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The Lead-Up
So, just how did this whole affair get started?


Luke and I have been friends since we met at university in 1985. We've always been interested in motorsport and, at the same time, in the experience of dynamic and spirited (but safe and respectful) driving in scenic places and on great roads. We've also over the years participated in motorsport activities: track days, kart-racing series, an attending races (especially Formula One). Here are a few images of us from years past:
Andrew, 1991 Canadian F1 Race
Piloting a 1st-Gen Boxster
Kart Racing
At the turn of the decade, 'round about February of 2020, I began to think about another motorsports adventure. The BMW Euro Delivery trip from 2018 was a fading memory, and mostly I'd been doing my outdoors-focused activities and trips. But little vignettes from that trip: the excitement of the walk through Olympiapark to the BMW Welt, where I knew a Long Beach Blue M2 was waiting just ahead, slowly rotating on its platform; the thrill of seeing a sliver of a corner of the Nordschleife for the first time - in 3D - in real life - after having heard and read and seen clips of it for so many years; hearing the gruff blap of the turbo blow-off valve while accelerating out of an alpine hairpin in the alps, fresh off of completing the M2's break-in period; of relaxing outside of an alpine rifugio after eating a fine meal and reminiscing about the day's hours of incredible twisties. All of these vignettes would come to me, again and again. It had long been obvious to my subconscious that I was going to take such a trip again, if I was able to.
BMW M2 Euro Delivery in 2018
Capturing the 2018 Trip
Luke and Andrew at Nordschleife
And so by the winter of 2020 I had already started forming a plan to do just that. I was happy with the M2 - it was handsome without being ornate, had a smooth, sonorous motor; it was comfortable (by my standards), and had quite a lot of utility. It was a manual. It had round gauges. Pretty much it had everything I liked ... perhaps the only gripes being a slightly porky weight and a not-particularly-rev-happy engine.

Being relatively happy, I continued to look to BMW ... and there were indeed upgrade options for me to consider. The F87 M2 was still being produced, was still available in a manual, and had a couple of higher-spec models: the M2 Competition, and the M2 CS. The Competition wasn't too large of an upgrade over the OG M2, but was a very modest increment in price, and the CS was a significant increase in performance and a reduction in weight, but at a much larger cost. I began mulling my options - and voicing my thoughts to Luke (He had accompanied me on my 2018 trip, and I envisioned inviting him again as my copilot).

Two very significant events then interrupted my thoughts: Covid-19, and BMW's cancellation of European Delivery (for North American customers) - and I'm not sure which had the biggest impact on me. While the former changed life for the foreseeable future, the latter meant that a path to a repeat of the automotive nirvana of the 2018 trip was suddenly blocked. Just like that, no more Euro Delivery, for any purchases after May 18, 2020. Although I knew it would do me no good, I tried to figure out what had happened. Had Covid influenced things? Was BMW in trouble? The best I could find as an explanation was a bland corporate statement:

"After carefully evaluating the changing BMW U.S. customer preferences towards U.S.-built X vehicles and the declining interest in the European Delivery Program, BMW has made the decision to bring the European Delivery Program to a close"

Was that even true? Declining interest? Was that the real reason? Of course, it all didn't matter. Once these sorts of decisions are made, they are made. Even if there was a way to argue, a company is not going to reverse a statement like that.

After a period of time which could best be called (in the era of Covid) quarantined mourning, my mind started to wander. I had only considered BMW as my viable path forward for restrained styling, elevated performance, and palatable interior ergonomics. It was basically the best choice in the mid-tier of sports cars that also offered a European Delivery program. One by one, other German and European manufacturers had been dropping their ED programs and so had automatically disqualified themselves in my mind.

But there was one marque that remained. And it wasn't that I didn't know that this remaining marque (you've probably already guessed: Porsche) had European Delivery, it was simply that my mind had not considered the move to the next-up price bracket that buying a Porsche would entail. But then, when all choice is gone, and time continues to pass ... the mind iterates. And iterates.
I think it was probably around early June when I started to think more seriously about whether or not a Porsche would be something to consider. I mean, they had an obvious model that would check many of the right boxes: the 718 model - in either Cayman or Boxster form. It had beautiful, restrained lines - in fact much more naturally attractive and sporty than the M2, which had fasciae and flares tacked onto a fairly standard coupe shape. It was much lighter, and had its engine in a much more optimized location (i.e. it was mid-engined). It was a true purpose-built sportscar on a dedicated sportscar platform, rather than an existing mass-market general platform that had been "sportified". In all of those ways it was a true-er, pure-er enthusiast's car.

It was also more expensive, although perhaps in the most base trim and with no options it was close to the price of an M2 - although it was at a power and feature deficit in that configuration.

It was at that point in my thinking that I thought.. and I'm not sure what made me first think of it ... hey, wouldn't it be cool if Luke and I *both* got cars and did Euro Delivery? No sharing of the wheel - each of us always driving. Doing a Euro-version of the cross-country road trips we had done across the breadth and length of North America over the decades. Now that would be cool. It made the idea of spending the extra dollars on a Porsche seem more worthwhile. And Luke had recently been musing about what his next car would be after many years of his Honda S2000 ownership and not coming up with any good options - other than perhaps simply purchasing my BMW M2 off of me if I was going to get something newer, which would have been a logical thing to do.

In any case, it was an opportunity to initiate a conversation. And so ... I scheduled a breakfast chat with him at some point around the end of June. Let's test the waters, no?
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