Nobody tells you how unbelievably expensive car restoration is. After all, a factory-finish respray alone can cross the five-figure threshold, and that’s before you get into the hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of labor to take everything apart and put it back together with shiny new parts. It’s not the sort of process normally lavished on a vehicle you might see on a buy-here-pay-here lot, and yet, here we are. Someone had Porsche restore their 2009 Cayenne, and there’s something joyous about that.
Mind you, this isn’t just any heavily depreciated 16-year-old SUV: it’s an incredibly rare manual Cayenne GTS. The pairing of a 399-horsepower 4.8-liter V8 and a row-your-own six-speed manual gearbox in an SUV is unique, and it probably helped that this example only had around 50,000 miles on the clock when it was sent to Porsche for the full Sonderwunsch treatment. That being said, it’s still a 16-year-old car, and components like bushings and rubber fixtures can age just as much from time as they can from mileage.
As such, once the Cayenne arrived in Zuffenhausen, Porsche’s restoration experts went to town using the same sort of Factory Recommission process normally reserved for stuff like Carrera GT hypercars. Think restoration, but with a few tweaks. In addition to any necessary mechanical work, they fitted knobbly tires and a tow bar to pull an Airstream. Then they sprayed it in Black Olive paint, a subtle shade of dark green you’d normally need a paint-to-sample allocation to spec.
On the inside, this Cayenne has been completely retrimmed with English Green leather upholstery and seat inserts made of trippy Pasha cloth straight out of the 911 Spirit 70. The glovebox lining? Also Pasha.
The result is that this Cayenne genuinely looks brand new inside and out, aided by the fact that the Apple CarPlay and Android Auto-capable Porsche Classic Communication Management plus infotainment system isn’t compatible with facelifted E1 Cayennes. Right down to the Recession-era graphics on the navigation system, it’s like someone put in a mega-spec order in 2009 and it just arrived.
It’s worth noting that not only has Porsche continued to crank out parts for the first-generation Cayenne including skid plates and a Transsyberia-style spoiler, it’s also rolled out new ones including some graphics packages. It’s exceptionally rare for automakers to care this much about an aging SUV, but maybe this is a sign of things to come. The world at large might not be ready for collectable 2000s family rigs yet, but if enthusiasm exists, why not celebrate it?
As such, I love that the owner of this Cayenne adores it enough to have it shipped across the Atlantic for the full factory restoration program. I love that it would’ve been worth maybe $70,000 tops, but has likely seen multiples of that spent on it. While Porsche hasn’t divulged a figure for this build, the factory restoration process on other models can run hundreds of thousands of dollars. This 16-year-old SUV is the definition of doing it for the love of the game, and in an era where enthusiast cars are often viewed as speculative assets, dumping a load of money into one because it speaks to you is cool.
Top graphic image: Porsche
Oooh, that’s nice, but it’s probably for the best we don’t know what it really cost since that would make it less so.
The seats look fantastic, and that green paint! 😀
It has never occurred to me to line a glove box with anything, but it does make sense…center consoles typically have something inside, even if it’s just a rubberized coating. I really like it.
And I can totally relate to wanting this level of restoration; I would love to see this done for a more common vehicle.
Bring your tired first generation Mazda Miata back to Mazda and they will make it factory fresh again, they have been doing it at least since 2017:
https://www.thedrive.com/news/29942/mazda-will-restore-your-na-miata-roadster-to-factory-perfection-for-40k
I do like the Pasha pattern.
Do you guys think Toyota would do the same to their 5th gen Tercel?
Fourth gen is better; the fifth gen started development as the Japanese bubble burst and as such, was somewhat flimsier and more value engineered.
Don’t get me wrong: I like all Tercels, and the fifth gen remains a pinnacle of reliable and useful design.
Now let’s see someone do this with a Ford Tempo.
You could easily spend $250K on a Range Rover. I don’t know how much this restoration costs, but i bet in 5 years it will seem like an absolute bargain when you compare depreciation. And in the meantime, I know where I would rather be sitting.
I really like that interior, almost as much as I dislike that exterior color.
Sometimes I go to see the local ads on used Porsches, just to look for light airy interiors with tasteful options. Other times I still play with Porsche (and Aston) configurators and I usually end up with similar darker greens + tan brown + sand fabric setups.
I think this is great. If I had the money, I’d have sent my mk1 Legacy off to a high end shop for restoration and some improvement. It’s only not worth it if you care about market value, which is irrelevant if you’re keeping the car forever.
