The Holy Grail of Sharks, Million $ Cars, & Patrick Long
 

Saw a '95 GTS 5-spd on display Sat. There were approx 30 GTS 5-spds sold in the US in '95. These are $150K+ cars in top cond.

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Was at the Schonesland Region's 50th anniversary celebration in Des Moines, IA. The owner of the GTS drove up from the KC area. He said he bought it from someone in Seatle in 2008-2009 who was in the boat business and was feeling the pinch of the economic downturn. I bet he got it for a song. I think he said it has 80K mi. The driver's seat looked like that kind of mileage. He said he doesn't drive it much anymore (too many cars) and the AC needs repaired. He thought he might sell it in the future. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't have a chance to get it cleaned up once he got to DSM, but it was dirty even by black car standards. It was being displayed in the special Porsche section, as it should've been.

I was working on fixing the driver's armrest on my 89 and got it all back together Fri afternoon. I saw there was a section in the display lot for 928s, so I contacted the director of the show and asked if he needed another shark to display. I mentioned mine was a 5-spd and had won awards at numerous car shows. He responded immediately and said YES! So I got there Sat morning just before the show started and got her displayed.

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Got a ton of compliments and thank yous for bringing her over. This was her longest trip to date, although I've driven her many times to my hometown which is just a little shorter distance than DSM. She ran great and appears ready to tackle longer trips.

While there were plenty of great cars on display outside, there were 3 inside the facility that were spectacular - a 959, a Carrera GT, and a 918. There was supposed to be a 2nd Carrera GT but the owner was riding his bicycle and a tree fell on him, killing him instantly. When it's your time, it's your time.

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Featured speaker was Patrick Long. He had several stories he regaled about his past adventures, including driving the street version of the 963 at Laguna Seca last week. Prior to his speech, he walked around with young people who were the judges for the special display Porsches. He told them the significance of each car and then the judges marked their ballots. My understanding was they accumulated pts based on ext, int, ect, like they were real judges at a concours.

After the speech, I had a chance to personally chat with Patrick. Since he'd mentioned Mr Penske several times in his stories, I took the opportunity to request he ask Roger to put the DE at Indy back on the calendar. The event ran from 2015-2020. Roger bought Indy in 2020 and had the DE because it was on the calendar (although it was delayed to Oct from Aug due to COVID). After that, he didn't renew the contract. It was a great event and is missed by many. Thought I may never have a better chance to make a case for getting it back. Gotta strike when the iron is hot. The first pic is me putting in my request to Patrick.

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