20 yrs, 1.5m KM,14 cars and 4 dogs.....
Discussion
Looking back now, quite a lot happened in the last 20 years, most of which is not relevant to PH.
However, a few things might be on interest
Dog ! had arrived in mid 1996, a Boxer , (Chloe) who unfortunately had had her ears cropped before I had a chance to prevent it. She was the only dog I have ever owned who had this done.
At the time I had just changed jobs, and my previous employer had given me my brand new company car as a parting gift, a 1997 V8 Oldsmobile Aurora . It was a great car and I had the amusingly named Autobahn Edition which has better suspension and rubber and a top speed of 135MPH…and it loafed along at that speed. I traded it in for a C280 for the OH.
New employer let me have a company BMW 528i five speed. which I drove for three years. Biggest issue was an apparent clutch failure at about 6000 miles. Dealer inspection revealed some issued with the drive train and the replaced the clutch and complete gearbox under warranty
I missed the V8 though despite the infinitely better handling. ,First chance I got I changed it for 540i six speed which was a superb car ,immensely comfortable and wonderful V8, and was only bettered my my last ever sedan, the E39 M5…at the time seems to be just about the best four door car around. Loved that car. Both cars were bulletproof. Can’f find my pics now but this was the 540 at the Dueseberg Museum :
The Boxer died very young( 6) of Lymphoma, and a standard poodle arrived (Lola) in 2002, and she is still around today, but a little fragile.
Seen here with Coda who would arrive later:
In 2003 I fell in love with the R230 SL500, and ordered one for OH. The car was specified with aluminium instead of wood for the interior, black, with a black panorama roof. It remains in the garage although now lives in the winter house in AZ, and only has 28,000 miles on it. Three major events…
(1) Burnt out headlight (had optional bi-Xenons)…replacement unit was $2300
(2) in 2015 at low speed suffered a complete brake failure..dash lit up like a Christmas tree. Dealer told me there was a hidden warranty for it.
(3) In 2016 needed a new wiring harness and plugs
By then the first appearance of the Bangle cars was upon us, so I decided to get a 645ci as a personal car. It was a rarity for I specced it with a six speed box. Loved the sound of the engine, absolutely hated the runflat tires and changed them as soon as I could. I remember at the time how much flak I took for ordering such an ugly car.
At the same time I changed the E39 for a VW Touareg V8.I was sick of digging the BMWs out of deep snow so thought the VW would be good.
It was a truly terrible car ,plagued with electrical problems so bad that eventually VW took it back, and lent me a VW Phaeton for a number of months…amazing fun.
2005 brought a replacement Touareg which was a wonderful, dependable comfortable and quite quick vehicle with none of the problems of the ’04 It also brought a very small and very large addition:
A Smart ForTwo for the city…diesel (quite expensive to maintain by the way) Have it still.
and a rescue Great Dane called Coda..18 months old
By late 2005 I was lusting for an M6, sold the 645 and took factory delivery in Munich. Individual car with butter yellow upholstery which is not fir everyone. I had it delimited at Hartge next day and drove it 2000km in three days. It was bloody quick.
However, it started a chain of events from which I never recovered. I brought it to the Nurburgring, and another pHer (Hammerwerfeer, who is sadly no longer with us), agree to give me some instruction. He had done thousands of laps and lots of instruction.
“God. the torque on this thing” ,he murmured, "but..its way underbraked for the track”. Anyway, my spirits were a little dampened,,,and he was of course, right.
It WAS fast though and I was quickly able to use the SMG shift smoothly. At track speeds and used very aggressively I was once getting 4 MPG
….I kept it for six years and it had only about 25000 miles when I sold it. Te complexity of the car was worrying, and at one point the ECU went haywire and multiple messages showed up….had to replace the entire ECU under warranty.
Yet, coming back for Muinch i was bothered. I had gotten a ride on a GT3, and fell in love. Then, in Frankfurt I happened on a copy of Total 911 magazine, with a review of the 997 GT3RS by some character called Chris Harris. I arrived back in Canada and went down to see the Porsche Dealer ( the M6 had not one come back to Canada).
“I’d like to talk about a GT3 RS please”
“ Of course” Said the very nice sales lady , Antje, “ but I have to tell you that they are all sold”
“Ahhh…ok..well…hmm..Lets get one of next year’s models”.
