New Car part 2

There are a few Mercedes dealers around here. Outside of Toyota, Mercedes might be the most popular car in Taiwan. They have a wide variety of models, and I think a lot of people buy the cheaper A and C classes just to say they have a Mercedes. If Bentley had a $30,000 model, there would be thousands of Bentleys on the road. Of course, like everyone else, Mercedes also has SUVs.

I was never going to buy a Mercedes, of any class, so I test drove an AMG GT 63, which is a four door sedan based on the E class. While it looks like an E sedan, it has a 577 horsepower 4.0 liter biturbo V8 and a top speed of 311 km/h. It is far more powerful than I need, and with a sticker price of $3,500,000 (元), it was never an option. But it was fun to drive.

It might seem like a bad idea to test a $3,500,000 car while shopping for a $700,000 car, but I figured as long as I was driving a bunch of cars, I might as well go all out.

Despite the power and excellent handling, I was a little disappointed in the Mercedes. A car like that should be fully manual, but this one had a nine speed automatic transmission. The driver can change gears when the car is in manual mode, but there is no clutch pedal or gearshift. You shift gears by tapping paddles on the steering wheel. I understand why they did it that way. That is how the Formula 1 race cars shift gears, and people like to think they are racing while they wait in traffic. But driving to the grocery store is nothing like winning the World Cup, or whatever trophy Formula 1 drivers get. I like the full tactile control of a manual transmission. Tapping a switch on the steering wheel does nothing for me.

The AMG GT also had something close to a stick for shifting, instead of the paddles, but it could not be moved in a standard H pattern, or any pattern. You slightly tap on it, just like the paddles. Touching the stick without actually shifting and not putting your foot on the clutch feels strange. The paddles make more sense. Unfortunately, Mercedes is not the only car maker to change from manual to fake manual. Finding a real stick in Taiwan is impossible, unless you go used.

The car had a lot of bells and whistles, and someone got paid too much to name everything. The interior was not dark gray. It was “dinamica microfibre black with red stitching and a matt carbon fibre trim”. The suspension and all of the sensors and cameras had their own trademarked names, though they were the same as everything on every other comparable car. You can open the doors with the remote, which every car can probably do now, but with Mercedes it is “keyless-go”.

As long as I was in the luxury neighborhood, I paid a visit to Porsche. I knew I was never going to buy a 911. They are far too expensive, and I need room for more than two passengers. I am usually the person who takes everyone to the airport. A tiny sports car is not ideal. I knew I wanted room for at least four people and maybe a suitcase or two. At Porsche, that means SUVs. The Cayenne is popular around here, but again, I want a car, not a truck. Not even a Porsche truck. While looking at a 911 Carrera Cabriolet that I was never going to buy in a million years, I got to talking with the salesman. He knew I was not going to buy his $5,800,000 car, especially when I complained about the lack of space for passengers and luggage. But he thought, as incorrectly as they all do, that I might be in the market for an SUV.

When I look like me and live in a place like Taiwan, everyone inevitably asks where I am from. When I told the salesman that I just moved from Hong Kong, he was far more interested than usual. For years, I have been telling people that Hong Kong is not all that exotic when you live there, and now I am surrounded by those who completely agree. But since I am from Hong Kong, the salesman assumed I would be familiar with right hand drive cars. And he was correct. Every car I borrowed or rented in Hong Kong had its steering wheel on the right side. When the salesman asked me if I might be interested in such a car, we both saw the opportunity in front of us. He saw someone who might actually want to buy this car and I saw a car that the dealership was having a hard time selling.

Taiwan, like most of the world, is left hand drive and right hand traffic. Hong Kong, like most of the former British occupied territories, is the opposite. Porsche, from a left hand drive country, is more than happy to make right hand drive cars. Those never go to Taiwan. Except this car. Someone custom ordered a right hand Panamera Turbo from the dealership and, for whatever reason, never bothered to pick it up. Maybe he went bankrupt. Maybe he died. I don't know. They were never going to give me a customer's private information. What they would tell me was that someone from either Hong Kong or Australia, maybe even the UK, ordered this car with all the details and extras he wanted, and now it was taking up space at the dealership. They could not sell it, I assume because the steering wheel was on the wrong side, and eventually, it got older. It is a 2019 and not at all used, but everyone wants 2021s now, and even the 2020s are falling out of favor. Time was not on the dealership's side. The older this car got, despite having no miles on it, the lower they would have to price it.

One of my first thoughts was that maybe I should wait a while. If I could be patient, I could really take advantage of their dilemma. Then again, it was always possible that someone else from Australia or Hong Kong might want to buy it. I have never actually met anyone here from Hong Kong, but there are more than a few Australians running around. Or the dealer might just return it to Porsche and take a bath, minus whatever the person who ordered it paid up front. There must be some kind of system for cars that never sell.

