Now its time for delivery… since the world was still a little confused on what was going on with Covid, my travel itinerary was all screwed up and I ended up traveling about 36 hours to get from NYC to Leipzig finally arriving at my hotel at Midnight about 8 hours before my pickup. To say I was exhausted was an understatement. I really couldn’t enjoy anything that the hotel provided, had a very sleepy breakfast (which was nice) and then was picked up via Mercedes Cab to head to the Diamond of Leipzig (what everyone calls Porsches Factory there)...
I chose Leipzig as I wanted more than just a museum tour which is what Stuttgart gives you. At Leipzig you get to do a little lead follow on the track + off road course. The plan was to drop off the car at Stuttgart at the end of the trip so I’d do whatever tour then. Also getting to rip on someone else’s car on track is always fun :slightly_smiling_face:
At this point I arrive at Leipzig and am super tired / jetlagged / braindead a little bit, its 745 in the morning and a nice lady walks up and goes “Are you excited to go on track today” to which we replied “yes” to which he responded “okay were doing it now”... great I can barely keep my eyes open and were going from 0-100.
They have us set up in a Gentian Blue GT4 with Buckets and PCCBs and after a quick couple minutes we are off (cars were pre warmed). I’m expecting we do a warm up lap, but nope… We go WOT right onto the straight and then into heavy braking for T1. My brain is pretty overwhelmed truthfully, but I’m having a blast. I’m blown away by how engaging the GT4 is and especially the intake / exhaust noises. I’ve been on and off rennlist for about a decade now and I found everyone in the 718 GT4 subsection complained heavily about the noises this car made. I was simply blown away and giddy. Also PDK kicks serious a**, it made me actually contemplate it for the first time in my life as I was ripping this car around track. PDK Upshifts at full throttle are something to be experienced. After some time, I switched and let my copilot do some track time to which he loved. Additionally we did the off road circuit in an Orange Macan and damn that was fun. I have never really spent time “exploring” what SUVs can do but I definitely see the appeal when used correctly.
To give a little context on my build, I had never actually seen Python Green in person and was pretty excited / nervous on the outcome. Parked in the track paddock was a Python GT4, I tried not to notice it when we walked by but I had a little smirk.
Alright you’ve read this far and are probably wondering when the heck is delivery time. So after we’re escorted off the track / off road section our host starts walking us somewhere and walks up to a car with a cover on it and goes “this is your car”... I’m somewhat confused as I almost walked past it because I had no idea what we were doing, but ultimately I loved the coyness of the delivery. I pull off the cover and am blown away… Seeing something you specc’d in person, right there just waiting for you with every option you wanted and none you didn’t is an overwhelmingly positive experience. I walk around the car a bunch of times, checked inside and out and was just awestruck. My fatigue only exaggerated every emotion I was feeling. At this time we also noticed another person taking delivery of a Shark Blue GT4 Manual with Buckets right next to us and quickly became friends.
We all toured the factory, museum and then together had lunch in their fancy restaurant. After lunch we were free to do whatever we wanted, we ended up checking out the gift shop. I bought some little things, Porsche presented us with a Euro Delivery gift of breakable China, which I still think is the weirdest gift to give someone who is traveling. We packed up the cars and decided to just hang out for awhile, watching other people take delivery looking at all the cars in the paddock and on track. We hung around until literally closing time, where we thought it was best to leave…
At this point I should mention, I’m traveling with one of my best friends who drives a cayman and we've been lifelong car enthusiasts. We’ve known eachother since we both got our licenses and have been through A LOTTT together and have done countless road trips and nights in the garage modifying, etc… The two of us travel extremely well together and are both spontaneous.
I should also mention that for the entire trip, we had no solid plans or reservations. We wanted to really just drive and figure it out on the way. We know we wanted to hit Berlin (since it was close to Leipzig), the ring, Switzerland, Stuttgart for drop off, but the rest was open and we had no order…
