Slipstream - May 2019

As more time passed I got a little more aggressive. I sent
PMs to the auction winner, but never heard back. I found
an article that thoroughly documented the car’s paint
correction and film protection
and offered them a generous
finder’s fee for any contact that
would end up with me owning
the car. No response from them
either. Radio silence all around,
but something in that article
added extra fuel to my fire in
pursuit of this car.
So here’s the thing. I am not
a born and raised Texan but I have lived here for two
decades, and consider Texas my home. There were a few
things in that article that seemed to challenge me on this
car. Number one: this car came from Mavericks country.
That’s right. This car was delivered to Porsche of Plano and
spent its young life here. At some point, she was traded in,
and with the silver rims and clear taillights, sat longer than
is normally allowed by AutoNation policy on the PoP lot.
Number two: the paint correction shop was throwing
the gauntlet directly at me with this line: “This particular
Porsche is ready to resume reign over the lanes in the great
state of Washington. Hopefully it won’t relocate again
any time soon!”
From this Texan’s standpoint, they placed a giant blue
star on the roof of this car and Terrell Owens was now
strutting on top of it.
My mind was set. If that car is going to reign anywhere it’s
going to be right back here in Mavericks territory as God
and Stuttgart intended. So how did this 1 of 1 PTS Mexico
Blue Turbo S ever leave North Texas in the first place?
The second owner, a corporate insider at AutoNation,
used all of his connections to get the car from PoP to
Portland. He had a clear vision for taking this car from
its 95-point score to the 100-point perfection of a 2000
Chateau Margaux. After having the paint corrected and
all front facing surfaces protected with XPEL Ultimate, he
switched the clear taillights out, had the rims professionally
painted all black, and rebadged the Turbo S script on to
the car. With only just a few thousand miles more on the
odometer, this is the car that exists today.
The car then went to a third owner, who traded a
Lamborghini Gallardo for it. He held on to the Porsche for
a brief period, then put it up for auction on Bring a Trailer
using the incredible photography and marketing skills of
Portland’s Josh Bryan.
The fourth owner’s alias, “FordGT,” turned out to be
prophetic. Sadly, he only has a six-car garage, and when a
new Ford GT became available to him, something had to
go, and that is where my good fortune and timing come in.
I had just returned from a 10-day trip to Zurich, the
Black Forest, Paris, and Stuttgart, where I took in the
Porsche factory tour and museum. I wasn’t really looking
Like many other Porschephiles with the
disease, I was just looking to vicariously
and temporarily satisfy my addiction.
But there it was, in my honed down new
search for blue 997.2s, my great whale
had surfaced for air. Call me Ishmael.
for anything in particular and I wasn’t looking to spend any
money that Saturday morning.
I couldn’t believe it. Was this a joke -- a stuck ad -- a
mistake? Who cares! The
seller, Avant Garde, had two
numbers listed in the ad, and
in a few minutes I had called
them both. As I was leaving
a message on the second
number, the first number was
calling me back. I dropped
my call and picked up the
incoming call. “My name is
Jeff and I want to buy this car.”
It’s just the way Tony Robbins tells you how these things
work. You believe, you expect, you plan, you do the work,
and you can live your dream. How did I get so lucky this
time? I can’t say with any certainty; these questions are almost
always answered above my paygrade. What I did know was
that my obsession would be mine and early Tuesday morning,
I’d fly to Portland to ensure this dream was realized.
Driving across the country was never my ideal solution.
I’d much rather have the car loaded into a covered carrier
and brought to my front door. However, an imminent trip to
Europe limited the window to impossible that the car would
arrive in time. There was no choice; I was going to have to
drive the car back to Texas and karmically unwind one mile
at a time the Universal imbalance of it ever having ever left
Mavericks country in the first place. Two thousand miles in
two days? If any car could do it, this would be the one.
Sunday was mainly spent in disbelief, like a lottery winner
that keeps rechecking his numbers. Monday was spent
herding cats, and by late that evening, I was ready to make
the early Tuesday morning flight.
The Portland area and much of Northern California,
Oregon, and Washington are truly beautiful places. In the
past few years, I’ve made several trips to the area to take in
the coastal roads and beaches as well as the mountains and
forests. For me, the 101 from Port Angeles to Bodega Bay is
about as good as it gets when it comes to a driving adventure.
Josh from Avant Garde picked me up at the airport and
took me to their shop and showroom floor. Seeing the car
now for the first time in real life gives me a slight chill as I
write about it now. They told me that over a dozen people
tried to buy the car out from under me since I first got hold of
them Saturday morning. They explained how several insiders
could have had the car before it was even advertised but had
dragged their feet and then committed too late. The fact that
they held the car and kept their end of the deal helped me
validate my lack of “shrewd negotiating.” Besides, I went
in all in, knowing that the regret of buying the car would
always be less than the regret of not buying the car. Another
of life’s great lessons repeated; regrets in life are seldom about
the things we’ve done, but about those things we didn’t do.
Paperwork, signatures, a quick tour of the shop, and there
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