I wanted a Porsche for ever. Who didn't right?!! I cut my teeth on all kinds of VW's from Golf to Jetta to Scirocco to my beloved Corrado so when my kids were finally High School graduates and eager to move out of the house, I obliged of course. What's a loving father to do?
It was wierd how, at about the same exact time, I began to see a huge chunk of money in my account left over at the end of the month. Yeah, easy math... no kids in the house = more money in the bank. Cool. I like this new math!!!
I had been doing extraneous amounts of research trying to figure which Porsche model I really wanted and could afford in the long run.
I was ready to settle for a later model 911/993 but wasn't convinced about the whole air-cooled "engine in the trunk" philosophy. 996 was the next obvious choice but the prices went up (alot) with the newer model and maintenance costs with it. More research led to the discovery of problems with 996 engines etc., so my search continued.
928 was really starting to look like the route I'd be taking. But what year? I looked and researched, and looked and researched and came to find out that 928's are awesome cars but the maintenance can sometimes equal "2nd mortgage". I drove a couple of my friends 928's over long weekends and I fell in love with the silky smooth power, touring car comfort and obvious good looks. Very nice.
My 928 research led me into the 944/951/968 end of the Porsche spectrum. I stumbled across dozens of fantastic websites that supported all forms of the model. As I continued to do my research, I began to see the light.
968 is modeled after many other beautiful Porsche body styles so why not get it all in one car? Intoxicating good looks, thin waist line, perky hips, smmmoooooth power, 6-speed gearbox, and thanks mostly to the 944, readily available and reasonably priced parts.
My search was over.
I shopped everywhere and found wildy varying prices and conditions of 968's from coast to coast. In my hesitation to slap down the greenbacks, my "travel agent" finally decided to allow me to return to my dearly beloved Germany.
Enter eBay.
I found the car of my dreams, called and spoke to the dealership/owner and made the purchase on the 4th of July. I had the car picked up from the lot and shipped in a covered transfer van from Miami up to Jax where it was put into a 20 foot Sea-Land type container and sat staged in the lot for two months. The container was loaded onto the wrong ship and sailed toward South America, Venezuela, Columbia and back around some of the Carribean islands. Nice vacation for the car. Freaking unbelievably stressfull for me while I tracked my car to where I figured it would get dropped off at some port and that would be the end of the story. It wound up back in Jax just in time for hurricane season and sat until finally the shipping company figured out what had happened. They loaded it onto the correct ship this time and sent it to Germany where I received my long-distance lover on November 11th, Labor Day! Five months after the purchase!
The car arrived filthy and with a dead battery. The car was completely stock, zero modifications. Her first day in Germany was spent very cautiously cruising the autobahn from Bremerhaven back to our house in Wuerzburg.
I love my car and have been thrilled with it since the day we met. Every time I get in and turn the key, it's like another first date!!! I'm in love all over again.
Dan
