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July 1, 2022 - Introducing Dave

On July the first, we had a 3-way phone conversation with Dave - the friendly poster from 718forum.com. He introduced himself as David Renner, from Michigan. His job? a Porsche Brand Ambassador at Porsche Motor City in Detroit.

After exchanging pleasantries, and after re-iterating our Porsche storytelling idea, we learned a bit more about Dave. Actually, no ... we learned a LOT more about Dave.

Over the next ... I'd say ... forty-five minutes ... we learned that Dave is no mere run-of-the-mill dealership employee. No, no. Dave has worked in the car industry for decades, and not just for Porsche. What's more, Dave was a very dedicated and very well-connected Porschephile. He'd been a Porsche Club of America member for years. He'd participated in various concours events. He'd travelled to Germany and participated in many notable Porsche-related events in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. He had formed friendships and networked with many notable individuals in the world of Porsche over the course of decades.

He knew Grant Larson, the designer of the very first Boxster. (Reference: porsche.com Boxster origin story, Road & Track Boxster history article).

He knew Justin Placek, notable Porsche custom interior specialist. (justinplacek.com, elferspot.com/en/magazin/justin-placek-master-of-porsche-interiors).

He knew the head of the Porsche CXX customization division and even the head of the more exclusive Sonderwunsch within Exclusive Manufaktur.

He had extensive contacts in Porsche's Community Management team.

He knew Alois Ruf, famous Porsche tuner and custom coachbuilder. ALOIS RUF! I remember reading about the Ruf Yellowbird at university in 1987, for God's sake. THAT Alois Ruf, yes. (ruf-automobile.de/en, roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a10368261/reliving-the-ruf-ctr-yellow-bird-legend)

He knew members of the Porsche family themselves. He had cars (among them, an '86 911 Carrera and a 2019 718 Cayman S) personally signed by Wolfgang Porsche.

Dave's connections to the world of Porsche - the really cool parts of Porsche - are amazing.

Yeah, so ... Dave was a pretty well-connected guy in the world of Porsche. And, incredibly, he thought our story idea was great. It was a thrill to have him be interested, to hear him recount story after story after story about events that car-geeks like us remembered from our University days. Like stories about being present at the factory when some of the first Porsche 959s were being built, in Germany, back in the late eighties. Of talking with Grant Larson about the very first Boxster. About his trips to the birthplaces of Porsche: Zell-am-see, Gmund, Stuttgart.

Dave also brought us up to speed on some of his current advocacy work for Porsche. He was in the process of working to nominate Wolfgang and Ferry Porsche into the Automotive Hall of Fame. He was working on designs and materials for upcoming Porsche anniversary events.
Dave at Concours
959 Factory (959registry.org)
959 Interior (959registry.org)
Dave, 959 factory floor (959registry.org)
Interior of Dave's 911
Dave's Cayman S
Signed by W. Porsche
Dave was fully supportive of our idea of us 'telling our story' and of seeing if he could get someone - anyone - at Porsche to help out. And after our wonderful phone call, in a series of back-and-forth emails and with several edits, we worked on an email suitable for sending out to his Porsche contacts. We were over the moon at his enthusiasm and his advocacy for us. And very grateful.

By the middle of July, a very nicely-crafted email was sent off - by Dave himself, on our behalf - to his contacts at Porsche Germany. We were excited about this - as excited as we'd been when Michael at Porsche E.D. had given us his enthusiastic support. We had cautious hopes that this latest advocacy might lead to some really cool collaboration.
Mid-July 2022 - Time for "Face"time

By the end of June and beginning of July, Luke and I had come to the conclusion that it was time ... for Facetime. No, not the kind of Facetime that you are likely thinking of ... I mean real facetime. As in, actually meeting the people who worked at the dealership at which we'd invested such an important event in our lives. The last few months had us feeling like we were on a long, downward slope in our relationship with Porsche Centre London: Dwindling transparency, slowing response times, and messages that seemed ... boilerplate and obfuscated. It had been precisely one year since that happy, enthusiastic day when we signed our two GTS orders with Christina, and the following near-instantaneous responses filled with actual details and information. It was almost beyond belief how things seemed to have flipped around over the course of these past 12 months.

Luke's Thoughts
[on the change in mood from our dealer...]
Not gonna lie, it's been a tough couple of weeks in the Porsche journey. Why? Christina has stopped being the salesperson who responds to our emails practically instantly, to now being someone who hardly responds at all, only when pressed. Something has definitely changed and we are not sure what it is.

