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

November 1, 2021 - Movement like Molasses

After the initial flurry of allocation line advancement from Christina and Porsche Center London in the summer, movement slowed considerably in the fall. Five months had elapsed since we had placed our orders for GTS 4.0 models.

Luke's Thoughts

[on the interminable waiting...]

No news on allocations. Ugh. Talk about an exercise in keeping excitement and anticipation tamped down.

This is not like any car purchase experience I have ever had before, and I'm not sure just how much of it is down to COVID, and how much is just the Porsche/Dealership arrangements and processes.

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

Our salesperson Christina, to her credit, was still giving us fairly frequent update emails, and also responding to our casual emails. And doing so quite quickly. She would often report various bits of info from the Porsche world generally and at their dealership specifically. It seemed that a few 911 allocations were being granted but nothing on the mid-engine (i.e. 718) front, and therefore no movement of our places in our respective allocation lines. We really appreciated the level of feedback she was giving us, even though it didn't benefit us directly at this particular time.

Desperate for indications of progress, we started turning to the online forums for allocation info (most often, 718forum.com, but also occasionally carpokes.com and rennlist.com). There we would hear of allocations across the US, Canada, and even more widely. The overall news: allocations were being given, but only in little dribs and drabs. Frustrated comments by forum posters abounded:

... Still no news regarding the alleged release of new allocations in October. My salesperson stated on Monday we should hear something this week...the silence is deafening.

... Getting tired of this. 6 months and nothing positive. I want this car, I don't need this car. If I don't see an allocation by 31 December I'm out.

... I got on the waiting list for a base Cayman near the end of September. I had my SA reconfirm today the expected timeframe to get an order allocation. He said Q1, and that chip shortages are certainly getting to Porsche more recently.

Yes, Indeed - Overall, things had definitely slowed down. And to further corroborate, we would occasionally cruise by our local Ottawa Porsche dealership - Mark Motors - and noted that there were almost no cars on the lot. Vehicle stock seemed very, very thin.

November 4, 2021 - A Little bit o' Magic

November is wet, and dark. Cold. Life slows, and the land goes to sleep. So it was also with progress on the allocations front. And then, Luke types this in a text message:

From: Luke Ward 11/4/2021, 9:20:54 PM
That would be good, yes. A teeny part of me is hoping that Christina is secretly holding out, and going to come back to us with guess what guys you're number one in line and you have allocations!!!

Hm. A pleasant hope, indeed. But then, not twenty-four hours later ... an email. From Christina. And yes, it was about our place in line. The title: "Some news!"

Good Afternoon Gentlemen!

I hope you're both sitting down. Are you?

Good.

YOU ARE BOTH FIRST IN LINE NOW! We got allocations for some which now pushed both of you to FIRST in line!!! This means the next Boxster GTS spot is yours along with the next Cayman GTS spot.

YAY!

I saw the email first. I went nuts. Sitting from my desk at work, I messaged the following:

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/5/2021, 3:28:35 PM
ALERT
From: Andrew Lavigne 11/5/2021, 3:28:37 PM
ALERT
From: Andrew Lavigne 11/5/2021, 3:28:37 PM
ALERT
From: Andrew Lavigne 11/5/2021, 3:28:39 PM
ALERT
From: Andrew Lavigne 11/5/2021, 3:28:40 PM
ALERT
From: Andrew Lavigne 11/5/2021, 3:28:42 PM
CHRISTINA NEWS
From: Andrew Lavigne 11/5/2021, 3:28:48 PM
DROP EVERYTHING YOU ARE DOING!

Luke's Thoughts

[on catapulting to Number One...]

Unbelievable!

Jumped from number 4 to number 1 on the list! Andrew number 1 as well!! No idea this was coming! That suddenly has changed the whole complexion of this. What was starting to feel highly unlikely to me anytime soon has suddenly been propelled into OMG this could happen by spring!!

It's enough to get me through Christmas and the darkest days of winter.

Maybe 2022 will be a Porsche year?

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

I know for many of you readers out there, it is probably difficult to comprehend how a couple of adults might go so crazy over getting news about some common transportation device like a car. But one has to understand: these were more than just toys or conveyances. We craved the joy of exploration while feeling a taut, eager machine, vibrating and living as it moved us over the landscape and along a spaghetti of pavement, leading us to sights as-yet-unseen, bounding from corner to corner, squatting into and grunting out of hairpins, undulating and responding to changing slopes and cambers. And doing it not alone, but as a shared experience. The ultimate car-buddy road-trip machines.

So yes. You bet that we were damn excited.

