I want to start by saying that during the Cayman buying process this site has been an incredible and invaluable source of information. The people here and their contributions have given my wife and I the confidence needed to make ordering and buying a custom vehicle a positive experience rather than an uncertain one. We found we knew the order guide and options better that the sales people we dealt with and knowledge is power. I want to thank the moderators who keep this board incredibly organized (and on topic) and I especially want to thank our host K-Man S for having the vision and passion to put this forum together.
I want to begin our story by apologizing for what I expect to be a fairly long post that is mostly devoid of tech talk. However I wanted to use this post as an introduction to both myself and my best friend who fortunately for me also happens to be my wife. What follows is a story about two people and how they came to be Cayman S owners.
The Story of His and Hers
This story begins last June when we were planning our annual trip to southern CA to visit my folks. My wife who normally sets up all of the travel issues asked me to participate this year by selecting the rental vehicle. This is something I could definitely get into and so I wasted no time going to the web site to see what was available. My first instinct was a sports coupe of some type. It became evident to me rather quickly however, that the coupes being offered had about enough luggage space as it takes to hold an empty garment bag. I continued my search and saw that Hertz had a Shelby GT in the offering. This seemed to fit both the luggage and my testosterone criteria and so we reserved one.
The visit with my folks was a good one with lots of fun being had with the rented muscle car. When we returned home both my wife and I discovered that we had gotten the “new car bug.” This was unexpected as up until then we were both content to drive our existing cars, mine being a 1992 Toyota SR5 pickup and my wife’s a 1984 Porsche 944. We therefore, started to search the web and make weekend visits to different dealerships. We began where we left off at Ford inquiring about a Shelby GT500. As we discussed it though we both agreed that going from 0 to 60 very quickly was not necessarily what we were after. We wanted performance but we wanted more than raw power. We wanted great handling along with the power.
Thus our quest took us to test driving Nissan Zs, BMW M3 and Z4M Coupes, Dodge Vipers, Lexus
SC, and others. They were all worthy vehicles but we found them lacking in one or more of the many criteria that we had established as requirements for a sports coupe. Our last stop was the local Porsche/Audi dealer. We started with an Audi TT and although it met many of our requirements I found the styling not to be to my liking. And so it was that we wound up on the Porsche showroom floor.
Now my wife is a long time Porsche owner who at one time owned three Porsches. Until I met my wife I had never owned any sports car much less a Porsche. In my childhood I remember hearing the other kids, who were in the know, pointing to a flashy sports car calling out “check out the 911S” or “hey look it’s a 911T”. Now the 911 I got but the S and T designators were something that would hold little meaning until much later in life.
For the last fourteen years my wife has been training me in the deep lore of the Porsche culture. I have learned that it is Porsche’ not Porsch, that driving can be about more than just getting from point A to point B, and that paint, leather, and plastic need frequent care and attention just as engines do.
As we walked around the showroom floor I saw the Cayenne and the Carrera, but an SUV was not what we were looking for and the big butt JLo syndrome that has become the modern 911 also does not do it for me. There was however, another one that was totally new to me. It was incredibly sleek and had a look that said “Take me for a drive, I won’t disappoint.” The sales person came over and told me about the Cayman and its S variant and asked if I would like to take it for a test drive.
I will not soon forget that first experience in the 987 CS. There were some back roads around the dealership that gave me a taste at just how maneuverable and stable this platform is. I was hooked and knew I had to own one of these cars.
And so after some discussion, my wife and I decided that we would buy a Cayman S but not one off the showroom floor. We wanted a “to order” vehicle. It was at this time that we found this web site. I spent hours pouring over the various forums and reading all of the
articles and FAQs. We also both got quite familiar with the Porsche Configurator and discovered that our options were very close to each other. The one thing we could not seem to agree on was color. My color of choice was a shade of blue, while my wife preferred white. After much discussion it was decided that Meteor Grey would have to be the compromise.
