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September 2020 - Testing Begins

With fall approaching, it was time for our first ever test drive of Porsche automobiles. On September 2nd, Luke and I had arranged for a test drive of a base model at the Porsche dealership in our home city of Ottawa, Canada - Mark Motors Porsche. We were pretty excited about a whole new world of car-dom opening up for us. I had carefully mapped out what I thought would be the best test drive route that would allow us to get a sense of how a 718 really was in the twisties, even though we were limited to a short in-city drive.
courtesy LWard
courtesy LWard
Heading to our first test drive
Planning some twisties
After exchanging pleasantries, and the rough outline of our interest in two 718s, we headed out to the parking lot to await our test vehicle. Soon a Guards Red base model 718 Boxster was puttered out to us. Three things immediately jumped out at us. First, the car was so ... tidy. As in, small. Now, don't get us wrong - that's a good thing. Cars these days are getting ever more bloated, heavy unwieldy. The small proportions made a great first impression.

Second, the car sounded very ... Volkswagen Beetle-y. The base model has a 2.0L flat four and you could definitely tell that it was a horizontally-opposed four cylinder. It seemed strange emanating from the lithe, sinuous lines of the car. Thirdly, we found that the standard 18" wheel and tire combination was very bulbous-y. 18 inches is a decently large wheel size, and so this meant that the overall circumference must be quite large in order for us to perceive this sort of balloon-y effect. We both immediately knew that if we were going to go ahead with these purchases, we'd be upgrading to the optional 19" wheels.
courtesy LWard
courtesy LWard
Our first look
First Sense of Interior
I took the wheel first as Luke and I went out for our test drive. Our car was equipped with a 6-speed manual transmission (we have a natural affinity for manuals).
Luke's Thoughts
[impressions after first test drive...]
Big grins on our faces.

Feels pretty special, and solid as a rock. Really put together well. Craftsmanship. It's small too, S2000-sized. In a world where vehicles seem to be trending larger and larger and larger, it's refreshing. Nice.

Certainly gave me the 'all the feels'.

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


The car itself felt nimble, and plenty powerful (with 300 horsepower and 280 lb-ft of torque) as it pulled around less than 3000lb of weight. The engine, which had sounded like an old Beetle at idle, sounded a lot more grown-up while it was revving at speed. Not exactly musical, but kind of pleasant.

We never really pushed the car that hard in our specially-crafted "twisty circuit", but we were able to get a sense of the mid-engine, no understeer character. The way it pulled out of corners was quite good. The control placement and generally everything in the cabin was very attractive and comfortable and usable, even in this "stripper" base model. Luke and I agreed that we could see ourselves doing long-distance trips in a cabin like this.
courtesy LWard
 Nice lines
The intensity upped after our Mark Motors test drive. Within days, we took a road trip to nearby Montreal, to Porsche Lauzon, to test drive an S model, equipped with the more powerful 2.5L turbo motor - and still coupled with a manual. We had selected another "urban twisty" loop, and while we did get a few open sections of on and off-ramps, traffic made it tough to really get a good run with the car. Still - noticeably more powerful than the base had been. And the shifter was a light thing of beauty. Much more delicate and precise compared with the somewhat heavy and truck-ish shifter in my M2.

Wandering around in the Montreal dealership gave us a good look at various models and trim levels. We saw our first GTS model (albeit one of the pre-4.0 ones), and also got a look at a car with seats in Sport-tex - a kind of synthetic fabric with nice texturing and patterning that, frankly, was rather appealing. And a look at many more colors.
courtesy LWard
courtesy LWard
courtesy LWard
Our first GTS Look
Sport-tex
Taste of a manual S
courtesy LWard
Smiles from an S
We visit Mark Motors again, this time trying out a used Boxster S model and this time with PDK. PDK stands for Porsche-doppelkupplungsgetriebe - Porsche's super high-performance take on an "automated manual" transmission. We took it on the same test loop upon which we had taken the base model. The transmission was mighty impressive in the way it would instantly shift between gears without slop and without harshness, and the paddles on the steering wheels instantly transmitted shift-change requests. The shorter ratios and the extra power and torque really made themselves felt, and I recall telling Luke that this thing was definitely pulling harder than my M2 did.

We had a brief sit-down with salesman Julian (at Mark Motors). After a bit of light banter we broached the subject of prices and discounts, but didn't get too detailed. Initial impressions? They didn't appear to be eager to offer any specifics. Maybe they wanted to have us be "serious" about buying ...
October 2023 - Exploration

October became the month of exploration. We alternately visited dealers if they were somewhat close (e.g. Montreal) or had Zoom calls with them if they were far away (e.g. Quebec City, Halifax). We were totally good with the idea of purchasing from a far-away dealer, should they be willing to offer us a better deal than Mark Motors.

Our visits to dealerships, of actually driving in the cars, feeling them real under us, kindled the planted seeds of dual Porsche ownership into strong, energetic shoots. I'd say at this point, Luke had decided to go full-in on this dual-car project We started fairly regular web calls where we discussed models, options, colors. And started learning lots and lots about Porsche trivia and history.
Luke's Thoughts
[on deciding to take the plunge...]
Getting close to my birthday. What better time to think long and hard about buying an expensive car?

Should I buy a Porsche?

The Boxster definitely feels pure.

I think I'm gonna do it.

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


At this point in time, we seemed to be settling with the following: order two Porsche 718s: a base Boxster for Luke and a Cayman S for me. We'd put in the orders sometime in the fall and hope for a European Delivery date sometime in the late spring of 2021. Keep in mind, we knew nothing about the subtleties of the Porsche ordering process at this point - we were complete noobs.
Pondering the options
We were also starting to form an idea about a theme and a story for our upcoming grand automotive adventure; that theme - of a couple of long-time car buddies getting a pair of cars, involved making sure our orders reinforced that theme. To that end, I wanted to have the two cars pair up in some way; some way beyond the fact that both were 718s. The most obvious was color, and to that end, I proposed to Luke that I would mirror whatever color he ultimately chose (well, as long as it didn't completely offend my sensibilities). Beyond that, I proposed that we get the same wheel options. I felt pretty comfortable with this one; Luke and I are strongly aligned on wheel characteristics (namely, silver in color and avoiding any overly-intricate or weird spoke patterns).
October 24, 2020 - Toronto Dealership Tour

Our away-searches culminated in a day-long multi-dealership visit to Toronto on October 24. In Canada, there's nowhere better to see lots of cars on-lot.

The drive to Toronto was long - 4+ hours - but the excitement and the draw of seeing yet more cars, more models, and advancing towards a possible order - they all generated excitement and as a result, the kilometres passed quickly, with much back-and-forth chat about various negotiation strategies. We were of the mindset that with the "power" of ordering two cars at once, surely we should be able to wrangle some sort of deal.
Luke's Thoughts
[reflecting on our Toronto dealer visit...]
Driving down with Andrew was awesome, we yapped Porsches the whole way and didn't run out of things to say at all.

I can definitely hear Dad or Will saying "Sounds like a Beetle!"

The real question is, "Do I care?"

Probably not.

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


The first dealership on our itinerary - Pfaff Porsche Toronto - is a big dealership. Really big. Noticeably bigger than any of the big dealerships we visited in Montreal. In fact, we soon discovered that Pfaff Porsche Toronto is actually the largest Porsche dealer in North America. Impressive.

The October morning was partly cloudy and chilly. Before heading inside, we browsed the sprawling parking lot. As expected, there was a sea of SUVs - Macans and Cayennes, along with a healthy number of Taycan and Panamera sedans. But the place was big enough that there was, thankfully, a fair number of sports cars, including a reasonable array of 718s. We got a look at some new colors, including some towards which Luke had already started to gravitate. And this is where in-the-flesh, up-close examination is valuable; upon seeing Gentian Blue in the flesh, in direct natural sunlight, we noticed that it actually had purple hints. And after a few moments, it was clear that Luke had crossed Gentian Blue off of his list. Purple wasn't his thing. A few other colors of note: GT Silver was a very classy, attractive color (albeit a bit understated). I was intrigued by an example of a Cayman in Graphite Blue Metallic; a very interesting very pale greyish-blue. Luke also had a close look at Midnight Blue (as you can tell, we were on a blue kick here). He liked it, and it didn't have the purplish undertones of Gentian Blue, but we noticed that in all but direct sunlight, it was so dark as to seem almost black. And we didn't (collectively) want black.

The interior of the dealership was wide, high, spacious, and aligned with the current modern Porsche dealership architecture. Before heading down to Pfaff, we had cold-called the dealership and had talked with a salesperson named Rick. We now greeted and sat down for a discussion with Rick (masks on, of course, as we were still deep within the bad part of Covid), re-explained bits of what we talked about over the phone and starting to get down to business. What could he do for us, especially given that we were going to be purchasing two cars?
Toronto visits
Largest dealer in Canada
The lot at Pfaff
Rick had some practiced lines for us: Pfaff would offer a discount of two percent. Our double order, our European Delivery options, none of that would make a difference one way or the other. Two percent was currently being offered across the board to all customers, and it was inflexible. He did say that if, between the time of making and closing (paying for) our orders, that discount was to increase, then we would be eligible for that increased discount. And that the discount fluctuated based on the current conditions of the market.
Midnight Blue
How do I look?
Some sales talk
We came away from the meeting with Pfaff slightly heartened - this was definitely a better start to numbers than with Mark Motors, which seemed to be putting forth a starting position of no discount. But also we were starting to get the first glimmers of understanding that maybe we didn't really have that much bargaining power after all. And maybe these ideas of 5+% discounts were unrealistic. Maybe the market had changed. And I think we were beginning to understand the implications of entering this higher tier of product. I don't know if you'd call that tier a "luxury goods" tier, but in any case it was dawning on us that in this tier, Luke and I were most definitely entry-level. Junior. Economy. Small potatoes. The fact that we were getting two 718s didn't seem to make anyone bat an eyelash.

We continued our tour of various Toronto Porsche dealerships. The Downtown Toronto dealership was attractively situated in an urban environment. We had an enthusiastic salesman that gave us a sprightly and well-polished talk, but discussions about an actual order and about prices didn't proceed very far. We got our first good look at a more upscale model of the 718 - a Cayman GT4, and we got to see a few more colors and interior trims up close.
Downtown Toronto
North Toronto Porsche
North Toronto
We rounded things off at Porsche North Toronto. We didn't realize it at the time, but this is the only Porsche dealership in Canada actually owned and run by Porsche itself (all of the rest are franchises). As well, the offices of Porsche Canada (including the department that runs the Euro Delivery program) are in the same building as this dealership.

Porsche North Toronto had a nice array of sporting machinery: a 991.2-generation 911 GT2RS, some clubsport models, and, of course, various Boxsters and Caymans with various trims, colors, and wheels. A black Cayman S in the showroom sported the 19" Cayman S wheels we had been looking at online. We both really like these rims, and they solidly became our number one choice amongst the wheel options we were considering for our two builds.

We also met Tyler - one of the salesmen at Porsche North Toronto - and felt immediately more at ease with him than with any other salesman thus far. He seemed genuinely enthusiastic about our buddy-buddy double-euro-delivery story, and I thought "I could see myself buying cars from this guy". We didn't get down to any actual prices or orders, but we did take his business card and left with a very positive impression.
courtesy LWard
Excellent wheels
All the while, between all of our test drives and visits and Zoom calls, Luke and I obsessed over our potential builds; options, prices, discounts. Adding this; removing that; Heavy use of Google Drive spreadsheets let us compare combination after combination and discount after discount .
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