Luke's message from less than twenty-four hours before had been amazingly prescient, but not entirely accurate. While we had moved up to our respective number one positions in the two order lines, that was all. We had not actually yet received allocations. That would, we expected, be the next step - a step we realized could still be some time away. For now, though, it was time to celebrate.

Luke and I went to see a movie that night, and although I don't recall precisely what we said, I'm sure it involved much back-slapping and excited congratulations. The texts, though, highlighted our moods:

From: Luke Ward 11/5/2021, 5:32:15 PM
I'm still kind of on cloud nine

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/5/2021, 5:33:30 PM
No doubt

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/5/2021, 5:33:33 PM
In a daze

From: Luke Ward 11/5/2021, 5:34:27 PM
A little bit yeah

From: Luke Ward 11/5/2021, 5:36:04 PM
It felt real when we signed the papers last November. Then it felt real again when we signed with Christina in June. And now it feels really real.

From: Luke Ward 11/5/2021, 5:36:27 PM
Glad to have you on this journey :)

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/6/2021, 8:56:12 AM
good morning sir.

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/6/2021, 8:56:41 AM
I send you this message on a new day to confirm that yesterday's occurrances were not last night's fever dream, but in fact real. You are still #1

From: Luke Ward 11/6/2021, 8:58:05 AM
Good morning to you my friend, it was all rather a bit of a whirlwind wasn't it? I confess I had a hard time falling asleep last night. We are number one we are number one!!!

We spend the next few weeks in a happy place, dreaming about how close our arrival of allocations might be but also not wanting them to be too soon, as we didn't want to have a Euro Delivery scheduled during the winter. In the meantime, we are enthralled by the release of the 718 Cayman GT4RS, which Porsche had just released. The 911 GT3 engine packaged in a lightweight mid-engined Cayman and shorter gears, and with hard-core suspension and aero. It was an impressive (and in silver-wheel guise) an impressive and attractive-looking machine.

November 13, 2021 - One Year Order Anniversary

On November 13, we commemorated one full year since committing to the world of Porsche; one full year since we had placed our original Boxster base / Cayman S orders with Pfaff in Toronto. So much had changed, evolved since then. Allocations received, covid restrictions, model upgrades, allocations declined, talks with Porsche Centre London, GTS orders, waiting, moving, waiting, the beginning of awareness regarding the inscrutible ordering process, and now ... a full year later, number one on the order books for two new GTS 4.0s. A lot had transpired in that year - a year full of ups and downs.

November 29, 2023 - What's in a name?

The fizz from our "number one" news continued to fade as November drew to a close. Even so, we now felt that a Euro Delivery trip in the spring was a real possibility, and so my mind turned to the details of the massive story-tell that I was inevitably going to produce (and which you, dear reader, are consuming right now!). And one of the major parts of any good story is its title. What would we call our story?

To start with, we wanted our story's title to be centered around the obvious centrepiece of the story - our two cars. Now that we were destined to get GTS models, we wanted "G T S" to be somehow cleverly incorporated into that title. So we started down a thought path in pursuit of how we could incorporate the letters G, T, and S into a title. I started off with a simple schematic idea:

It was a bit corny, to be sure, but it was a start - a sort of crossword puzzle-style intermingling of "The GTS Trip" with the tagline "Getting Two Sportscars". That precipitated a sometimes silly back-and-forth conversation:

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 8:59:22 PM
the problem is "sportscar" has a lot more letters than "getting"

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:00:26 PM
Is there a synonym for "getting" that starts with "g" and has a lot more letters? I can't think of what that would be

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:02:37 PM
Garnering

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:02:44 PM
Gathering

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:03:12 PM
Personally I think that works better

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:02:58 PM
Grabbing

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:03:19 PM
Haha grabbing

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:05:01 PM
Generating

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:05:26 PM
Genuinely

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:05:51 PM
Genuflecting

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:05:54 PM
Gestating

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:05:56 PM
It could get silly

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:06:08 PM
Gimme

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:06:32 PM
Germanic Two Sportscars

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:06:44 PM
Germanic Type Sportscars

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:07:09 PM
Genuinely Terrific Sportscars

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:07:16 PM
Wait did we already do this?

During this process, we realized that "The GTS Trip" main label felt too limp - it needed to sound more monumental. Something more stately-sounding. Chronicles. That was it - "The GTS *Chronicles*".

The tag line brainstorming continued ...

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:07:27 PM
we really want something gerund-ish
we're trying to get a short action phrase that describes what we are *doing* in our chronicle
the trip is about the act of obtaining our cars
so it has to be something along those lines

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:09:32 PM
Gravitating To Sportscars

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:10:03 PM
Gaining Two Sportscars

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:10:15 PM
No better than getting

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:10:24 PM
Overthinking?.

