Porsche just gave a first-gen Cayenne the kind of treatment it usually reserves for halo cars, and it did it right on the factory floor. At this year’s Icons of Porsche festival in Dubai, the brand pulled the cover off a 2009 Cayenne that went back to Zuffenhausen for a full tear-down, restoration, and wild custom build through the Sonderwunsch “Factory Re-Commission” program. It is the first time Porsche’s in-house special-request team has reimagined an original Cayenne from the ground up, and it stole plenty of attention from the brand-new Cayenne Electric parked nearby. 1970s Spirit In A Proper V8 Luxury SUV PorscheThe starting point is serious enthusiast stuff already. The donor is a first-generation E1 Cayenne GTS, built toward the end of the run and powered by a naturally aspirated 4.8-liter V8 that makes about 405 horsepower and sends it through a six-speed manual gearbox to all four wheels. Manual Cayenne GTS models are thin on the ground, which already makes this SUV special before the custom work.Porsche did not just freshen it up. The team stripped, inspected, and rebuilt the SUV to essentially new condition, then used it as a canvas. The body now wears a Paint to Sample shade called Blackolive, a deep olive tone that throws off major seventies energy. The lower cladding and wheels sit in matte black, and the truck rides on chunky off-road rubber that fills the arches and hints at real desert use, not just cars and coffee posing.PorscheOut back, things get even more specific. The owner wanted to haul a classic Airstream through the Rub al-Khali desert outside Dubai, so Porsche built in a proper U.S.-style receiver hitch with a square mount. That single detail says a lot about the brief: this is a factory-built overland rig with real towing in mind, not just some lifted showpiece with knobby tires.The cabin goes just as hard. The seats, dash, and panels wear Leather to Sample in a deep English green, and Porsche laid the legendary Pasha fabric in black and olive across the seat centers and even inside the glove box. The bold checker pattern looks like it rolled straight out of a late-seventies 911 parts bin. Light-brushed aluminum trim on the doors and dash cleans up the look and keeps it from feeling like a costume. The New Owner Is A Collector PorscheNone of this happened by accident. The client, American entrepreneur and well-known collector Phillip Sarofim, asked Porsche to channel the vibe of the 911 “Spirit 70” one-off that the brand built earlier in the Sonderwunsch program. He wanted the same retro flavor, but wrapped around a V8 Cayenne that he could actually take off-road and live with on a long-distance tow trip.His project ran through the Factory Re-Commission lane of Sonderwunsch, which handles cars that already live in customer garages. Owners send their cars to Porsche, the team checks what is technically possible, and then combines restoration work with full re-spec of paint, trim, and interior materials. Until now, that kind of full-boat rebuild mostly went to classics and unicorns such as the Carrera GT. Putting a 16-year-old SUV through the process shows how far up the food chain the Cayenne has climbed inside Porsche’s own hierarchy. A V8 Cayenne Right When The First Cayenne EV Debuted PorscheThe timing also feels right. The first-gen Cayenne, launched in 2002 and built through 2010 under the internal code E1, took heat from purists when it arrived. Two decades later, just days after the Stuttgart-based company unveiled the first-ever electric Cayenne, which also became the brand’s most powerful production model ever, the original luxury SUV has a cult following. Fans love the heavy-duty hardware, the low-range transfer case, and the way a big Porsche V8 feels when it drags an almost-five-thousand-pound SUV down a back road. Porsche itself now brands these early trucks as “youngtimers” and actively supports them.PorscheIn GTS trim, that support makes a lot of sense. The 4.8-liter V8 revs cleanly, sounds angry, and shoves the Cayenne to around 60 mph in the mid-five-second range and on to roughly 157 mph, numbers that still look healthy in 2025. Add three pedals, fresh mechanicals, the 1970s-inspired color combo, and one-off factory paperwork, and this thing instantly jumps into the “grail Cayenne” category. It is hard to imagine a more desirable spec for a diehard Porsche SUV fan.Source: Porsche