One of the first things I did was test drive a new 2020 Panamera Turbo. It was not the same car, obviously, but had the same type of engine and most of the same modern bits and pieces. It was also safer to test drive. Crashing the car they wanted me to buy would not have been good for anyone. Although, I suppose that would have solved their problem. I doubt they want anyone to crash their test cars, but they have plenty more. And the only reason crashing was even a consideration was because of that steering wheel. Right hand drive is nothing new to me, but driving closer to the curb is.

I can now safely say that the 2020 Panamera Turbo is an incredible machine. It looks nothing like a sports car. It is technically a sedan, though it has something close to a hatchback. It has a similar engine to the Mercedes AMG GT 63, though marginally less fuel efficient. It can supposedly go from 0 to 100 in 3.8 seconds. Not that anyone could ever get up to 100 in this traffic. When I was test driving the Mercedes, that salesman told me how fast it could go, but the cars in front of me when the red light turned green could probably do 0 to 40 in a few minutes. Other than freeway on-ramps, instant speed is useless here.

With the discount, I was definitely interested in the right hand 2019 Panamera. But the price was still too high, and I had done absolutely no research into this car until after I got home.

The next day, I got a call from the Porsche salesman's manager. After a year of trying to sell this car, they might have seen me as their last hope. Every car salesman wants to make a sale, but you are almost never their only customer.

Instead of waiting, I haggled like a pro. Or like someone who lived in Hong Kong for a decade. There was no way I could ever pay full price, but they had already marked it down considerably. I simply needed to see how low they could go. I always assumed I would buy a Toyota anyway, so walking away again was an easy option. We all knew I was in the driver's seat.

If the option ever presents itself, I wholeheartedly recommend buying a car that no one else wants from a dealer who cannot unload it to save his life. Because it is a 2019 and most people are waiting for 2021, and because that steering wheel scared everyone else away, I took home a brand new, more or less, Porsche Panamera Turbo for almost nothing. My bank seems to think it cost more than nothing, and it was more than any Toyota I would have bought, but far less than a brand new, more or less, Porsche should ever be.

The downside is that someone else ordered it, so it has everything someone else wanted. The exterior is “amethyst metallic”, which is dark purple, and the interior is “saddle brown with black trim and sweetgum wood finish”, also known as black and dark brown. I would have never picked those colors, but I have seen the available Porsche color combinations and it could have been much worse. It took a few minutes to adjust to a steering wheel on the right and opposing traffic on the left, but I am used to it now. The next time I drive a normal car, I will have to adapt back.

The good news is that Mystery Man ordered a 21 speaker Burmester 3D surround sound stereo. Since the car is extremely quiet, outside of sport mode, a good stereo is a nice touch. In sport mode, the car makes a lot of noise, which I suppose is what sports car people want. Instead of four seats, it has “4+1” seats, which is four seats with something of a seat in the middle. Anyone larger than a teenager might not enjoy that +1 seat. The other four are quite comfortable and supposedly adjustable 14 different ways, each with their own climate control.

Like probably all new cars, it has sensors everywhere. I thought I would never use the reverse camera, but I have found it convenient, especially at night. The rear window is large enough to see through, but that rear camera shows everything and knows exactly how close the nearest obstructions are. The car also beeps when another car is too close, but I have to find a way to disable that. This is Taiwan. There will always be another car too close.

Whatever car you drive in Taiwan, it will get hit by something. Maybe another car, definitely a scooter. I assume that whenever I park in public, sooner or later, I will return to a new scratch or ding. Fortunately, the dealer will take care of any minor issues, and they have a warehouse full of paint in my color. If they ever have to change the color, that would not be the worst thing in the world. When someone inevitably crashes into it, I will not have a heart attack. Instead, I will let all the airbags all over the place do their job, take whatever is left to the authorized mechanic a few kilometers from my apartment, and let insurance foot the bill.

What I like most about my new car is probably its most useless feature where I live. Though it looks like and is as comfortable as a luxury sedan, it has the engine of a sports car. When I am at a red light, I can feel in my hands how quickly I could effortless race to the next red light, if only all those other cars were not in my way.

One of the early contenders.  

A nice enough car, but a little too weak.  

A far more powerful car, and far too expensive.

Porsche has a website where you can enter your car's code and it will list every little specification and extra loaded into your car. Unfortunately, the pictures are always left hand drive, no matter where you buy the car. I thought maybe that was only because I bought it in Taiwan, but I checked the UK site and every picture there was also left hand drive.

Other than the steering wheel placement, and the background image, this is essentially my new purple car.