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December 28, 2022 - A New Anxiety

You'd think that with the arrival of allocations, our problems would be over, and it would be all smooth sailing from here. Not so fast, assumptive reader!

During the lazy days between Christmas and New Years, I had taken to reading a few ongoing threads about European Delivery in the forums (seeing as now our horizon actually had the reality of ED visible on it now). What I read was a bit concerning. There were multiple reports of customers (with ED in their order) getting told there was difficulty in getting them a delivery slot or in some cases, being told that there were no Euro Delivery slots left for all of 2023. That ... was an extremely distressing thought; Our whole project, our whole experience, was built around the concept of a double-delivery In Europe. It was crucial.

We hadn't heard from Porsche Centre London, but it being the Christmas Holidays and all, that wasn't all that surprising. We knew that things would be going slower as a result, but still, we really wanted to nail a couple of things down. First, we still hadn't received confirmation of official V200 status, and second, this Euro Delivery availability thing was starting to concern us. Back during our video call when we received the allocations, Christina had mentioned a tentative April/May delivery date - which was a perfect time to go, actually - but we didn't really know how firm that was. Once again, in the absence of solid information, we resolved that a little 'prod' email to Porsche Centre London was in order. And this time, more than than ever, time was of the essence.

Dec 28, 2022 12:09AM
Hello, Christina, Tim, Steve.

Hope you all had a great Christmas.

I've been hearing some accounts from other ED customers (U.S. ones) that they are being told (some via email, in fact) that things are very tight for European Delivery slots for the first half of the year (up until July). I don't have a good sense that we (Luke and I) have anything reserved or definite for our joint ED delivery timeslot - especially since our orders haven't gone to the state where ED planning can start in earnest (correct me if I am wrong on this point).

I know you have all been working hard to get us our cars and we appreciate that. However, I'm concerned that we'll get told there are no ED timeslots available until after the summer, and with the fact that our cars are going to get built in the March-April timeframe, that we'll then be given an ultimatum: accept our cars without Euro Delivery, or forego the allocations. I'm feeling pretty scared about that possibility.

...Andrew
Tim (the Sales Manager) responded right away, which was - as always, very appreciated. In his email, he gently admonished against taking too much stock in online postings. And there was wisdom in that statement, I agree. But, in my opinion, it is wrong to discount online postings entirely -paying some attention to online chatter without taking it as gospel is usually the right middle ground. Apart from the admonishment, though, there were a couple of useful tidbits in his reply:

Dec 28, 2022 6:23AM
Hello Luke and Andrew

Having a great Christmas, thanks. Likewise I hope you both are enjoying the festive season as well.

We have converted your orders into production spots. Your orders are 'real' in every sense in that they are now scheduled at the Factory for production. Without this step being complete, we couldn't have moved to the next stage, which is booking the EU delivery dates. This is where things stand right now.

[...] as of right now, you are waitlisted for July or August and we should have an exact, confirmed date nailed down by Feb/March. At this point, there has been no mention about any kind of ultimatum as you have suggested, and as of this moment, with the above information in mind, I am not expecting that.

[...] My understanding is that each market is given 'x amount' of EU Delivery spots by the Factory. Therefore it is entirely plausible (but I am not confirming) that the US spots for the summer are now full. That schedule should not impact those of Canadian customers.


Interesting stuff. We appreciated the reassurance on orders-to-production slots, which gave us greater confidence about achieving V200 status. The statement about the EU delivery spots being given out by country was especially useful. It meant that, even if the U.S. European Delivery order slots had already all been used up, it seemed that there was a separate pool for Canadian delivery slots. That was not something I had ever seen or been told before. Very useful, and did in fact help make us feel better about not being straight-out told "you aren't going to be able to do European Delivery"

The other statement - about being on a waitlist for July or August - that was new as well. It seemed that things had already shifted from the tentative April/May date given by Christina back during our allocations call. This was mildly distressing - not because it was farther into the future - but because it would fall into the busiest, most congested months for recreational vacation travel in Europe. Very unfavorable for car enthusiasts who were hoping to experience their vehicles on amazing mountain roads.

