Today, for I think the first time ever, I am going to publish a post from a guest author – the one and only Jay Shearer. He is more than a little excited about his fancy new German souvenir.

Its Sunday 2 March and I just got to the Steigenberger Graf Zeppelin in route to my 08:00 pickup of my 2025 Shark Blue Porsche 6MT Cayman GTS 4.0. 

A bit about my back story, I’ve had the pleasure of owning a few fun cars in my life so far, but never a Porsche.  Through my work I have had the pleasure of working on multiple continents and am currently on my 2nd 2-3 year expat assignment here in Germany (my first was in Australia ~8 years ago).  During my last expat assignment I attended quite a few car shows in Australia and ended up tracking down a mostly restored 1955 Holden FJ Utility, buying it to have there for the last year and then shipping it home with us.  My wife thought it was a bit of an extravagant souvenir from our time abroad, but she went into this one eyes wide open that I’d likely be looking for another souvenir here :).  Since importing to the US anything less then 25 years old meant that I was doing most of my searching in aircooled 911s, it didn’t take long before she realized that she really didn’t appreciate the 80/90s style and she hesitated about filling another garage space with a car that I would only drive on the weekends.  It was settled, I would buy new and take a Euro delivery to get to experience it as long as I could here in Germany.  My daily commute is 100km each way down the A5/67 from the Frankfurt area to either Mannheim or Walldorf and I’m anxious to park my 320/330d wagon and drive daily the CGTS on special days. 
 
Since this is my first Porsche it took a bit to find a dealer with an allocation I could spec and who was willing to sell to my at MSRP.  We were home for a funeral in July when everything finally fell together.  I ended up getting an allocation by way of a posting on one of the Facebook 718GTS groups.  Dealer was Porsche Detroit North (roughly 450 miles away from my home back in the states) but transaction was fairly easy, a couple phone calls, various exchanges of build specs and a $5k deposit later and I was all set to start tracking my build!!! 

I have never driven a Cayman, so while I was home my son and I drove to our nearest dealer in Peoria IL to check out some options.  They had a GT4RS that had the buckets we could test out, done deal, I knew I was going to pair the legendary NA Flat6 with the 6MT so that was also a done deal.  The truck I left at home is a Hydro Blue Ram TRX so the color was also a no brainer, Shark Blue, but everything else was lots of back and forth reading forums, asking friends.  I defaulted to a heavier optioned car with Burmeister and Leather/Racetex we’ll see what I like and what I can live without, I don’t expect this will be the last Porsche I own (hopefully). 

The build process was great to track through the app, enjoyed seeing the stages, but sad about not having the actual pictures like prior builds at Zuff.  Then the day came in November when it was Finished!!!  Only problem was that I didn’t want to take delivery until Spring.  The Porsche NA team was great, they worked with me and the schedule we went back and forth quite a bit and settled on an early March delivery, they don’t have a bunch of storage space and of course they likely have more veteran customers then me that would like the sought after spring/fall dates. 

I was hoping to have 6 months with the car in country but the max they allow is 90 with the insurance/license packages.  I’m sure I’ll be able to squeeze plenty of fun into the next 2 months.  Trips to the Nürburgring of course, Hockenheimring is one of my favorites to watch racing so will hopefully get a chance to drive my car there as well (doing a GT3 experience there in April).  Schwartzwald, hopefully some time down in Switzerland (Lucerne is our favorite place to visit) and as many other tracks and I can get her to. 

Post 2 Delivery Day 

Oh man what an experience… I’m not going to lie, after a mediocre steak dinner that I had high hopes for (restaurant advertised Prime US beef…) I didn’t get much sleep Sunday night.  Normally you would see this from jet lagged folks coming from the US/Canada but mine was all excitement driven! 

Hotel was good, breakfast was good, quick 20 minute cab ride to the Porsche Werke 4 (compliments of the PorscheNA team voucher) and I was inside the showroom of the dealership that plays temporary home to the delivery process.  Met Sean, Gary and Tesra (probably butchered names sorry guys!) who I would be tagging along with most of the day as Sean picked up his new gorgeous Guards Red GT3RS with all the go fast goodies.  We had a coffee and wandered around the showroom checking out the huge assortment of special 911s, Caymans, Spyders, 918, etc.  There are bigger Porsche showrooms around Germany, but this one had the fewest number of Macans/Cayennes/Taycans that I’ve seen. 

Melanie was my delivery person, she took me over to the delivery area where a sheet covered my CGTS as well as 5-6 other cars being delivered that day.  Was told they typically do 2 US/Can deliveries per day (roughly 300-400/year) and then 6 German/European deliveries per day.  Melanie fired up the cloth puller and I was totally stoked, while it didn’t compare to the multiple GT3RS’s around me, this one was the one I wrote the check for and designed from day one, and will for sure be a memory I always cherish.  Posed for a professional photo they gave me later, she walked me through all the PCM functions, and setting the car up for me.  Probably spent 30-45 minutes there.  Signed a few documents, got a couple nice gifts and then was out the door with my new ride.  While the initial cold start was a bit underwhelming (was hoping for closer to my Hellcat TRX…) it is something I can fix when I’m back home. 