Sad smile. “ “ I’m afraid that they are all sold too”.
I was crushed. Thee was no way I was going to pay some silly aftermarket inflated price. So every month I dropped in to see Antje. One day in late ’07 I got a call:
“ I have a cancelation, but you need to decide in the next 30 minutes or another sales person gets to”…
“Sold”…called the bank and couriered the cheque, got the VIN and then had insurance done, completely done in three hours. I owned my first RS, Viper Green , which was the colour I had wanted in the first place.
Antje delivers
my first RS:
]I was ready to change the Touareg for another one, but VW stopped bringing in the gasoline V8s so I persuaded my boss to let me have a Cayenne V8 instead, although a fairly stripper spec. Has the power though and I have that one still…0ver 210,000km with 50,000 under tow. Its a tough old thing and will be changed out for the next gen Cayenne in 2018. Very reliable..two big jobs..a very expensive oil leak the needed a complete engine out strip down and subsequently worn camshaft lifters had to be replaced. Still, it has had a very hard life.
The only problem was that the RS was already in Canada. I had wanted Euro delivery so I simply shipped it back next Spring. I had a personal plate reading NRDSCHLF on the RS, and it drove the German polizei completely bonkers. I got stopped three times and asked for my papers. Once they figured it out it was all smiles of course;)..
So, back to the Nordschleife we went, and also to Spa. I loved that car except for two things…its pretty scary on Cup tires in the rain, and at maximum speed on an autobahn the front end lifts and you have no front grip. The RS has no stability control so you’re on your own. Still, most of the time it is a blast, and I have it still.
You can’t have too much of a good thing, but I was still sad I had missed
factory delivery on the RS, so I had been working on Antje to get me a 7.2 RS factory delivery and in 2010 she did just that. In May of 2010 I picked it up at the factory. It was a big improvement in both wet and dry and also had none of the front end lift of the 7.1 So, more running around Germany and back to the Nürburgring for the 24H. I asked Sabine to drive the car but she said she wanted her mechanic to inspect it first..”why?”…
“Because the wheels might fall off!”
“What?”
She had become aware of a very early and bad accident where a centre lock wheel had become detached on a 7.2 . As it happened my car was OK and she drove it happily.
I had full access to the 24 and was able to walk the live pits which was thrill and afterwards Porsche kindly held the RS they had raced with Harris et al for pics with my car. The race car had taken a massive beating in the 24 though.
Apart from the subsequent recall on the 7.2 for new hubs the 997 RS cars were just bulletproof.
By 2012 the winter house in Arizona was well settled in , and it made sense to get some kind of offroad vehicle. Well, in the kind of landscape, what could be more fitting than a Jeep, my first American vehicle since the Aurora. Sadly, the Great Dane, Coda, had taken her final journey the previous Fall after completing the long drive from Canada to Arizona, so sneer never travelled in the Jeep. The Jeep is cheap and tough and lots of niggling stuff goes wrong. Roadholding is vintage, it cannot top 100MPH, and the back seats were designed by a sadist. BUT…it does one thing well. You can climb over all sorts of stuff.
Coda left a Great Dane sized hole in the house, so the next adoptee arrived. Nina was a huge Dane, had been very badly treated in a drug house, brutally bred, starved , beaten and abandoned. We brought her back to health, spayed her, and tried to acclimate her to the city…but she could never do it. Eventual she ws re-adopted by a very nice young couple with a place in the country with a big yard.
There was still a Great Dane sized hole…and then a very small Dane arrived to fill it….
Shiloh who is from Provo, Utah, It was a long drive to get her.
And then.the 991. I tried an early 991S and much preferred the 7RS.
Of course the usual rumours were out about the GT3 and RS so I decided to go for a 991RS, factory delivery, and Antje got one for me. One of the existing cars had to go, so the RS.2 went..the better of the two 997s, but i simply cannot bring myself to part with my first RS
This was a very special delivery, as there was a superb meet in Zell am See which was sponsored by Dr Wolfgang Porsche, and we went up to his home where Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche are interred beside the house. Dr Porsche very kindly signed the car.
