Gutierrez pulls in to the Findlay Volkswagen dealership a little before 9 p.m., where Robert Malthouse and Tom Hlady, the sales manager, are waiting patiently. Malthouse snaps photos from his phone while Gutierrez maneuvers the Golf R off the truck.
“I’ve been driving everybody here nuts waiting for this,” he tells me.
A VW worker works quickly to remove the wrapping. Malthouse hops in, and searches for the keys.
“Check the door,” Hlady yells to him.
“Oh,” Malthouse says.
Gutierrez offloads the rest of the cars while Malthouse works on his in the dealership’s garage, filling the wiper fluid basin, tightening the lug nuts, and attaching the license plate.
When he finishes, he changes quickly out of his work clothes — and hops in.
A left turn, another left, and a few miles later, he pulls into his garage, where boxes of accessories ordered in the months leading up to the car’s arrival line the right hand side. Malthouse’s girlfriend Melissa meets him as he steps out of the car. She breathes a sigh of relief, glad the wait is finally over. It seems he’s been driving her a bit nuts.
And with that, the car comes to rest. Malthouse puts his arm around Melissa and stares at a car that had just traveled over railroads, onboard a ship, across an ocean, through a canal, onto a truck and over hundreds of miles of desert to his garage.
With an ever-present smile, he thinks out loud: “I should probably put some gas in this.”
