Chesapeake Region
Time for an Engine Switcharoo
Aaron Miller
For those regular readers of The Patter, you may recall in October 2020 we sold our 944S to a close friend in Arizona and delivered the car to him. Since then, we’ve had a few small life upheavals. In January, we received transfer orders to report to Stuttgart, Germany in August 2021. Unfortunately, this means I’ll be forced to leave the Vice President position and Minta will be leaving the Membership and Chesapeake Challenge committees. While it’s bittersweet because we’ve loved our time in Chesapeake Region, orders to Germany would present all kinds of interesting options. We knew we would bring a Porsche, but which one? Our classic 944 Turbo and 968 Cabriolet were far too old and fragile to be pressed into daily service in a foreign country, so they would stay here in the able care of Randy Moss’ Collectors Car Corral. The Cayenne was an obvious choice, but thoughts of driving the Nurburgring or Stelvio Pass in a heavy SUV left us disappointed. A by-product of the “Dieselgate” scandal was the German government’s hard-pivot away from Diesel engines in favor of electrification. That means our beloved 2014 Volkswagen Sportwagen TDi was now “verboten” and would not be allowed to transit around Europe. So we decided to sell the VW, and opt to bring something else instead. With the Cayenne identified as a must-send vehicle, we decided to buy a second Porsche to bring with us to Europe. Before I receive the inevitable “Why not buy something there?” emails, our logic was thus; a Porsche purchased in the U.S. is one we could bring back to the U.S. and a European delivered car did not promise the same reciprocity. So, the question became, “Which U.S. Porsche do we buy?” As Chesapeake’s unofficial Chief Transaxle Proponents, the answer may surprise you; we needed a 911.
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