The factory tour was amazing.  I’m no newbie when it comes to factories, my career has put me into dozens of large equipment manufacturing facilities, but the access we got to the assembly line and upholstery was something normally not granted to outside tours, I was super happy with the couple hours we spent and blown away with the amount of hand craftsmanship that goes into everything (especially the upholstery).  My favorite fun fact was that it takes roughly 7 (young cow and/or racetex) hides to cover an interior.  While the assembly line was a finely oiled engineering masterpiece as you would expect from a Germany company, the upholstery shop was nothing short of artwork aided by digital technologies. 

Lunch was great, a bit of bubbly wine to celebrate the day, great duck and soup and then I sent Sean and the boys off on their amazing plan for the next week or so and I headed home to take the family for rides (even picked my son up from basketball practice so he was able to show his buddies the new ride). 

After my somewhat reserved drive back home and to work this morning I’m at 500+ km and hoping to keep it going up so she’ll be ready for the Ring on Sunday. 

Post 3 Week 1 + Nurburgring!!! 

Well I’d like to say that I had a super exciting first week with the CGTS, but Tuesday to Friday was back to the normal grind.  My commute from home to either of the offices I frequent is roughly 300km round trip.  The bad news is I was still obeying break-in procedures, but the good news is that normally that commute is 75% unrestricted autobahn.  I typically head into work at 6:00am so the traffic is light and in my 320d/330d wagons I regularly cruise at 220+kph.  I kept it responsible this week but still enjoyed the experience of the beautiful noises from behind me and the Burmeister in front of me. 

The kids enjoyed being able to ride around in the Porsche this week, but the wife has requested I start looking at an 18way seat for her passenger princess throne… 

(Nicole here to add some commentary). The seats are TERRIBLE. Sure, if you are 100% driving around a racetrack, I can understand why you would want to be squeezed into a tight little place. But 100% of the time for me I will NOT be on a racetrack. I will be cruising down a normal road, most likely straight, and I am not going to deal with bruised hips. *end rant*

My office in Walldorf is only 10 minutes from Hockenheimring, so I cruised by there on Friday on my way home for a quick picture. No luck in sneaking onto the track.  Couple mods this week, installed my Zunsport grills, super easy to do and very happy with the look and fitment.  Also ordered a set of amazon key fob covers, I tried to purchase the SB ones at the dealership during the delivery, but they said they would need to order them… saved myself 80euro in the process. 

Sunday was the highlight of the week, and maybe one of the highlights of my automotive life.  My son and I got the go-pro set up and headed up North to Nurburg to visit The Ring!  It was a bit over an hour drive, mainly a-bahn but a few fun country highways at the start and end.  WHAT AN EXPERIENCE.  My son was an excellent spotter, helping me keep tabs on the GT3RS’ (and pretty much everything else on the track) that were passing me.  While I definitely had a couple sections where I felt comfortable pushing it, there are so many blind hills/corners and the fact that it was opening weekend for Touristenfahrten there were a ton of people like me on the track as well.  Both of those equal a much more conservative drive then I would have loved.  We ended after 3.5 laps, my passenger couldn’t take the last lap and we may have had a slight incident which necessitated stopping by the first gas station and buying bottles of water to wash down the passenger side… 

(Nicole here to insert some additional commentary) I TOLD Ty to grab some puke bags on their way out the door. I know how Jay drives on a normal curvy road, so I can only imagine what the ride would be like on an actual racetrack. “Mom, I don’t get carsick anymore.” But still, it doesn’t hurt anything to just take them along, just in case. “Nope, I don’t need them.” Mama knows best.

Nevertheless, the experience was one I’ll remember forever.  From scanning the bar code for the first time, the gates lifting and then driving out onto a track which I had spent hours of my childhood roaring around in Playstation games, to giggling everytime we were passed and listening to the roaring and then cackling exhausts as they entered turns.  To say it’s a rolling car show is an understatement.  We were lucky enough to find a parking spot for an hour or so right by the diner and walked around to see all of the cars and meet a few folks out enjoying the amazing weather on the first weekend. 

Sunday night, I swapped parking spots and moved my 330d back into commuter duty, already >1,500km and want to make sure I’m able to enjoy the remaining kms doing fun weekend outings! 

Link to my youtube where I uploaded the first 3 laps, ignore the commentary, I’m sure it was mainly jibberish as I was geeked out and trying to concentrate on driving. 

http://www.youtube.com/@shearerjaya 

Bis Spater!