I did 6000km in three weeks , including a trip to Hamburg where my new 991 met its ancestor…the 1939 Porsche Typ 64 ( was retitled a Porsche by the family in 1946)…..
and of course…back to the NS:
Now, its summer again..the SL500 is 14,the Poodle is 14, the Smart is 13 and the 7RS will be 10 this year….No worries. Not everything has to be new and I am not new myself...but there will be more adventures on the road.....
However, a few things might be on interest
Dog ! had arrived in mid 1996, a Boxer , (Chloe) who unfortunately had had her ears cropped before I had a chance to prevent it. She was the only dog I have ever owned who had this done.
At the time I had just changed jobs, and my previous employer had given me my brand new company car as a parting gift, a 1997 V8 Oldsmobile Aurora . It was a great car and I had the amusingly named Autobahn Edition which has better suspension and rubber and a top speed of 135MPH…and it loafed along at that speed. I traded it in for a C280 for the OH.
New employer let me have a company BMW 528i five speed. which I drove for three years. Biggest issue was an apparent clutch failure at about 6000 miles. Dealer inspection revealed some issued with the drive train and the replaced the clutch and complete gearbox under warranty
I missed the V8 though despite the infinitely better handling. ,First chance I got I changed it for 540i six speed which was a superb car ,immensely comfortable and wonderful V8, and was only bettered my my last ever sedan, the E39 M5…at the time seems to be just about the best four door car around. Loved that car. Both cars were bulletproof. Can’f find my pics now but this was the 540 at the Dueseberg Museum :
The Boxer died very young( 6) of Lymphoma, and a standard poodle arrived (Lola) in 2002, and she is still around today, but a little fragile.
Seen here with Coda who would arrive later:
In 2003 I fell in love with the R230 SL500, and ordered one for OH. The car was specified with aluminium instead of wood for the interior, black, with a black panorama roof. It remains in the garage although now lives in the winter house in AZ, and only has 28,000 miles on it. Three major events…
(1) Burnt out headlight (had optional bi-Xenons)…replacement unit was $2300
(2) in 2015 at low speed suffered a complete brake failure..dash lit up like a Christmas tree. Dealer told me there was a hidden warranty for it.
(3) In 2016 needed a new wiring harness and plugs
By then the first appearance of the Bangle cars was upon us, so I decided to get a 645ci as a personal car. It was a rarity for I specced it with a six speed box. Loved the sound of the engine, absolutely hated the runflat tires and changed them as soon as I could. I remember at the time how much flak I took for ordering such an ugly car.
At the same time I changed the E39 for a VW Touareg V8.I was sick of digging the BMWs out of deep snow so thought the VW would be good.
It was a truly terrible car ,plagued with electrical problems so bad that eventually VW took it back, and lent me a VW Phaeton for a number of months…amazing fun.
2005 brought a replacement Touareg which was a wonderful, dependable comfortable and quite quick vehicle with none of the problems of the ’04 It also brought a very small and very large addition:
A Smart ForTwo for the city…diesel (quite expensive to maintain by the way) Have it still.
and a rescue Great Dane called Coda..18 months old
By late 2005 I was lusting for an M6, sold the 645 and took factory delivery in Munich. Individual car with butter yellow upholstery which is not fir everyone. I had it delimited at Hartge next day and drove it 2000km in three days. It was bloody quick.
However, it started a chain of events from which I never recovered. I brought it to the Nurburgring, and another pHer (Hammerwerfeer, who is sadly no longer with us), agree to give me some instruction. He had done thousands of laps and lots of instruction.
“God. the torque on this thing” ,he murmured, "but..its way underbraked for the track”. Anyway, my spirits were a little dampened,,,and he was of course, right.
It WAS fast though and I was quickly able to use the SMG shift smoothly. At track speeds and used very aggressively I was once getting 4 MPG
….I kept it for six years and it had only about 25000 miles when I sold it. Te complexity of the car was worrying, and at one point the ECU went haywire and multiple messages showed up….had to replace the entire ECU under warranty.Yet, coming back for Muinch i was bothered. I had gotten a ride on a GT3, and fell in love. Then, in Frankfurt I happened on a copy of Total 911 magazine, with a review of the 997 GT3RS by some character called Chris Harris. I arrived back in Canada and went down to see the Porsche Dealer ( the M6 had not one come back to Canada).
