Imagine for a moment: it’s a late, hot night in Kuwait. You’re on the highway, flying between speed cameras in a Guards Red Porsche 911 Targa. It sounds pretty perfect, right?
Well, if you’re crammed in the back, sitting sideways across the back seats, I can tell you it’s pretty f*cking far from perfect.
That’s how I found myself, one fateful night during my recent tour of the Middle East. Majeed, the owner of the aforementioned Targa, had effectively kidnapped me, luring me into his car with the promise of a Porsche unlike any other I’d ever seen before.
Had I known it was an hour-long journey, I may have reconsidered, but as we pulled off the manic, exhilarating, borderline terrifying highway out of Kuwait City, my excitement grew. This was met with intrigue as we headed further into the barren land, pulling into a walled-off compound, complete with a guard tower above the entrance.
I extracted myself from the 991-shaped torture chamber, spine now resembling a question mark, and looked around. The grounds themselves, though large, were unassuming; a wooden pagoda and two large garages were the main features on this side of the compound.
That’s when a door opened, and I was struck with a beam of light from the direction of four gorgeous Porsches: a 993 Turbo, 996 GT2, 997 Turbo, and the previously alluded to star of the night, a 997 Turbo 4S. I’ll get to that shortly…
Our host for the night, Khaled, welcomed us in with a firm handshake and a wide smile. Biggie Smalls was playing on the TV, the glossy floors reflected the neutral white lights, and fresh Arabic coffee was brought in for us. The garage centrepiece was a lounge, complete with beautiful furniture, an extraordinary collection of memorabilia, and – the elephant in the room – a taxidermied giraffe mounted on the wall. Yes, it’s real.
Beyond the collection of books on the shelf, the tennis and basketballs signed by world champions, and the multitude of stunning scale models on display, two items on the wall really marked this out as a collection of a different calibre than the norm.
On Gerry’s left, another signed note, this time from Ferdinand Porsche. Speaking of, that curiously-badged, blue 997 Turbo 4S? Well, that’s a car that was never meant to see the light of day, but not as an in-house Porsche special.
If you have the money and influence, you can have any car you want built – beyond any typical customer program. After all, a brand can’t refuse to build you a car if you have the power to buy most of the company, should you wish.
In this case, a 997 Turbo S with exclusive badging in 24K gold, a leather-trimmed interior, and yellow detailing. Not only that, but the car doesn’t even have delivery mileage on its odometer. No, it was plucked off the production line, had its bespoke trimmings fitted, and has spent the rest of its life sitting as an art piece.
You can call that a shame, you can argue that high-performance machines are meant to be driven, but considering the owner’s other cars see regular use, that’s an argument you’ll lose. Khaled wasn’t the Turbo 4S’s original owner, but he came upon it by luck and couldn’t refuse. He jokes that the blue Porsche ruined his ‘silver streak,’ with his end goal being a turbocharged silver 911 of every generation.
After looking around and engaging in some lovely conversation, I grew curious about the second garage, adjacent to the Porsche palace. Khaled almost laughed it off, referring to it as the ‘dirty building’ – where I assumed he’d keep buggies and quad bikes, as are so common in the Gulf. I’d assumed right, but also very wrong.
As I peeked through the door, I caught a glimpse of a Lexus LX 570, a typical sight in well-to-do areas of the region. Less common was the Rolls-Royce Silver Seraph parked next to it, the grand finale to the iconic Bentley and Rolls platform-sharing era, while the BAC Mono tucked away next to it was rarer still.
But it was the enormous shelves, stacked with trophies, that really caught my eye. What were they for? Well, the answer to that was parked across the garage: a squad of V8 drag cars under wraps, as well as a heavily-built R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R and a fibreglass Ford Mustang Cobra. Many thousands of horsepower, all tucked away in the ‘dirty garage.’
It’s easy to judge a book by its cover, and when you hear of car collectors with undriven supercars, it’s all too easy to come to a none-too-flattering conclusion. Yet my night in Kuwait felt like a fever dream of outrageous supercars, hosted by a down-to-earth entrepreneur who also happened to be a top player in the Middle Eastern drag racing scene.
There was even a Renault Twizy. Absolutely insane.
