My personal version of “Car Week”
Monterey has “Car Week” every August. Never been. It’s on my bucket list as an enthusiast. Sometime after I’m no longer a zone rep, I’ll get there. For now, in an effort to manage domestic tranquility, I need to be very careful how much time I put into auto-enthusiasm. Commitments to the “job” have me on the road a bit supporting PCA. Adding additional “non-PCA” car stuff to the calendar typically requires a calculated approach and some forethought into the anticipated “but why would I be interested in that?” question. So when HER friends were arranging for us to join a week-long June walking tour of London, I was pleased that this vacation would help balance things out. But then Julie asked, “Do you really want to travel all that way and spend just 7 days? So with a limit of about 12 days as a total trip length, due to a desire for Max the Berne-doodle to recognize us on our return, we looked for a 3-4 day additional excursion to “add on” to the London trip. Portugal? Italy? Southern Spain? Nope, not enough time to do any of them justice. Soooo……I meekly suggested, “what if we went to Stuttgart and hit the Porsche factory”. Expecting to maybe get smacked, I was shocked at the resoundingly positive response. As it turns out, a trip to the Ford F-150 factory near Dearborn a few years back had left a very positive impression. Who knew? And so, perhaps pushing my luck, I asked “what if we spent 3-days and also hit the Mercedes, BMW and Porsche museums as well?” AND…fly into Munich and do a bit of Autobahn driving, too? Sold! The trip was ON!
Despite living in Europe and traveling often to the UK at the time, I never really visited the core of London, particularly near Hyde Park. To my delight, this “car week” started unexpectedly before we got to Germany. While Julie and friends were taking in towers, castles, bridges, round theatres, plays, cathedrals, abbeys and funny buses, I was gawking at every possible sub-model of frustratingly traffic-stifled Lambos, Jaguars, McLaren’s, Rollers, Bentleys, Maybachs, Ferraris, and AMGs. There were even some of ‘our own’ rather pedestrian (by comparison) Porsche 992s already roaming the streets.
Then it was off to Germany. Needless to say we hit all 3 museums in four days and also did the Porsche factory tour at Zuffenhausen. Thanks to a well-informed recommendation by Chris Lennon in the Alpine Mountain Region, we stayed at Schloss-Hotel Monrepos. It’s located on a beautiful estate not far from Zuffenhausen. Just idyllic.
But wait- the ‘week’ was not over. Back in March, I received an email from Vu Nguyen, Executive Director of PCA, asking if I might be able to provide help to Porsche Cars of North America, for an event they were planning in Salt Lake City. It turns out that they had chosen the Grand America Hotel (site of the 2012 Porsche Parade for those that may have attended) and the Utah Motorsports Campus as the host hotel and road course respectively, for dealer product launch training on the 8th generation 911,- the 992. Long story short- PCNA was looking to borrow one nice example of a 911 from each of the first seven generations. The cars were to be displayed in a secure ballroom, from mid-June through mid-July. The goal of the display was to showcase the evolution of the 911 during a dramatic “reveal” of the new 992. After lots of phone calls and some arm twisting, we arranged all 7 prior generations from some very generous PCA members here in Utah. In return PCNA graciously invited those owners as well as me, to attend their training sessions. Needless to say, those two training days happened immediately upon my return from Germany, at the end of June. I’m not sure which was more impressive, the training sessions themselves or the new 992. But needless to say, the entire program was run in an extremely professional manner. Special thanks to all the PCA members who gave up your cars for a month. You know who you are.
I’m still looking forward to Monterey Car week some year. But I’m not sure how to top my own “car week” of June 2019!
Rich Sanders
Zone 9 Rep