“I’d like to talk about a GT3 RS please”
“ Of course” Said the very nice sales lady , Antje, “ but I have to tell you that they are all sold”
“Ahhh…ok..well…hmm..Lets get one of next year’s models”.
Sad smile. “ “ I’m afraid that they are all sold too”.
I was crushed. Thee was no way I was going to pay some silly aftermarket inflated price. So every month I dropped in to see Antje. One day in late ’07 I got a call:
“ I have a cancelation, but you need to decide in the next 30 minutes or another sales person gets to”…
“Sold”…called the bank and couriered the cheque, got the VIN and then had insurance done, completely done in three hours. I owned my first RS, Viper Green , which was the colour I had wanted in the first place.
Antje delivers
my first RS:
]I was ready to change the Touareg for another one, but VW stopped bringing in the gasoline V8s so I persuaded my boss to let me have a Cayenne V8 instead, although a fairly stripper spec. Has the power though and I have that one still…0ver 210,000km with 50,000 under tow. Its a tough old thing and will be changed out for the next gen Cayenne in 2018. Very reliable..two big jobs..a very expensive oil leak the needed a complete engine out strip down and subsequently worn camshaft lifters had to be replaced. Still, it has had a very hard life.
The only problem was that the RS was already in Canada. I had wanted Euro delivery so I simply shipped it back next Spring. I had a personal plate reading NRDSCHLF on the RS, and it drove the German polizei completely bonkers. I got stopped three times and asked for my papers. Once they figured it out it was all smiles of course;)..
So, back to the Nordschleife we went, and also to Spa. I loved that car except for two things…its pretty scary on Cup tires in the rain, and at maximum speed on an autobahn the front end lifts and you have no front grip. The RS has no stability control so you’re on your own. Still, most of the time it is a blast, and I have it still.
You can’t have too much of a good thing, but I was still sad I had missed
factory delivery on the RS, so I had been working on Antje to get me a 7.2 RS factory delivery and in 2010 she did just that. In May of 2010 I picked it up at the factory. It was a big improvement in both wet and dry and also had none of the front end lift of the 7.1 So, more running around Germany and back to the Nürburgring for the 24H. I asked Sabine to drive the car but she said she wanted her mechanic to inspect it first..”why?”…
“Because the wheels might fall off!”
“What?”
She had become aware of a very early and bad accident where a centre lock wheel had become detached on a 7.2 . As it happened my car was OK and she drove it happily.
I had full access to the 24 and was able to walk the live pits which was thrill and afterwards Porsche kindly held the RS they had raced with Harris et al for pics with my car. The race car had taken a massive beating in the 24 though.
Apart from the subsequent recall on the 7.2 for new hubs the 997 RS cars were just bulletproof.
By 2012 the winter house in Arizona was well settled in , and it made sense to get some kind of offroad vehicle. Well, in the kind of landscape, what could be more fitting than a Jeep, my first American vehicle since the Aurora. Sadly, the Great Dane, Coda, had taken her final journey the previous Fall after completing the long drive from Canada to Arizona, so sneer never travelled in the Jeep. The Jeep is cheap and tough and lots of niggling stuff goes wrong. Roadholding is vintage, it cannot top 100MPH, and the back seats were designed by a sadist. BUT…it does one thing well. You can climb over all sorts of stuff.
Coda left a Great Dane sized hole in the house, so the next adoptee arrived. Nina was a huge Dane, had been very badly treated in a drug house, brutally bred, starved , beaten and abandoned. We brought her back to health, spayed her, and tried to acclimate her to the city…but she could never do it. Eventual she ws re-adopted by a very nice young couple with a place in the country with a big yard.
There was still a Great Dane sized hole…and then a very small Dane arrived to fill it….
Shiloh who is from Provo, Utah, It was a long drive to get her.
And then.the 991. I tried an early 991S and much preferred the 7RS.
Of course the usual rumours were out about the GT3 and RS so I decided to go for a 991RS, factory delivery, and Antje got one for me. One of the existing cars had to go, so the RS.2 went..the better of the two 997s, but i simply cannot bring myself to part with my first RS
This was a very special delivery, as there was a superb meet in Zell am See which was sponsored by Dr Wolfgang Porsche, and we went up to his home where Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche are interred beside the house. Dr Porsche very kindly signed the car.
