! We walked into the dealership, eager to get things going and start our journey home. Christina greeted us with an expression that seemed perplexed. Apparently she did not know we were arriving this afternoon. It seemed that somehow - despite our communication with them - they were not fully aware of our arrival today. I'm not sure how that could be... as we had been emailing back and forth with Susan all week. Susan herself was not around (or if she was, she didn't make herself available).

That all seemed a bit disorganized, but no big deal. Our beautiful cars were outside, and as long as the paperwork and what-not was in order, we would be thrilled as children on Christmas morning.
The GTS Chronicles @ Porsche of London
After the perfunctory greetings, we got down to business. Registration slips, insurance confirmations. We asked about the accessories that were supposed to come with the car - mats, the trickle-charger. Christina said that the trickle-charger wasn't included, and would be an extra fee. In my mind, I was like, "whoa, whoa, whoa...what??". Back during our purchasing phase, she had specifically said that the trickle charger was a little gift she included in all of her customer's cars. In fact, I remembered that they were even listed on our invoices. However, somehow she seemed not to remember this.

There was not much value in engaging in a he-said/she-said sort of debate over this, so we moved on to the next step: a walkaround. Luke and I went outside, but Christina did not (I guess because they didn't know we were coming, she had other business to attend to? So we did the walkaround ourselves).

The cars were pristine, looking really good. No issues. A check inside: hmm, no fire extinguishers. Darn. We had feared that. BLG Logistics or the Port authority in Emden must have removed them. Continuing the walkaround... mats in place: check. Dave Renner's custom mats. Check check. In our frunks, a surprise: the trickle chargers - the very trickle chargers that Christina had just said weren't included... they were there: nicely packaged in their Porsche-branded boxes. Luke and I exchanged surprised glances.

Luke had left a bluetooth radio comm switch velcroed to his steering wheel. It was gone and we couldn't locate it anywhere, so probably it had been removed and discarded during transport. Our bad on that one. Fortunately, it wasn't that expensive of an item.
Cars Looking Great
In all, the cars were in great shape. It was now time to head back inside to complete the process. I wanted to bring up the discrepancy with the chargers, and then thought better of it. Why risk some dumb argument (and perhaps confiscation or an attempt to extract money out of us) over something that clearly we had been officially gifted (actually, I went back and checked. It wasn't "gifted" - we actually had them as a costed line item in our invoices. So damn right we weren't going to pay for them again). So we agreed. Do not mention of the chargers.

We reported back inside. Cars great. Everything looking good. However, fire extinguishers were missing. Could we please mark that down somewhere and have them resolve the situation so we could have them replaced?

Christina seemed unsure about the course of action about the extinguishers, and she excused herself while she went to discuss the situation (presumably with Tim or Steve or whoever).

Christina came back and gave us her report on what they were going to do about the fire extinguishers. The verdict: they now considered the cars as "used", and therefore there was nothing the dealership could do about them.

We were like... what? Seriously?

We weren't going to let this one go unchallenged. Luke and I pointed out that the extinguishers were a selectable vehicle option in the Porsche Configurator. Which we had selected. We selected it in combination with another selectable vehicle option: European Delivery. In an abstract sense, the fact that during the process of experiencing vehicle option B (Euro Delivery), that vehicle option A (the extinguishers) got removed from our vehicles could not possibly be something we should be responsible for. This logic seemed quite self-evident to us. We paid for option A (the extinguishers) to be in our cars. Therefore we wanted option A to be in our cars upon re-delivery. Very simple. This argument about "used" vehicles seemed quite preposterous. What if our cars had come back from transport with a seat missing? Would we be forced to deal with that also because the cars were now "used"?

A lot of humming and hawwing ensued. Sales manager Tim joined the discussion. We re-explained the situation, stating our pretty firm belief that an option chosen during our builds is required to be present in our cars upon final delivery. And if not, it was Porsche's (or the dealer's) job to make it right. And why were we arguing about this anyway? Relative to the cost of the vehicle and the profit to Porsche and the dealer, this seemed like petty nickle-and-diming. Again, I thought of the motto I would adhere to if I ran a dealership, or any business: "Strongly consider the impact to the goodwill of your customers when you make cost-reducing decisions. Especially for items where the cost isn't that high (like this one)". Goodwill is a thing easily lost, and much harder to re-earn.

Eventually we got to the point where the dealership agreed to investigate further. Which was good. One way or another, the important thing was that we had our cars, even if Porsche Centre London ultimately decided to wash their hands of the extinguisher matter. We could litigate that later over email. Certainly, though, the general mindset of this delivery experience was now one of irritation.
Prepping the Cars
With all necessary release papers signed, required information exchanged, and keys received, we went out to complete the loading of our cars, do any final configuration, and start our journey back to Ottawa. Again, no one from the dealership came outside with us (which was both simultaneously fine with us and also a minor further irritant - maybe they wanted us out of their hair as much as we wanted to get out of their hair).

I spent some time trying to get the free "Porsche Connect" subscription up and running in my Cayman, which was not really that obvious. In the end, I actually called a Porsche hotline and got walked through it by a support representative.
Departing in the rain
Then, finally, after wiring up our two-way radios, we fired up our twin 4.0-litre flat-six engines. The now-familiar boxser-six mechanical clatter filled our ears.

The occasional patter of drizzle had formed into continuous rain. The pavement was now wet, which was a shame. It meant our beautifully-clean 718s would soon bet wet and grimy. But, the weather was what the weather was. And we were keen to make our way back home. We had a fairly long drive ahead of us, and it was going to be a late arrival.
Reflecting on the day
I had planned a route back that avoided the busy and boring 401 corridor, and we initially stayed on secondary roads to the north. But, as it got dark and with the rain, we ended up just merging back with the 401 around Cambridge. As we cut across the GTA (the Greater Toronto Area), we stopped for dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Asian noodle place - Yunxi Handmade Noodles - in Scarborough. Over some delicious soup, we discussed the experience of our Canadian delivery. It was as you might expect - super happy with the cars, and kind of - I guess - you could say... ok with the delivery experience itself. But the rating of "ok" was mostly because we had long ago come to understand how things generally went down between us and Porsche Centre London. My summation was, after some thought: "Apathy combined with minor dysfunction". Luke found no reason to disagree. I mean, we HAD asked for no fanfare, and none was given. But some level of organization and of support when hiccups arose, no. There was not much of that.
Nighttime on Highway 7
Post-dinner, we continued our journey eastward. We picked the slower and quieter northern route back towards Ottawa - Highway 7: a gently-curving two-lane route that over recent years has been nicely repaved. Driving it late at night - as we now were - it was a quiet and relaxing route, very amenable to cruise control.

Luke peeled off into his neck of the woods as we started to come into the greater Ottawa area shortly before 1 a.m., and I continued on a little further until I arrived at my place. It had been quite a long day, from 4 a.m. get-up time, the train ride to London, the pickup, and now, the drive back. But more importantly, The GTS Chronicles had been fully patriated to their final home.

Over the next few days, we took some pride in showing off our two newly-arrived beauties to our local circle of Porsche-o-philes, including Luke's friend Winston (with his Silver Cayman S) and other local members of the 718forum.com online community, including @OttawaSteve and his Guards Red Cayman GTS 4.0, and Luke's friend Winston and his Silver Cayman S. It was interesting lining up the cars together and comparing the difference between Carmine and Guards Red.
Reviewing The GTS Chronicles
Carmine-Guards sandwich
Carmine-Guards sandwich
3x GTS 4.0
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