Based on some previous maintenance experiences on our 944, we were unsure that the local dealership (Dealer A) was the best place for us to purchase our new car. We therefore, decided to visit another dealership in the area (Dealer B) and see if we got a more positive impression. A few days before we went to Dealer B however, PCNA announced the Cayman Design Edition 1. This caught the attention of us both and we started discussing the possibility of making the DE-1 our Cayman of choice. We decided to find out all we could during our visit to the second dealer.
We spent the morning at Dealer B’s lot and were made to feel quite welcome. Our sales person did not have any info about the DE-1 and did not know when he would. Long story short, that day we became comfortable enough to place an order and leave a deposit on a Meteor Grey/Black 987CS. On the long drive home we were both very excited but knew that we were at least six months out until delivery so patience would be a key ingredient to this process.
Over the course of the next few weeks more info became available on the DE-1. My wife and I were both very interested but not sure if the DE-1 would be the best option for the two of us. One morning, while doing my daily workout, I started toying with the idea of buying two Caymans. I ran this by my wife and was a little surprised to see that she had been having similar thoughts. I began sending emails to Dealer B to again indicate that we were very interested in the DE-1. Now, Dealer B did not have an allocation for a DE-1 but he took my option list and told me he would see if he could come up with one. In the meantime I contacted Dealer A to see if he had a DE-1 allocation. He told me that he had two but that I would need to work fast if I wanted to get one with the options I wanted. He also indicated that he could give me a better deal on the DE-1, with all of the options I wanted, than Dealer B had given me on the Meteor Grey CS.
The next day Dealer B contacted and told me that he could get a DE-1 but it would not have two of the options I had requested (Adaptive Sport Seats and Painted Seat Backs). He also indicated that he could not deal on the DE-1 and I would need to pay full pop on it even though I would be ordering two cars from him. This did not sit well with me at all, so I contacted Dealer A and asked him to place the order for the DE-1. That night I decided to cancel my order with Dealer B and place a second order with Dealer A.
The following morning I got an email from Dealer A telling me that he also could not get the Adaptive Sport Seats and Painted Seat Back options on the DE-1. Unfortunately this was a deal breaker for me and so I needed to cancel our order. So, although in the morning of that fateful day we had two Cayman S vehicles on order, by the evening we had none. Both my wife and I were beginning to believe that owning a Cayman S of any type was just not in the cards for us. It was now late September and we were no closer to an order than we were in June.
That night and the following day we took a hard look at where we were and discussed what our next move should be. We concluded that we were already in a two car buy mindset so why not just substitute another “to order” CS for the DE-1. She could then have her White CS and I could have my Blue CS. And so the following weekend we went to Dealer A and placed two orders, one for a Carrara White/Black CS and one for a Midnight Blue/Black CS. My wife took delivery of hers early last month and I took delivery of mine earlier this week.
This has been a ten month process and patience has played a big role in it. Now that I have the car I find that I must still be patient for I am realizing that the hardest thing for me will be to get through the break-in period. The growl of the engine above 4000 RPM is intoxicating and it will be difficult to stay below the prescribed 4200 RPM.
I have already started doing several aftermarket modifications, Ralph Boothe wheel spacers, bolts, and exhaust tips, and the Mods4Cars Remote Key to name a few. This weekend sees me pulling the hatch area apart so the folks at BumperPlugs can do the option 805 paint job for me. (Why does Porsche advertise an option they never offer???) Thanks to K-Man S again for the great article and pictures on this mod. I also see intake, exhaust and ECU mods in my car’s future. My wife will mostly be content with her stock version with a few cosmetic mods being the only changes she makes. But the wonderful thing about the Cayman S is that a stock version is still a really good vehicle.
It is great to be a member of this forum and of the Porsche community in general. I am looking forward to many engaging conversations on this forum and especially many fun hours behind the wheel of this fabulous platform known as Cayman S!
Thanks again to you all.
Here is a picture of the twins:
Congrats & Enjoy!!! great story, glad you shared it with us
Also having a wife with a P-Car Passion makes buying all of the P-Car toys and upgrades easier.
I definately have to agree with ul2fly on this one, I am very lucky that my wife shares in my passion, or maybe more correctly, that I share in hers.
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