Hello everyone,
although I have been a member of this forum for the past three months, I have solely been an active reader of many many posts.
Up until the purchase of our Macan GTS, many posts of this forum were a great help to get a better understanding of the car, the purchase process and what to be aware of. Thank you everyone!
Having read many great posts, I thought I'd share my story of ending up with a Macan GTS.
So let's begin. In mid August, my wife and I purchased a CPO Macan GTS (2017 model year) with around 26,000 miles.
Major options on the car are:
MSRP of the car was $85,000.
Up until the whole pandemic situation, we never thought that we would need nor buy a car living in Brooklyn NYC, since everything was quite easily and safely reachable via public transport. In addition, we never thought about actually paying the absurd monthly parking fees in my area.
After about six months of "working from home" and truly getting annoyed / frustrated by the whole situation, we started to think of purchasing a car for the following reasons:
1. To get somewhere within the city without relying on public transport (not only the filthy subway but also including Lyft, Uber and Via).
2. To be able to go out of town over the weekend without the hassle of finding an available rental car. It sometimes was really tough and overpriced to get a car for the weekend, especially when the weather forecast for the weekend was good.
Usually, any $20,000 - $30,000 car would have been more than enough for the above mentioned purposes.
But we both knew that we did not want to buy a car which would not excite us every single time we drive it, whether it is a short trip in the city or to somewhere in Upstate NY.
Living pretty close from work (Lower Manhattan), the car would not be used for commutes when life here in the city returns to normal. It will only be used over the weekend.
The car should have a modest amount of power, have AWD, sound great and sporty, offer options of both a comfortable and sporty ride, have space in the back for larger items (road trips). Fuel economy was not an important factor.
First we checked out options in the sporty compact SUV segment by BMW and Mercedes. They were ok but not convincing enough to think about buying a particular model new, used or CPO.
Next option: Porsche Macan, to be specific a Macan GTS with certain options. We had a 911.1 GTS in the family back in Korea, so the GTS variant was the most appealing.
Having the options of getting a new car, used car or CPO car, we had to decide which route to choose. Buying a new GTS would have cost around $90-95K without dealer discounts. But in the end, we decided not to spend too much on our "first car" here in the US, so we decided to look for a CPO vehicle with the options I want.
There were interesting CPO vehicles nationwide but too far away. Traveling far to take a look at the car in the pandemic situation made no sense so it had to be somewhere close.
I then saw this one CPO 2017 Macan GTS in Carrara White at Porsche Westwood.
So, we went to check it out. It had around 26,000 miles on it and was very clean inside and outside.
After deciding to buy the car, the long and complicated process of purchasing the car began - the finance department person was great to work with, but the sales person was painful. The only reason why I did not walk away from this car was that it was the only Macan GTS with the options I wanted in the 2-300 miles distance area.
The sales person who had 10 years of experience at a different dealership had just recently started to work at Porsche Westwood so he himself was getting to know the new dealership's workflow - which is fine and I completely understand. What is not fine is that he would become passive, not reachable whenever there is something important which he has to find out and inform me about. I will not mention his name but I really hope that he will be more professional when it comes to dealing and communicating with clients, especially when there is a problem at the dealership's end. You can't simply avoid talking to a client whenever there is a problem..
The problem I discovered with my Macan GTS was that it was being sold as a CPO vehicle although they didn't perform any of the CPO related services.
Having read many posts about CPO vehicles, I had requested a CPO inspection report from the very beginning after making my deposit but I did not receive a credible report for a few weeks. At one point, they admitted that they must have forgotten to perform the actual CPO services.
Long (very tiring) story short - I heard excuses why it was mistakenly not serviced by the head of the service department himself, then they eventually performed all the necessary services, I got it inspected, all seems fine up until now. I have driven around 3500 miles so far in 2 1/2 months and so far no issues.
Another headache caused during the purchase process was the protective film service I had added upon purchase of the car to not have to deal with it later on in NYC. I was told that it will be installed by professionals in the area - Automotive Elegance. The XPEL PPF for the front parts of the car were applied in an interesting way - far from what I had been promised and explained. The PPF was not wrapped around the panels but instead the person who worked on it made "Picasso inspired" cuts which were clearly visible. He didn't seem to have bothered cutting straight lines. After seeing this, I requested a refund for this artistic application of PPF and 2 1/2 months later I finally got my money back for that. I will have this redone locally in the near future.
Things I did to the car after the purchase:
Although the purchase procedure was not as straightforward and painless as I wish it would have been, I am still happy about the fact that we have endured the long process to get this car. My wife and I, we are both satisfied with the car itself and look forward to driving it as often and many miles as possible.
And finally, here are photos I have taken over the past few months.
although I have been a member of this forum for the past three months, I have solely been an active reader of many many posts.
Up until the purchase of our Macan GTS, many posts of this forum were a great help to get a better understanding of the car, the purchase process and what to be aware of. Thank you everyone!