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:11:02 PM
Getting Two Sportscars

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:11:06 PM
Graduating to Sportscars?

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:11:20 PM
The problem is you could argue we already had sportscars
especially you

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:11:23 PM
Hmm I'd say our current cars qualify as sports cars

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:13:48 PM
Gaining Two Sportscars

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:13:56 PM
Gathering Two Sportscars

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:14:08 PM
Gathering is.... not too bad

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:14:20 PM
although it feels like we are harvesting them out of a field or something
or out of a herd

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:15:39 PM
Graduating Two Sportscars

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:15:43 PM
(Pun)

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:15:59 PM
Graduating True Sportscars

From: Andrew Lavigne 11/29/2021, 9:16:24 PM
Getting True Sportscars

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:16:32 PM
Ooooh

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:16:40 PM
That's goood

From: Luke Ward 11/29/2021, 9:16:57 PM
I like that

And so, after several minutes of quibbling, we arrived at the title that now graces our story here: The GTS Chronicles: Getting Two Sportscars ... Getting *True* Sportscars. We really felt that these words had real meaning. These were two cars that were designed - in spirit and form - as true, dedicated sportscars. Not derived from an economy model or a sedan, with bits grafted on or altered, but from the ground-up. Bespoke. Only built for driving enjoyment and nothing else. *True* *Sportscars*. And we were getting two of them!

We were quite satisfied with the fruits of our brainstorming. We started mocking up exploratory banners, such as this clever flip-title one:

One of the first prototypes of a GTS Chronicles title banner

We weren't just thinking about a written story; We also gave some thought to a video version. What if that started off like so ... "Here's a crazy thought: What do you get when you plant an idea for the coolest car trip, share it with your best buddy, and let it grow for nearly two years? You get the first installment of The GTS Chronicles. Getting Two Sportscars. Getting True Sportscars. And getting them directly from the factory, and from Porsche, no less.".

By the middle of December we'd gone through countless refinements and variations of our trip report banner and had arrived at what ultimately became our final version, more or less (the version you now see at the top of every page of this trip report). You can see how we'd started to try and find ways to merge the Cayman and Boxster silhouettes into one, in the hope of showing a "different-yet-unified" kind of vibe. This animated sequence below captures that progression:

The design evolution of the GTS Chronicles title banner

Option Obsessing

Soon our attention switched away from titles and banners to options... obsessing about options. This, or that? that, or maybe this and this and not that ... and, how will our builds contrast? We liked the idea of a lot of sameness and then a few touches that are different. Luke was particularly irked by the little protruding mini-domes that are the top of the automatic headlamp washer system (which come standard on the GTS and cannot be un-specified, but can be finished in a variety of colors and textures). We spent many hours debating how to "paint the warts" (as Luke also likes to call them). I cared less, and pledged to option my "warts" to match to whatever decision Luke arrived at. On the color front, we had finished with exploring other color options and had settled firmly back to the basic, classic (and $0 option) Guards Red.

For a while, it was fashionable for us to share "flip" animations showing the differences between my and Luke's options. Here are some examples. See if you can spot the differences!

Comparing the interiors of our builds - can you spot the differences?

December 14, 2021 - A Christmas Reminder

As the holidays drew near, Luke and I felt that it would be a nice touch if we rang up our salesperson Christina and asked to have a quick Christmas Zoom call. Since we lived so far away from the city where Porsche Centre London was located, we also saw it as a way for us to stay "in-mind" to them; and we were of course interested to hear any possible nuggets of information about car production, allocation, anything, but we didn't really expect anything concrete.

We dressed up in corny Christmas "We're number 1" outfits, and placed screen backgrounds derived from our newly-created title banner graphics. Pretty nerdy and cringe-y, in retrospect, but hey... you can't really be too hard on the positive energy that emanates from nerdy, geeky passion.

The Zoom call was pleasant and upbeat, and as we expected, Christina didn't really have any new information on our allocations. Hopeful for the new year, etc etc, but nothing specific. In all, a nice touch-base. Hopefully Christina wasn't too embarrassed for us in our GTS Chronicles get-ups.

And so, with that, we wrapped up the year 2021 anno-domini. We were starting to have some misgivings about our year's choices at this point (some musing about whether or not we should just have taken our "S" allocations and then sold the cars in exchange for GTS models in a year or two, getting potentially two different ED trips in the process). But, that boat had now long ago sailed, and overall we were happy with our move to GTS models. Not so much about the extended delay in getting them, but overall at peace. And we had many hopes for the great and exciting new year of 2022!