Dealership list brochures Options

[JeffBowlsby]

I'd like to assemble a collection of all Dealership lists where 914s were sold. Have one? I have one from one of my 1974 cars and am happy to email a .pdf of it to anyone who asks. Mine is dated September 1973. If you have a different one can you email me a .pdf of it? I hope to ultimately expand this collection to dealership-logoed swag - license plate frames, keyfobs etc...anything we can find.

Mine is code 36-69-12050 8th edition.

email them to me at: jeff-dot-bowlsby-at-sbcglobal-dot-net

[bandjoey]

Not a brochure but dealer info. Hope this helps.

Found this about Forest Lane Porsche Audi in Dallas. A brief magazine article and an ad. Article is 1987 and the ad 1982.
I bought a 914-6 from them back in 71.

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Operation Luna

We Help Porsche Drive To The Moon

VW&Porsche magazine
March 1987, page 82

I had not been to Mexico in years. As a kid, Mexico was a neat place to go. You could camp out on the beach and shoot off fireworks anytime you wanted. In town you could barter with the storekeepers to get the cheapest price on keen-o things like switchblade knives.

Then I started getting older, and as my friends would go to Mexico they would come back with horror stories about how they had been minding their own business (usually in a bar somewhere) and had been thrown in jail until they could buy their way out. I didn't drink, had never been in a bar, and wasn't planning on starting either habit, but still I figured that Mexico was not the place to be.

Then the call came. Drive to Mexico City … to the pyramids of Teotihuacan … to the Temple of the Moon? In a Porsche 944S? For Porsche? With Gerhard Plattner? ?You bet,? I replied in a heartbeat.

Think about it. Gerhard Plattner has driven Volkswagen and Porsche vehicles all over the world. This is one cat who knows how to travel. We will probably have a Porsche chase car, secret caches of special Porsche fuel, stay in special Porsche hotels that lie along our special Porsche-planned route … it promised to be the ginchiest thing since Kookie lent out his comb. The down side, as it was explained to me, was that we would be expected to observe all speed limits; the eyes of the world were upon us. Sigh.

To get to Dallas by noon on Saturday I had to board the plane before seven in Los Angeles. This is what is known as an inauspicious start. I got to Dallas okay, and after a small mix-up located the shuttle bus that the Texian Inn had sent out to collect me. The sky was threatening to rain again but the thermometer was hinting that it might be sleet. I figured that Gerhard would know what to do when he got into town.

The plan was that I would arrive in Dallas a few hours before Gerhard and check into the Texian. The Texian was chosen because it was right next to Forest Lane Porsche, our rendezvous point as we converged from opposite ends of the United States. The first leg of the journey Gerhard was sharing with race driver Price Cobb, the latest winner of the Porsche Cup. Gerhard would then take a couple of hours off while I put some miles on the car driving it around Texas. Sunday we would leave for Mexico with a refreshed Gerhard.

This plan lasted until I was about half-way done filling in the hotel personal information card. At that point, Gerhard walked through the door and introduced himself. Judging by his appearance, he had been in town quite a while. 55 miles-per-hour indeed! Would I like to leave for Mexico right away? I would, so I picked up my bags and followed Gerhard to Forest Lane Porsche, where the car was getting an oil change, a bath, and a general looking over before the trip south.

After I threw my things in the back, Gerhard handed me a map and a highlighter pen. "Here, Greg," he said. "You choose the route." In case you are wondering, there was no chase car either.

I stuck with the roads that made the fattest lines on the map. No sense getting off in the middle of nowhere, I thought, eying the cellular phone in the 944S that would do us absolutely no good at all once we left the Dallas metropolitan area.

Gerhard still had some preparations to make, so I wandered over to the shop area where a 944 motor was sitting on the floor, partially disassembled. We had just dropped our 924S off at the dealership in Los Angeles so they could fix for the second time a small problem in the oil cooler that allowed oil and engine coolant to comingle freely. The car had been there a week already, with no hopes of getting it out soon because the new and improved parts were back-ordered to Stuttgart. The motor on the floor was waiting for those same parts, and it was interesting to speculate on how long we would have to hole up in Bueno Loco, Mexico, when that same seal in our 944S motor let go.

Before leaving Forest Lane Porsche we shook hands all around with everyone, including owner Kirk Franceschini. Kirk is the kind of guy who pops into my mind when I think of a Texan. He's big and self-confident in a quiet way, and you know he gets the job done. Kirk let slip to Gerhard and me that Forest Lane is the largest Porsche dealership in the country, selling nearly 500 cars last year. After he left, Gerhard turned to me and whispered, "We didn't sell 500 cars in all of Austria last year." It would be interesting to know how many cars Forest Lane could sell if Texas wasn't in the depths of a recession, and if there wasn't another Porsche dealer right across town.