Picking Up Your New Porsche at the Factory

If you buy a new Porsche, there’s a service that lets you travel to the factory in Germany and pick up your car in person. It’s called Factory Collection, and apparently around 15 customers use it each day. The program has been running for 65 years.

That’s amazing.

If you live in Europe, making the trip to collect your car sounds like a great idea. But traveling all the way from Japan to pick it up would be quite an undertaking… Then I learned about this option:

A package is available for Porsche customers in North America that combines picking up their new car with a European road trip. Porsche organizes a trip that includes the destinations chosen by the customer. The company takes care of everything, from arranging a personalized trip with hotel stays to shipping the car (in this case, to Canada). Once the trip is over, you can drop off your car in Zuffenhausen or Leipzig, or in a city in any of 16 European countries. Porsche then ships it to your home country by sea.
＊A Moment of Joy with Porsche – Porsche Japan

So you can collect your Porsche in Germany, then have it shipped home by sea. Shipping a car from Germany to Japan seems to take about one to two months, which means that even if you go to pick up your Porsche, it might not arrive at your home in Japan for another two months.

In that case, I wonder if there’s much point in making the trip. And how much would it cost, anyway?

A Service Not Available in Japan

I got curious and looked into it, but couldn’t find a single Japanese-language article about the service. You’d think a Porsche fan in Japan might use Factory Collection and write about the experience on their blog, but I couldn’t find any accounts.

The official Porsche website says:

For details, go to “Service & Accessories” → “Factory Collection” in the menu on www.porsche.com.*

So I checked, but when I selected Japan as my region, the Factory Collection option disappeared. Then I noticed this:

*This service is not available in some countries.

Oh! Could Japan be one of the countries where it’s not available? ←It turns out Japan is not eligible.