Having read many great posts, I thought I'd share my story of ending up with a Macan GTS.
So let's begin. In mid August, my wife and I purchased a CPO Macan GTS (2017 model year) with around 26,000 miles.
Major options on the car are:
- Carrara White Metallic
- Leather Interior in Black/Garnet Red
- Sport Chrono Package
- Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)
- LED headlights incl. Porsche Dynamic Light System Plus (PDLS+)
- Power Seats (14-way) with Memory Package
- Seat Ventilation (Front)
MSRP of the car was $85,000.
Up until the whole pandemic situation, we never thought that we would need nor buy a car living in Brooklyn NYC, since everything was quite easily and safely reachable via public transport. In addition, we never thought about actually paying the absurd monthly parking fees in my area.
After about six months of "working from home" and truly getting annoyed / frustrated by the whole situation, we started to think of purchasing a car for the following reasons:
1. To get somewhere within the city without relying on public transport (not only the filthy subway but also including Lyft, Uber and Via).
2. To be able to go out of town over the weekend without the hassle of finding an available rental car. It sometimes was really tough and overpriced to get a car for the weekend, especially when the weather forecast for the weekend was good.
Usually, any $20,000 - $30,000 car would have been more than enough for the above mentioned purposes.
But we both knew that we did not want to buy a car which would not excite us every single time we drive it, whether it is a short trip in the city or to somewhere in Upstate NY.
Living pretty close from work (Lower Manhattan), the car would not be used for commutes when life here in the city returns to normal. It will only be used over the weekend.
The car should have a modest amount of power, have AWD, sound great and sporty, offer options of both a comfortable and sporty ride, have space in the back for larger items (road trips). Fuel economy was not an important factor.
First we checked out options in the sporty compact SUV segment by BMW and Mercedes. They were ok but not convincing enough to think about buying a particular model new, used or CPO.
Next option: Porsche Macan, to be specific a Macan GTS with certain options. We had a 911.1 GTS in the family back in Korea, so the GTS variant was the most appealing.
Having the options of getting a new car, used car or CPO car, we had to decide which route to choose. Buying a new GTS would have cost around $90-95K without dealer discounts. But in the end, we decided not to spend too much on our "first car" here in the US, so we decided to look for a CPO vehicle with the options I want.
There were interesting CPO vehicles nationwide but too far away. Traveling far to take a look at the car in the pandemic situation made no sense so it had to be somewhere close.
I then saw this one CPO 2017 Macan GTS in Carrara White at Porsche Westwood.
So, we went to check it out. It had around 26,000 miles on it and was very clean inside and outside.
After deciding to buy the car, the long and complicated process of purchasing the car began - the finance department person was great to work with, but the sales person was painful. The only reason why I did not walk away from this car was that it was the only Macan GTS with the options I wanted in the 2-300 miles distance area.
The sales person who had 10 years of experience at a different dealership had just recently started to work at Porsche Westwood so he himself was getting to know the new dealership's workflow - which is fine and I completely understand. What is not fine is that he would become passive, not reachable whenever there is something important which he has to find out and inform me about. I will not mention his name but I really hope that he will be more professional when it comes to dealing and communicating with clients, especially when there is a problem at the dealership's end. You can't simply avoid talking to a client whenever there is a problem..
The problem I discovered with my Macan GTS was that it was being sold as a CPO vehicle although they didn't perform any of the CPO related services.
Having read many posts about CPO vehicles, I had requested a CPO inspection report from the very beginning after making my deposit but I did not receive a credible report for a few weeks. At one point, they admitted that they must have forgotten to perform the actual CPO services.
Long (very tiring) story short - I heard excuses why it was mistakenly not serviced by the head of the service department himself, then they eventually performed all the necessary services, I got it inspected, all seems fine up until now. I have driven around 3500 miles so far in 2 1/2 months and so far no issues.
Another headache caused during the purchase process was the protective film service I had added upon purchase of the car to not have to deal with it later on in NYC. I was told that it will be installed by professionals in the area - Automotive Elegance. The XPEL PPF for the front parts of the car were applied in an interesting way - far from what I had been promised and explained. The PPF was not wrapped around the panels but instead the person who worked on it made "Picasso inspired" cuts which were clearly visible. He didn't seem to have bothered cutting straight lines. After seeing this, I requested a refund for this artistic application of PPF and 2 1/2 months later I finally got my money back for that. I will have this redone locally in the near future.
Things I did to the car after the purchase:
- Install a 2 channel dash cam powered by a dedicated external battery pack which will be charged when the car is running.
- Install the Niche Technologies Convenience Module.
- Replace the orange side markers to white markers.
Although the purchase procedure was not as straightforward and painless as I wish it would have been, I am still happy about the fact that we have endured the long process to get this car. My wife and I, we are both satisfied with the car itself and look forward to driving it as often and many miles as possible.
And finally, here are photos I have taken over the past few months.
