Porsche Targa Art Car: The Middle East's Icons of Porsche 75th Celebration
In November of 2023, I had the great pleasure of heading to Dubai to bring a classic Porsche owner's vision to life. He informed me that the regional Porsche festival, Icons of Porsche, was approaching rapidly, and that he had an idea to create a custom 70s-themed livery for the car... but he wanted it to be hand painted on the car, live in front of an audience of 60,000 spectators over the span of 2 days. No pressure.
Saeed Al Shamsi of 68 Reserve was the owner who bravely approached me with the project and was open to whatever ideas I came up with. Since it would have been my first time being in Dubai, I wanted to incorporate the region's tone into the design the best I could- as funny as it is, the car actually came from Florida (where I am from and just moved back to less than a month prior to receiving his message), so it felt like a sign of something great.
With two weeks until showtime, I instantly agreed to his offer, and began sketching out ideas that we could use as a skeleton for the design. I took a deep dive into what the region's artwork, calligraphy, and textiles have looked like throughout history, and absolutely fell in love with what I saw. Oranges, purples, and earth tones galore. It is understood in the region's artworks that contrasting colors create a troubling visual experience for the viewer, but complimentary colors that are drawn from the colors of a desert sunset, for example, are soothing and will leave the viewer at ease. The "canvas" was a mid-70s Targa adorned in a light beige paint, and so I figured I would create a palette based around this philosophy of invoking peace from the viewer.
Having the unfortunate demise of being an American who cannot fathom how the Arabic language and its different dialects are read or written, I unfortunately had to pass on the idea of doing Arabic calligraphy on the car for fear of accidentally writing something incorrectly. I did, however, still want to ensure there would be some kind of Arabic writing on the car somewhere and would have Saeed give me a hand with it later down the line. While going through articles and videos though, I then stumbled upon a form of traditional weaving called Al Sadu. Al Sadu is weaving done in a horizontal pattern which often features many colors that would go along with my idea of keeping neutrality in the livery. I planned on doing some kind of pattern with the paint to pay homage to the Bedouin women who created the style - after all, it is also a woman who is tasked with painting on the car.
For the shape of the livery itself, I wanted it to float along the car's natural curves and flow well visually- again, going off of the philosophy of creating something aesthetically pleasing to the viewer and not something disruptive. In the 70s, all liveries were painted onto a car because vinyl films did not come until a good while later, which gave the owners the option to change it out at any point that they would like. This is why on modern race cars, we see plenty more sponsorship logos with higher levels of complexity in the overall design. In that era, less was more. Ian Callum, Jaguar's director of design was once quoted as saying, “Fundamentally, stripes matter; they accentuate a car’s forms. By using stripes in a certain way, you can give a car a unity that it might not otherwise have.” A 911 is certainly a car that you want to keep preserved visually because that silhouette is solidified in automotive design history forever as one of the greatest of all time. I have painted more Porsches on canvas now than any other vehicle by a long shot, and so the hips of a 911 were the focus of my initial sketches. I would plan on doing further study once I arrived in Dubai prior to the event.
When I arrived in the country, I got a few of hours of sleep, and he picked me up bright and early outside of the hotel lobby in his black 992 GT3RS. We took the car around the rural parts of Dubai near where his standalone garage was located, and I brought my Sony camera with me to shoot along the way to gather some more inspiration.
We drove by a fork in the road where the city paved around a tree, and he explained that it was a species protected by the government. The Ghaf Tree has an ability to stay green through the blistering heat and lack of water in its native desert climate, which makes it a symbol of resilience and unfaltering strength. We pulled over to take some pictures, and I made a comment that, "It's neat to see this car here because its legacy is as unwavering as the Ghaf."
The following day, we'd gone around the city collecting supplies, er, trying to. All paint stores that carried One-Shot pin striping paint and equivalents were closed. We stopped at Ikea to pick up a rug, and after Saeed and I bickered for an hour over if the rug was large enough to be placed under the car, he made the ultimate decision to get it. He would later deny this, but he indeed picked the rug. Saeed had also visited a local tailor prior to my arrival to have a custom jumpsuit made for me, so we picked that up after I'd tried it on and confirmed it fit. I got some brushes, mixing cups, tape, rope, and string amongst other things from Ace Hardware, and the following morning we headed into the city to a body shop to have some paint mixed for us. Yep, sometimes you have to improvise. I spoke English, Saeed spoke Arabic, and the body shop staff spoke English(ish) and Punjabi, so Saeed stood in the corner laughing at me and recording while they looked at me as if I had 3 heads, asking for them to mix maybe 7 different colors in small quantities with a kind of additive mixed in so I would be able to apply it with a paint brush. To quote them, "Bring the car here, do not put paint on with a brush. This is wrong." It took some (hilarious) convincing, but they did eventually oblige to our insane requests. That afternoon, I arrived and got to work!
I began by laying string from the front of the passenger side of the car to the taillight, so I could then apply tape exactly where the curves of the car were, and once the tape was applied with guidelines marked out, I started sketching my Sadu pattern in the blank space with a pencil. Once this was done and it was time to lay the first brushstrokes, quite an audience had gathered around and my anxiety started to set in. People were asking questions everywhere, and I was starting to shake. I had no clue how this paint would behave, but I was about to find out in front of a large group of people watching me. I stopped to put my earbuds in, turned the music all the way up, and went in. People watched on in awe, curiosity, and utter horror as piece by piece, the livery was starting to take form. After the first hour, I zoned out completely, and just felt like it was another painting that I was bringing to life.
By nighttime, I finally stopped for a bit to eat and drink, and once I was ready to keep going, I'd noticed a girl around my age sitting behind me with her legs folded under her. She gave me a smile, and I turned to Saeed to ask how long she'd been there for. He said she'd been watching for hours at this point. I pulled my earbuds out and lifted the rope for her to join me, and she didn't know what was happening at first- I wasn't trying to scare her LOL. I had her join me beside the car, and after showing her where to paint, we chatted for a good 30 minutes while she finished the section together. I gave her a hug and thanked her for watching, and shortly afterwards wrapped up my work for the day.
The following day went easier, and having already done it by this point, my nerves were gone. The paint wanted to do everything except what it was supposed to, but I made it work, and Saeed was kind enough to get me some Beats headphones for this workday so my earbud cords wouldn't get caught around my arms. He also got me a belt because I had comically tied my jumper back with a spare piece of yarn on day 1. I was terribly disappointed that the car was not finished once the day was over, but Saeed was calling me insane for working as long as I had and told me to call it quits. This was probably for the better, but I'm just stubborn as all hell and hate leaving a project unfinished. 
Following the final reveal of the art car, DRVN Cafe asked to feature it as an exhibition piece along with other Porsche art installations for 4 months. We also finished off my trip by visiting a falconry at sunset, and I got to introduce the prince of Dubai's absolutely stunning pure white gyrfalcon hybrid to a GT3RS for some closing photos to sum up my wonderful project with Saeed, 68 Reserve, and Porsche Middle East.
I do believe our Targa set the tone for how the production of future RR7 art cars would go. To be able to create artwork that is more than just brushstrokes on a car is something I hope to do more of- I want people to ask questions, and to be able to learn about the car's history through the elements present within the design. It was an honor Saeed, thank you for choosing me to bring your idea to life.