I did 6000km in three weeks , including a trip to Hamburg where my new 991 met its ancestor…the 1939 Porsche Typ 64 ( was retitled a Porsche by the family in 1946)…..
and of course…back to the NS:
Now, its summer again..the SL500 is 14,the Poodle is 14, the Smart is 13 and the 7RS will be 10 this year….No worries. Not everything has to be new and I am not new myself...but there will be more adventures on the road.....
Edited by RDMcG on Tuesday 23 May 21:38
Nice write up of some great experiences. 
keemaklan said:
What a lovely read. Thank you for taking your time to share such great stories. Loved the NRDSHLF plate!
Its part of a setGRUNHLLE is currently on the green car
NRBRGRNG is on the orange car
NRDSCHLF will go on a 992 RS as I am keeping current cars.
I have a couple of spares
KARUSSEL
and
FLUGLPLTZ
RDMcG said:
So, back to the Nordschleife we went, and also to Spa. I loved that car except for two things…its pretty scary on Cup tires in the rain, and at maximum speed on an autobahn the front end lifts and you have no front grip. The has no stability control so you’re on your own.
Err, it has no stability control 
I did an 8:14 in my best friend's last month and kept what I thought was the stability control on the whole way round.We're at Spa next month in it too. If i could've made myself more nervous...
LaurasOtherHalf said:
Err, it has no stability control I did an 8:14 in my best friend's last month and kept what I thought was the stability control on the whole way round.
We're at Spa next month in it too. If i could've made myself more nervous...
Corrected I did an 8:14 in my best friend's last month and kept what I thought was the stability control on the whole way round.We're at Spa next month in it too. If i could've made myself more nervous...
...the 7.2 has stability control though. At the time i recall that there was a California lawsuit over a CGT that had crashed at a trackday ( driver error), but driver and passenger died. Court had a minor fine on Porsche ($300k) but reprimanded them for having no stability control. As I recall there was worry about this being a precedent to nasty future suits so they quickly revisited it and after that there were no cars without it...RDMcG said:
LaurasOtherHalf said:
Err, it has no stability control I did an 8:14 in my best friend's last month and kept what I thought was the stability control on the whole way round.
We're at Spa next month in it too. If i could've made myself more nervous...
Corrected I did an 8:14 in my best friend's last month and kept what I thought was the stability control on the whole way round.We're at Spa next month in it too. If i could've made myself more nervous...
...the 7.2 has stability control though. At the time i recall that there was a California lawsuit over a CGT that had crashed at a trackday ( driver error), but driver and passenger died. Court had a minor fine on Porsche ($300k) but reprimanded them for having no stability control. As I recall there was worry about this being a precedent to nasty future suits so they quickly revisited it and after that there were no cars without it...I had it quite sideways at oulton park earlier this year but thought the esp gathered it up for me, maybe I'm not as bad as I thought?!
In all seriousness, I've followed your GT3 adventures on this site so it's a nice thread to read.
LaurasOtherHalf said:
Oh dear, I'm always quite nervous of Spa. So is it just traction control on the 997.1RS?
I had it quite sideways at oulton park earlier this year but thought the esp gathered it up for me, maybe I'm not as bad as I thought?!
In all seriousness, I've followed your GT3 adventures on this site so it's a nice thread to read.
I spun my 997.1 in the chicane...(as I have always said..not the greatest). It was my first lap though and the rest was fine. I had it quite sideways at oulton park earlier this year but thought the esp gathered it up for me, maybe I'm not as bad as I thought?!
In all seriousness, I've followed your GT3 adventures on this site so it's a nice thread to read.
I had a conversation with Hans Stuck who is someone i like and respect greatly.
He had just driven a 7.1 RS at the NS and I asked him...his reply was
"Jesus Christ! this is a great car at 6/10 for good driver, and an amazing car for a very experienced driver at 8/10.
At 9/10 you's better be me"
Just watch the wet. I am not talking as a great driver, just someone who has felt how twitchy the thing is in the rain. Better drivers may well have different opinions.Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff