Delivering Porsche 918 Spyder Big Deal at Dealership

When Jean “Charlie” Huth heard that a Porsche 918 Spyder was being delivered at Rusnak Westlake Porsche, he didn’t wait for an invitation. The 23-year old photographer raced to the dealership to ogle the pricey super car.

“I am a bit of a Porsche geek, and this is about as cool as it gets,” he says.

Cool indeed. The Porsche 918 Spyder is a plug-in hybrid electric race car with 887 hp that can hit 60 mph (97 km/L) from a standstill in 2.6 seconds. Only 918 were produced. 

It is a halo supercar for a company that produces many halo cars. Buying one, and being the dealership where a 918 was purchased, has its rewards.

“It is absolutely the most expensive production car Porsche makes,” Keith Goldberg, general manager of Rusnak Porsche Westlake in Thousand Oaks, CA, tells WardsAuto. The store is No.10 on the latest WardsAuto Dealer 500, a ranking of top dealerships in the U.S.

The basic (if one can use that word when writing about the 918) model starts at $845,000. The Porsche that Goldberg was delivering to an owner who asked that his name not be used came with the Weissach Package and other customizations, bumping the price above $1 million.

The owner, a semi-retired top executive at a pharmaceutical company wearing jeans and a baseball cap, was nonchalant about his new car, at least outwardly. What would he use the car for? “To get milk, buy groceries, get a newspaper,” he says.

But inside, the guy is clearly as much of a Porsche geek as Charlie Huth. It was love at first sight when the buyer saw a 918 prototype at the 2012 Los Angeles Auto Show.

The question wasn’t why buy this car, he says. “It is more like ‘why not?’ I have been enamored of this car since it came out.”

When it came time to configure his 918, the buyer decided to go with a Martini decal. Rather than the usual red, white, and blue look he chose a monochrome colored decal he had seen on a Porsche in a YouTube video. Then he decided the entire car would look good in monochrome.

Ordering a 918 requires a $200,000 deposit. The balance is due on the day the car ships from the plant in Zuffenhausen, Germany. For this buyer, that day was April 12. The delivery was on June 17.

This isn’t his only Porsche. He also owns a 20-year-old 993 Turbo S that he drives on weekends. He won’t consider selling that car because his adult autistic son loves it. “This is the only car he has locked in on,” says the buyer.  “When it went in for repairs, he asked, ‘Where is the black car?’” 

Rusnak Westlake Porsche is off the 101 freeway. Its sign is easy for drivers on the frequently congested roadway to see. The dealership moved there in 2012 from “a little side street,” says Goldberg. 

The 918 buyer lives in Orange County, CA, a 2-hour drive from Thousand Oaks on a good traffic day, which isn’t often in the Los Angeles area. He initially approached his local Porsche dealer about buying the 918, but the dealer didn’t want to take on the responsibility of selling one.

In Thousand Oaks on business in April, he saw the Rusnak store as he drove on the 101. He stopped to see if the dealership could order the 918.

The responsibility – and risk – of selling a 918 starts before the delivery and extends long after. So, however, do the rewards.

Each car is made to order, says David Donohue, 918 client relationship manager at Porsche Cars North America.

Once the car is ordered, the dealer is on the hook to buy it. And for a customer who is paying close to $1 million for a vehicle, forfeiting the $200,000 deposit would be onerous.

Designated Mechanic Bit Nervous

The dealership also must delegate a mechanic to be trained to work on the 918. At Rusnak Porsche Westlake, that is Larry Tewner, who has been a Porsche mechanic for a decade.

He needs two certifications to work on the 918. Because it is a PHEV, he needs high-voltage training, plus a 3-day hands-on course. 

Then there is the 5-day class to teach him to work on the 918 itself. In that class, they “took the car apart,” says Tewner.

He admits that working on such an expensive and complex car, which has both a race-car engine and a full-electric drivetrain, makes him a bit nervous.

“There is no room for error,” he says. “If you make a mistake, it is not going to be small.”

Selling a 918 also can be extremely rewarding for a Porsche dealership. “It is an accomplishment in our book to have the depth to handle a client of this nature,” says Goldberg.

It goes beyond simply feeling gratified, however. Through Porsche’s VIP program, a 918 customer has the right of first refusal on any specialty, limited-allocation model Porsche produces. The buyer also gets the right to buy one model per year of one or all of the production models. Those purchases do not count against the dealership’s allocation, says Donohue.

There are conditions. If the 918 is resold within six months of purchase, the owner loses the VIP benefit, and any additional cars the dealer has sold the 918 buyer count against the dealership’s allocation. 

If the buyer maintains the VIP status for three years, it’s extended to 10 years.

Any additional vehicle purchases must go through the original dealer. “This client has an open order book for any Porsche he wants for the next 10 years, sold through us,” says Goldberg.

The 918 buyer ordered the new 911 GT3 RS before he even received his 918, says Goldberg.

Porsche offers each 918 buyer the chance to buy a “Build Book” documenting each step of the production of the model. Usually the book costs E900 ($1,008). Rusnak Westlake Porsche gave the buyer the book as a gift. “It was the least we could do,” says Goldberg.

The buyer jokingly tells WardsAuto he’ll now have something to do besides watching Netflix.  He might be spending additional time at his computer, however.  He requested his Build Book in digital form.