Your Porsche Your Way

Twenty years ago, Lisa and I bought a Porsche 911 Carrera.

It wasn’t that we were rolling in cash from a lottery win. A rich relative hadn’t sent us a barrel full of greenbacks either.

My looming 55^th birthday had kindled a fresh bout of ‘911 Fever’, a recurring malaise I had felt off and on since the first time I lay my teenage eyes on one of the rear-engine sportscars in the mid-1960s.

I talked myself, and Lisa, into the notion that we would be able to fulfill my dream of a new Porsche 911.

I’d keep it forever!

That was in 2004 when there was no Porsche dealer in Atlantic Canada. No matter. The fever was so bad that, on a ‘business’ trip to Toronto, I went to a Porsche dealership where shiny, new 911 beauties were all lined up.

There were red ones and silver ones, but it was the black rear-drive Carrera that caught my eye.

It had the right options – Bose speakers, aluminum accents in the cockpit, embroidered Porsche crests on the seatbacks, centre pieces on the wheels –  and $900 tailpipes.

Since I was buying what was in the showroom, no other options were available to me.

I had to have the car.

After 20 years of ownership, I’ve grown to love my $900 tailpipes and have rocked out to those Bose speakers many times while winding our 911 through the gears.

I’ve often wondered, though, what 911 would we have bought if we could have optioned it exactly as we wanted? Within reason, of course.

I recently convinced Lisa that we needed to visit Porsche of Halifax, one of only four dealerships in Canada featuring the latest (and stunning) Destination Porsche design architecture, to have a look around.

At the very least, I wanted to ‘build’ the 911 we would buy if it could be personalized exactly the way we wanted.

We didn’t actually need to go to the dealership.

Porsche’s consumer website is a virtual hotbed of 911 Carrera fever.

With the slick Car Configurator, you can rev up the fever with the click of an icon. Choose paint, interior materials and colours. Do you want Porsche branding everywhere inside? Go ahead!

You see, a luxury brand like Porsche must stand above the rest and one of the ways in which they do this, well besides the dream vehicles they build, is to offer every single customer the ability to option their vehicle the way they want.

Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur: Add exclusive features to your ‘base’ Porsche.

Want the logo in your door sills to light up? Click the option on the Configurator. When you do this, your Porsche will be removed from the line during the build process and go to the ‘Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur’ department to have the feature added on.

Once you’ve finished designing the car of your dreams, a Porsche Code is generated.

This code can be emailed back to the dealership and your salesperson can review it, make suggestions, add/delete features and send it back to you for your approval.

Do you want the letters G T S embossed into the centre console of your Cayenne GTS? The ‘Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur’ department can make that happen.

You wouldn’t want to risk arriving at the party with the same car as everyone else, would you?

You shouldn’t miss the opportunity to experience the striking design of Porsche of Halifax’s new home.

And when an invitation came from Brad Sellars, Certified Sales Executive & Brand Ambassador, of course we went. Once inside the spectacular facility, we felt inspired, like we were members of a distinctive community.

Brad had been obsessing with the Porsche Car Configurator and he wanted to show us the result in the flesh in the showroom and share the code with us so we could see how it all worked.

What a car!

A 2023 Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet (Lisa loved the open-air option) with ‘Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur’ options to make the car truly unique, like the decorative stripes, the under-door puddle light projectors and headlights with no chrome surrounds.

Lisa appreciated how the exterior colour, an elegant Arctic Grey, was brought into the interior with accent inlays. I liked the GT sport steering wheel, aluminum pedals and footrest and, my favourite feature, the sport exhaust with black tailpipes.

With Porsche fever on high, we drove our 2004 911 Carrera over the weekend.

Although in near-perfect condition, it’s obviously not as advanced as the new one; less power, more road noise and an almost primitive interior. All things you would expect after a 20-year evolution of one of the world’s most iconic cars.

With only 14,667 kilometres on the odometer and the enduring feeling that the car is an extension of me, why on earth would I ever get a new one?

Thanks to the Porsche Car Configurator, though, we can rip up and down the untraveled roads in our minds in that personalized 2023 Porsche 911 Turbo S Cabriolet.

Or I can look up the code, add another couple of Porsche Exclusive Manufaktur features and ignite a slow burn on that car fever again.

*If you want to check out the other dream cars Brad Sellars has been ‘configurating’, be sure to visit Porsche of Halifax and start a fever of your own!