Great story, German car related

[nealf]

I sold one of my '02's in March so my wife could have a 1982 Porsche 911SC...not too bad a tradeoff since I drive that almost daily and still have my '72 Tii, and '70 2800CS...

Anyway, on the Pelican Parts forum, someone was talking about their european delivery back in 1983 and his story is below:

I ordered a 1983 SC in the summer of 1982 and took delivery at the factory in September of that year. Back then, the importer was VWOA, and they were less than friendly. I knew the dealer, who had been in business in a fairly small town for years. Better than that, I had a good friend who was pretty tight with the dealer and, while not employed there as a saleman, was probably responsible for 20 or more sales each year, just out of his enthusiasm for the cars.

I had an '80 targa at the time, so I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted. Porsche sales were pretty healthy then, in spite of the drastic price increases that had occurred yearly since the SC came out in the fall of 1977. The tourist delivery program (delivery at the factory) had different pricing than the normal MSRP. In round numbers, the prices were about 10% less. Even so, there was still a fair bit of dealer markup built in, so a better deal could be negotiated. The hardest part was figuring out some of the options and making sure what you wanted was what you got. There were a zillion different ways of optioning the interior and not much idea of what some of the choices really meant. There were no pictures or descriptions of some of the differences and help from VWOA wasn't coming. I probably spent 6 months hanging out at every dealer I could, in an attempt to spot a car that came in with an option or color I was curious about. The way some of the options were listed really pointed out that Germans think, and talk, very different from Americans. Eventually an order was placed, a deposit paid and then we waited.

One day, we were given a delivery date and we planned the trip. There were a total of five couples going, each picking up a car. The cars had to be paid for in full, a certain number of days prior to the delivery. A trip to the local AAA office was made to get an international driver's license, which really wasn't a license per se. It was more a booklet that enabled people of other nationalities to figure out your pertinent info in their own language.

We flew to Frankfurt on a 747, through JFK. It was a night flight and was more like a frat party than anything. There were endless wandering kids, in flight movies and nobody seemed to want to sleep. I sat in the middle section and gave up my seat to those next to me, in exchange for their share of the floor. I attempted to sleep on the floor with a pillow on my head to drown out the racket.

It was early in the morning when we got to Frankfurt and we caught a train to Stuttgart. Back in those days, the factory wasn't yet completely modernised and the tourist delivery cars were lined up in front of a small building. I have to say it was pretty neat to see your car waiting for you when you arrived. We did a little paperwork in the office, made sure we had insurance and then took the factory tour. In those days, it took around 17 days to assemble a 911 from start to finish and it was mostly done by hand. Sometimes, by feet. Some tasks were apparently best done by having the worker lay on their back in the car and push something into place with their feet, so that's what they did. The cars were pushed from one assembly point to another by hand, as they were mounted on little 4 wheel trolleys. The last task was to fill them with gas and oil and conduct the road test. At the factory exit, they had installed alternating speed humps and some rough pavement to settle the suspensions as the car left. When they started the cars, they hauled ass out of the building across these bumps and went on a 20 or 30 mile loop. I can just about guarantee you that every 911 engine saw the redline on that trip. The engines had already been on the dyno and these guys weren't bashful.

Once we had enough pictures, we hit the factory cafeteria for lunch and then hit the museum. About 4:00 we were finished and we set off to try and find the hotel. We had studied the international road signs and markings prior to the trip, which helped. It was still a little stressful, trying to get 5 cars to a hotel none of us knew how to get to, in what amounted to rush hour traffic.

You were limited to 4000 rpm for the first 600 miles or so, which worked out to about 100 mph in fifth. A service was due at 1,000 or 1,200 miles, so you tried to plan the trip to be near a dealer at the right time. Driving was fun, as the stoplights went from red to amber to green, so everybody at the light knew when the green was coming. You'd think the Germans invented drag racing, after watching them blast away from the lights. You definitely didn't worry about gas mileage. It was more of a concern to keep Hans from punting you up the backside when the light went green. Because we were in Porsches, it was assumed that they'd have to work real hard to keep up with us, so they were ready to go.

The autobahns were interesting. The right lane was full of trucks, wafting along at around 55 mph and the left lane was wide open, at least outside the big cities. You quickly learned to spend as much time looking in the mirror as looking out front. People in the fast lane assumed you would find a way to be out of their way before they hit you in the rear. They did not want their progress impeded so they left it up to you. This was a problem when you wanted to go fast. If you were tooling along at 120 mph and somebody came up behind you at 150, you had to find a way to get down to 55 and find a hole in the line of trucks before he reached you. Sometimes this was not easily done. At night, the trucks had to go away and park, so the slow lane ran around 80 mph. When it rained, nobody slowed down at all. This wasn't much fun, as we'd start hydroplaning around 55 or 60. Rain at night sucked. I did learn that a 911 rear window will stay completely dry in the rain, if you go fast enough.

Road rules were enforced without fail and everybody drove well. After a few days, you felt really safe and the speeds didn't bother you. If you made a mistake, the police were not so friendly. In Austria, I crossed over a single solid white line on a two lane road, to turn into a parking lot. A nearby cop whistled at me, wrote me a ticket and made me pay the fine on the spot, if I didn't want to visit the local jail. You'd think I slept with his wife, as pissed as he was. It was a good thing he didn't see our little caravan 10 minutes later, as we ended up on a narrow, one-way street that dumped us out in the middle of an outdoor restaurant in a plaza. It was pretty strange weaving five cars in between the tables to get to a place where we could hop the curb back into a street and get the Hell out of Dodge. This also taught me that if you get enough 911s in a confined space, there are some really neat acoustic effects from the engines harmonizing, if the engine speeds are close.

At the end of the trip, we turned the cars back in at the factory, where they were purged of leaded gas, had their catalytic converters installed, and got cleaned for shipping. There were other places we could have dropped off the cars, as all of the major seaports ahd facilities to process the cars. It took about 6 weeks for the cars to get to the US and, again, we had a choice of where to pick them up. We elected to collect ours in Houston, where we then got to fight with US Customs over the value. The duty was 2.8% of the current value, which was less than the original price, as the cars were now used, not new. Customs slapped a value on them that was higher than what we originally paid, which pissed us off to no end. In the end, they won because we wanted the cars and they didn't give a damn.

One twelve hour drive later and we were home. We spent the next few days servicing the cars again, in my friend's garage, as he wouldn't let the dealer mechanics anywhere near them. He was an ex-mechanic and did get to fix all of the cars that the dealer couldn't, so he sort of did what he wanted, with the support of the guy that owned the dealership.

Things have changed a lot since those days but everybody really needs to do this trip at least once. We have been thinking lately that a couple of new turbos might be a good thing in two or three years, before we get too old to drive them. I think we still have one more trip in us.