The frustrating thing for me is that she is a large user of Instagram with lots of followers and she posts multiple times a day, often lots and lots of Porsche-related posts, so on and so forth. And yet, zero response about our Instagram feed. Which we had specifically told her about. Nothing. Zip. Nada.

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

These perceptions - whether correct or incorrect - had made us believe that there was going to be no substitute for sitting down in front of them and having them see us. Hear us - in the room, in 3-D. Maybe some inkling of our passion and commitment to this project would help them make the right decision, at the right time (concerning our allocations). Or ... maybe that would have no effect at all. But again, .... nothing ventured, nothing gained. And we felt really distant and really unheard at the moment. So, why not? Luke and I liked road trips, right?

Back on June 27, I posted a message to Luke, after much back-and-forth on this subject, which in retrospect I believe summed up our mood:

From: Andrew Lavigne 6/27/2022, 10:17:55 AM

It boils down to this: there is the possibility that the dealership could choose to bypass us and we have no real sense that they "have our backs". therefore, we're worried and anxious about it. We need to communicate that feeling to them and ask them to please consider us fairly. And then hope that there's a shred or two of humanity in them somewhere and that they actually do so when the time comes.

We started floating the idea of an in-person visit to Christina near the end of June. Initially we didn't get much traction (maybe she didn't seriously believe we would want to drive all that way for a one hour visit? maybe she didn't really want us to come to visit?), but as we persisted, we got some affirmative responses and a week or two later, we had managed to get a visit lined up. Luke and I would drive from Ottawa to London, Ontario - a roughly five to six hour drive, and meet with our salesperson Christina, and also with Sales Manager Tim and General Manager Steve. We felt it important that we met all three, as we had learned (over our months of investigation) that it was the sales manager and general manager that made decisions regarding allocations. And we weren't going to visit without having a talk with those who held the fate of our [as-yet-potential] cars in their hands.

July 14, 2022 - Face-to-face at Porsche Centre London

We departed Ottawa at 3:00am on Thursday, July 14. After much driving, at 9:30 a.m., on what had dawned into a bright, warm July morning, we pulled up to the Porsche Center London dealership on Wharncliffe Road in London, Ontario. Christina greeted us and we had a bit of back and forth chit-chat. It was indeed nice to finally meet her, and she was friendly and accommodating.

Heading to London (ON)
Finally visiting our dealership
We then met Tim and Steve, the two main managers at the dealership, and soon we were ushered into Steve's glass-walled office where the door was closed and we began an extended discussion. We had fairly well-formed ideas that we wanted to get across, ideas that we had re-hashed and rehearsed on the multi-hour drive down from Ottawa. Key among these was simply a basic appeal to whatever slivers of car-enthusiasm these two people had in them: we'd being dreaming about this kind of an event for years, if not decades. We were busting our butts attempting to show some kind of ... I guess ... perhaps "worthiness" is the right word ... to them, and that we were more than happy to share and promote - in a marketing kind of way - to maybe tie the whole GTS Chronicles initiative in some way to the Porsche Centre London dealership. I guess in exchange for Tim and Steve to actually commit to giving us two allocations for our two GTSes, with Euro Delivery, together. Not necessarily immediately, since we knew that the flow of cars was tight and there was a lot of demand. But a commitment to have cars *at some point*. *in the future*. Even if that future was months upon months upon months away.

Tim and Steve listened. They were polite. They were friendly. They said things at times that appeared to show empathy. But they did not commit to anything in any firm way. They talked about KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), and how their decisions were driven by what types of buyers maximized those KPIs. And just what were those KPIs? well, things like referral numbers; service visits; likelihood of future referrals; likelihood of additional purchases. When you stop and think about that for a moment, any decision that was mainly based on those KPIs would put us at a significant disadvantage relative to local buyers. So ... our next thought was: why in the heck didn't they tell us this when we ordered our cars a year before? And if they had told us, we may have well said "to heck with it, let's just order from Mark Motors here in Ottawa". It kinda ... kinda felt unfair to be telling us this now, don't you think?

One thing that didn't really come up much was the idea that "meatier" builds (orders with a more expensive set of options) fit into the equation. They seemed to shy away from that. In our separate chat with Christina, we brought up the matter of options, and there was very much a "beat around the bush" quality to the ensuing conversation; "don't get anything you'll regret or that you're not happy with!" seemed to be the lines we were being given, but also, there was never an outright rejection of the concept. Reading between the lines? yes, it makes a difference, but no, we don't want to be heard telling you that. Figure it out for yourself.