Whether an older car is better is entirely based on the balance of compromises that an individual values, but trying to quantify such a thing is probably the wrong way to look at it in the first place as a conversation about something like this is an emotional decision. Even if one might be able to argue this as being sensible, it’s ultimately justification for succumbing to sentiment.
Googling “Toyota Restoration”, finding nothing. I’d spend $20K fixing up my Matrix back to factory-new-Plus.
Getting lower than avg MPG lately. 22 combined instead of 25, which should be more like 27. First guess is the air filter.
Wrong wheel/tire combo for this GTS but amazing spec otherwise. The first gen Cayenne deserves preservation.
Get the movie camera guy from a few weeks ago in on this. He said he’d keep buying ’04 Cayenne Turbos forever, now he can.
While the Cayenne of that era is a great car I am amazed that someone would want to spend a fortune to restore one. I had a 2008 Cayenne from new ( auto, V8). It was an amazingly tough car that I had till 2022 and sold it to a neighbour with 217,000 miles on it, still with original engine and transmission.
I used it for long distance towing of track cars, offroading, Canadian winters and Arizona canyons. The thing was indestructible.
The issue here is that this car cannot be driven to its capability without destroying value. I suppose if it had great sentimental value it might make sense. Looks great but really a concours car rather than something to drive.
Are we sure about that? The photos show a LOT of sand. Are we sure this wasn’t sent from Dubai or something? I mean, it doesn’t change the love and appreciation going on, but I think it was shipped from the east, not west.
LOL. It’s sitting in Unreal Engine – not sand. This thing is sitting in the virtual world. Source: I use this software for architectural visualization. The sand background and the plants look straight out of Twinmotion.
I didn’t see any sand, or anything in the background until you mentioned this, and I went back to look!
Seems CampoDF pegged the not-Cayenne part of the images.
I get it. Like many Autopians, I think cars were better before. Most everyone here has thought to themselves, “If I could buy a brand new [insert your favorite old car here] I absolutely would”.
And that’s basically what the owner of this Cayenne did. Good on them. They couldn’t buy a brand new, 400hp, manual transmission SUV at any dealer at any price, so they did the next best thing.
This.
I can think of about 4 that I would take for simplicity and strength over modern CPUs and an extra 1.6% MPG.
Your last sentence is the real bit:
“can’t get X at any price” – except for Porsche.
There are a number of older vehicles I would love with a specific set of technical characteristics – but I certainly do not fool myself to say that it’s objectively “better”, but it’s what I want to drive. If I had the money, I’d pay the factory to ‘make like new’, too.
Oh whoever did this is absolutely one of us. No doubt about it.
Looks great, and I think it’s neat someone did this. Lot of people blow money on things I can’t fathom, getting an old car you love back to “fresh from the factory” I can wrap my head around and support.
That glovebox fucks. Best part of it all that’s a visual thing.
That steering wheel is not what I expected in a porsche, and I think it ruins an otherwise nice for its time interior.
Crazy that they didn’t update that
Those first gen Cayennes are great trucks but I think their design leaves a lot to be desired. Their platform sibling the Touareg is a much better looking car – especially the interior.
Should’ve been a 928. So sad …
I….
love….
PASHA!!!!
If I could, I would ensconce myself in head-to-toe pasha (like George Costanza ensconcing himself in velvet if he could)!
The glovebox looks like a portal to another dimension
Just wait till you smoke/eat/take what’s in it!
Hey I listed to that talking cat once never again
I do appreciate that Porsche is willing to do stuff like this. They really care about keeping their cars on the road long term, which cannot be said of any of the other German luxury car brands. Unfortunately the sky high prices of used ones reflect this….
The Mercedes Classic Center has been doing this for some time now:
https://www.mbusa.com/en/classic-center?gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=13915830128&gbraid=0AAAAADtPev8j4DRQawB1DnjHiRL8NtjMj&gclid=Cj0KCQiAoZDJBhC0ARIsAERP-F_Nxq1Zzy5rWUle18cEpWY7eNSoarEOAxr3inlDjXBh7DfvN6MCnAcaAoj4EALw_wcB
Yep – the MB classic center will do anything for any car as long as you bring enough $$$. They’ve churned out some amazing restorations.
I am almost 100% sure these are renderings and not photos.
Yeah, they have that too perfect look
2nd to last picture has to be a rendering
It doesn’t even have hands.
I’m saddened that typing Porsche into a generative AI app comes back with a Cayenne.