Living the Legend
Phil Farrell
Cheshire, UK
@mllx8pjf
Model 991.1 C2 GTS
Year 2015
Acquired JUNE 2020
How things change over a relatively short period of time. Over the last few weeks we’ve started to come out of our enforced hibernation and enjoy a few of the things we used to, pre you-know-what. And with that we’ve been able to have chats with friends again about organising events and get-togethers, which really is exciting stuff, and something that I, for one, definitely did not appreciate enough pre-lockdown but will be savouring more moving forward.
After a couple of dry months on the motoring front I’ve had a great one. The month started with a visit round to Lee’s house along with Joe and Andy to be interviewed for their podcast, Road to Redline, the first they’d been able to do in person for quite some time so I was told. Lee did a stonking job on the BBQ and we were able to sit outside and have a chin-wag about our favourite motoring topics. It was so good for me to chat through my motoring history and we had a good laugh in the meantime. I hate hearing myself recorded back so I’ll admit I’ve not listened to it, but I’ve been told by others that it’s a good way to kill 40 mins or so. Please just excuse the talk of Triumph Dolomites towards the end – a guilty pleasure of mine from back in my childhood. While others had a 930 Turbo on their bedroom wall I must admit I’d not seen the light at that point and had a Sprint on mine!
I mentioned last month that I’d decided to move the 996 on. That in fact turned into moving both the 996 on and an Aston Vantage that I’d bought a few months back. Both are brilliant cars but for some reason there was something lacking from both, and I had a hankering for a more modern-generation 911 to occupy a single place in the garage where the other two had been. I started the month looking at a manual, Carmine red, 991.1 GTS at Ashgood Porsche. It was a lovely car and all the spec I’d want other than the pan roof, plus it was low mileage and well priced. But given the experience I’d had with the 996, needing to sink a load of money into a car shortly after purchase due to a lack of inspection, I swore to myself not to repeat the same mistake again. A quick ring around OPCs for a 111 check confirmed my worst suspicions that they were fully booked for some time.
While ringing around for OPC service centres local to Ashgood I did, as you do, venture on to the main Porsche Approved site to try to understand the price point difference between the independent’s GTS and an OPC GTS with a two-year warranty. As it happened a GTS popped up at OPC Leeds. It was black and had the Aerokit Cup on it and the fully black GTS interior pack, something I’d not waited for when I bought a Cayman GTS (981 obviously) a few years back and regretted instantly, and the pan roof. The whole black on black on black with a dash of red thing really worked for me. Only issue? PDK. Was it an issue though? A few texts between friends later and I had enough to confirm my gut instinct that it wasn’t. The Cayman had been PDK and it was fantastic. And I wanted this car to be a far more daily-driven car, so PDK seemed to make more sense too. It so happened that the Aston had come from Leeds also, so we were able to work a deal out.
It took a little while to get everything in place but the following Wednesday afternoon, and the single hottest day of the year, I drove the Aston up to Leeds and came back in the new (to me) GTS. Regrets? None. The