After giving our story, stating our case, showing our order and allocation analysis spreadsheet (which Tim did think was quite interesting), and listening to their talk on KPIs they use for making decisions, and getting what we could out of them about the allocation process, we ended our meeting. We did get Tim and Steve to agree to sending us some sort of email giving us some more detail on what process they would use to decide on who gets allocations with regards to us, when allocations finally did come in.
July 14, 2022 - Face-to-face with Dave

London, Ontario was pretty close to the US border near Detroit, so we had decided to make a really full day of it and head on further down the road to Porsche Motor City and to visit with Dave Renner, our new favorite Porsche person. We discussed our Porsche Centre London visit on the way; In all, we were reasonably satisfied with how it had went. We thought we presented our case fairly, felt heard, and did receive a verbal promise of some additional information on their processes. Certainly we felt that the visit had been more positive than negative.
courtesy LWard
courtesy LWard
Crossing at Sarnia
Blue Water Bridge
A few hours later, we had completed our crossing over the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia and we were heading south on Interstate 94 towards Detroit. We pulled into Porsche Motor City shortly before 2pm and were soon sharing hearty handshakes with Dave. It was amazing how not sixteen days before, we and Dave had no inkling each other existed! And now we were here sharing Porsche dreams!
Porsche Motor City
Dave regaled us with more tales of his amazing motorsport history with Porsche for the better part of another hour. His breadth and depth of experiences and contacts seemed bottomless to us. He knew so many people in the world of Porsche - really notable individuals, too. Afterwards, we went outside to take a gander at his pristine 2019 Chalk Grey Cayman S. Dave's license plate was "CXX" - and for those in the know - that meant something very special and very dear to Dave's heart. CXX was essentially a tier of Porsche's custom options program. his Cayman S had many custom touches, mainly on the interior. It was finished in a probably one-off combination of Agate Grey and Buffalo Green, with tartan-patterned cloth inserts on the seats and a personal signature by Wolfgang Porsche himself. There were also several logo stickers and custom pins in several spots - Dave was also a crafter and fan of such things.

We took a spread of nice pictures of his car out in the parking lot, then went back inside for a final chat and goodbye. We thanked him profusely for the enthusiasm and support and his willingness to network for us. And then we began the long eight+ hour journey back to Ottawa. It was going to end up being a very long driving day!
Dave's Cayman S
Dave's Exclusive Interior
Dave and the GTS guys
A resonant quote
Luke's Thoughts
[on the amazing Dave...]
Talk about a connected fellow! And super nice guy too! We decided to head to Detroit after to put a face to the name. We had a lovely chat with him; I sat slightly slack-jawed listening to him as he regaled us with some awesome stories of ACTUALLY DRIVING with Alois Ruf in the Yellow Bird (!!!), taking photos of the 959 being built in the factory (!!!), getting steering wheels signed by Ferdinand Porsche, and selling Jerry Seinfeld bits of Porsche memorabilia! Wow!

We drove away with plenty of good feels after spending three hours yapping with him! Well worth the trip after our rather downbeat earlier meet up with Porsche London.

(to read more of Luke's thoughts from this moment, check out his blog post)
A couple of days after our visit to London and Detroit, Dave sent off his letter (the one mentioned earlier in this report) to Mathias and Paul - two of his contacts at Porsche, in Germany. In it, he included a variation of The GTS Chronicles Pitch callout we had already posted to so many places and people. We had gone back and forth over the content very carefully, and had honed and crafted it specifically for this occasion.

Fingers crossed, once again!

Late-July 2022 - Finding Some Canadian Contacts

The email Dave had sent on our behalf to his contacts in Porsche Germany had been replied to in a positive manner, and those contacts had seemed willing to engage with others in the Zuffenhausen Porsche community. A very good sign. Nothing definite, but a very good sign.

Dave was still digging hard for us, finding more contacts with which we could engage. He suggested Patrick Saint Pierre, Director of public relations at Porsche Canada. He also suggested and introduced us to an acquaintance of his - a fellow Porschephile and car collector - in Toronto. His name was Ronan McGrath, and there were a few posts about him on the internet. He seemed to have a particular passion for 911 GT3 RS models, and had amassed quite a collection of them. That meant he would be a prized customer at whatever dealership he cared to shop at, since those cars were very exclusive and very not-cheap. Dave felt that Ronan might have some insight into the dealer and allocation situation at Ontario dealerships. Ronan also had extensive experience with European Deliveries of his own.