A slightly closer examination of a quote in Tim's email gave us a hint as to why our European Delivery slot had been pushed back from April/May to July/August; in this quote, there was a statement (probably from Porsche ED Canada) about the statuses of builds (enumerated by the non-labelled numbers 080951 and 081002:

[...]PAG needs two months of a buffer between expected production date and earliest possible delivery date. [...] See below for expected production dates (which can also be seen in PVMS), we-re held up by 081002:

080951 - April 7 expected production completion date
081002 - June 2 expected production completion date

So it was that second order - 081002 - finished at the beginning of June - that was the culprit. Because Porsche needed a 2 month gap between production completion and European Delivery, that was pushing us out to mid-summer. We didn't know it at the time, but it turns out that 081002 was Luke's Boxster - somehow it had leapt from being "built first", as had been intimated, to being built way, way after my Cayman. Unfortunate.

Not having fully digested the reality of one of the two cars now being built only in early June, I sent a thank you note along with a little hint/plea about a possible earlier delivery:

Dec 28, 2022 11:22 AM
That was a very quick and detailed reply, Tim. Thanks very much.

I agree with you completely re:stuff one reads online. I'm always reading stuff online with a bit of a jaundiced eye, so to speak. That being said, there are times where one reads enough things from enough different sources and it does hint to something of substance. It's a tough balance, to be sure. Reading tea leaves is easier.

Even as I was typing my email last night, the thought had crossed my mind that each country may have its own pool of ED slots - a point which you brought up yourself. And if that is the case, then it definitely reduces the impact of one country's ED demand versus others.

I guess the motivation behind my email was to help Luke and I understand whether or not there were any outstanding actions that might have some influence or bearing on when our Euro Deliveries could/would happen. You've clarified all of that quite comprehensively, so this was a very useful exchange for us (and thank you once again for writing such a detailed response at such an early hour).

One final thing comes to mind (and I have discussed this with Luke this morning already): if it is at all useful to this process (of securing the earliest possible ED delivery slot), Luke and I are willing to take ED delivery in either Leipzig or Zuffenhausen. We know that it means giving up the track day that's offered at Leipzig, but if it means a significantly earlier date is possible, then we would be willing to do that.

Later in the day (on the 28th), we held a followup Zoom call with Christina to discuss a smattering of items that we wanted cleared up: first off, we wanted to have the order and commission numbers of our cars so that we could enter the information into the Porsche "Track Your Dream" app. That would allow us to directly monitor the statuses of our cars. Secondly, we wanted to adjust the option for our brake caliper colors, switching them from black back to red (the long-running debate about "would the red of the calipers clash with the Carmine Red of the body" was now over). And we wanted to ask for permission to use some of the audio and video we had captured during one of our visits, for use in an upcoming media update.

I had decided in this Zoom call to be a little more structured. I was starting to tire of having a conversation about a desired action or item and then ultimately having that item not addressed (whether successfully OR unsuccessfully - the problem is when an item is put forward, accepted, and then never spoken of again). So, in addition to the usual informal back-and-forth in our Zoom call, at the end, I remember finishing off the call with a recap of action items. And those items were, roughly:

  • That she would send a screenshot with our v200 order status when she was back in after the holidays on January 2,
  • That she would would update our builds to revert our caliper colors back to red,
  • That she would take pictures of her allocation certificates and send them to us,
  • That she would put forth our arguments to whatever relevant people she could regarding our hope of getting Luke's Boxster build moved earlier a bit so we could have a shot at an earlier Euro Delivery date. She would use the rationales that we provided - Luke's vacation constraints, overcrowding in August, etc,
Christina seemed pretty upbeat and happy to do all of the above and so we came away from the meeting pretty satisfied, and with the sense that Christina would, obviously, follow through on all of the above.
December 31, 2022 - Happy New Year's Eve

Overall, the last weeks of 2022 had been solidly up-beat. We used our enthusiasm to work on the filming of our "allocations received" Instagram post, spending a blustery, wintery afternoon in Ottawa's Central Experimental Farm. We wanted a scene that reflected our moods in the leadup to allocations; i.e. bleak, harsh, forlorn.
Shooting the Bleakness for Post #63
It took a few takes, but we got it done (thanks to Will for being our last-minute cameraman). Mashed up with a bit of video from the "surprise" allocations call, and we had ourselves a geeky little aw-shucks Instagram posting. Given that we were posting right around New Year's Eve, I added a little holiday call-out at the end. Check it out below!

You can see the Instagram post here , or watch it directly below:
The GTS Chronicles IG Post 063 - "Allocations..."
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