I received a call from Ronan shortly thereafter (Dave had asked him to call us and give us his perspective and advice). I talked with him for about an hour. He owned three 911 GT3 RS models, and had an order demand in place for the latest GT3 RS, a 992 model. A 992-generation 911 GT3 RS was a serious, serious piece of sportscar machinery. Right at the very pinnacle of modern road-going sportscar-dom.
On order for Ronin - 992 gen GT3 RS
Ronan also owned a couple of other Porsches (a Panamara and a Cayenne). He had done extensive Europe Delivery adventures, and had been on the Nordschleife with his cars many times. I told him our story, and how we were also big fans of the Nürburgring Nordschleife, and planned to go there once again ourselves when (if) we got our cars. Regarding allocations and Ontario Porsche dealers, he suggested that we stay the course with Porsche Centre London. He said that allocations were given to dealers at the national level by Porsche, and then given out at the dealer level as they saw fit. Which basically confirmed that they didn't need to follow any sort of "order line" if they didn't want to. which was a confirmation of what we had already come to know. And, he didn't know the folks at Porsche Centre London personally (too bad, that might have been useful if that had been the case). But he seemed fairly confident that if we stayed the course with Porsche Centre London, eventually they would come through with allocations. How long ... who knew?

Ronan did say he would personally forward on our story to Patrick Saint Pierre, the aforementioned head of marketing at Porsche Canada. Maybe that might add some weight to our request for collaboration on a media initiative. That was very generous of him and I thanked him thoroughly for that.

A few days later, Ronan forwarded us some threads from rennlist.com - the subject was about 911 and 718 allocations in Canada, and the news was not great, but also not surprising. The rumor was that no more allocations would be given for the rest of the year in Canada. Oh well ... at least that was roughly in line with the story we were getting from Porsche Centre London. In that sense, it was confirmation that we were not being led astray in that particular regard. One thing was certainly clear: we wouldn't be getting 2022 models, that was for sure. The window for that was now past; any allocations we would receive would be for 2023 models (and the associated price increase, of course).
August 2022 - The Dog Days (third time around)

Soon we were in the Dog Days of summer - this time, August 2022 - the third set of Dog Days since Luke and I had initiated our dual-Porsche adventure. It was hard to believe so much time had passed. So many things had transpired; so many ups and downs. And we had no idea yet as to how it would all still play out.

As you may recall, Porsche Centre London's managers' (Tim and Steve) had promised "clarity" (or at least, some clarity) on the decision process they would follow on whether or not to grant us allocations when the time came. Well ... that clarity never came. We never got an email of any sort from Tim, or Steve, or Christina, for that matter, on the subject. We didn't pursue the matter. It seemed par for the course now for a stated intent to be made, and then ignored. It did make us think even more seriously about the fact that the only lever we had left with them was, perhaps unfortunately, to throw them some more money (i.e. in the form of some more options). Maybe that was exactly the game they were playing. If so, well-played.

While on my friend Julian's Bachelor Party trip to New York City, I stopped by at Jack Daniels Porsche (on a whim) to see what was up at another U.S. dealership. The lot and the showroom were practically *empty*. There was one Taycan in the showroom. That was it. The two salesfolk that were in there, Dylan Farrell and Marc Van Hengst - were super, super friendly. We struck up a conversation and got to talking about The GTS Chronicles and they seemed genuinely interested. Marc had an orange-trimmed Boxster GTS 4.0 that he showed to me, and we also got to talking about the benefits of some of the upgrades of the nearby Porsche aftermarket shop, Deman Motorsports. They offered an engine displacement increase and a re-geared transmission option for all 981 and 982 generation Caymans and Boxsters. That gearing option in particular was something that interested Luke and I very much. The gears on the manual transmission of all Caymans and Boxsters are very tall - a fact noted in about 90% of all 718 reviews, we noticed. Shorter gears would be so juicy!
courtesy MVHengst
courtesy MVHengst
Dutch Trimmings
Marc's Dutch Boxster
Deman Motorsports
Our Porsche champion Dave (Renner) continued to check up on and advocate for us throughout the month of August. With the relative apathy from Porsche Centre London, this enthusiasm on the part of other friendly Porsche contacts continued to buoy us. And although there had been much back and forth activity, emails sent, advocacy done, still we hadn't quite hit the jackpot, as we still had not established any sort of official intent-to-collaborate. But not for lack of trying, that's for sure!

Towards the end of August I took a vacation break to hike the 60km long Fundy Footpath in southern New Brunswick, Canada. If you'd like a little dose of the outdoors, you can read about that adventure here: here.
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