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Weekend Drive by Hormazd Sorabjee: Car nerds, assemble
Dubai’s Icons of Porsche had something for every type of fan: Museum models, flashy new launches, and coveted classics
Icons of Porsche 2025 in Dubai felt less like a car show and more like a full-blown Porsche city – 30,000 people, several hundred cars and two days of pure immersion. It has quietly grown into the Middle East’s biggest automotive festival and feels genuinely world-class.
The 2025 edition doubled down on the Icons part of its name, with 25 years of the Carrera GT as one of the key storylines. The V10 poster child drew the kind of crowds only a true unicorn can. Alongside it sat a spread of Sonderwunsch specials – ultra-bespoke cars that showed just how far the factory-custom programme can go, tapping into the same one-off, collector-grade mindset seen in recent Sonderwunsch GT cars.
On display were rare museum models shipped in from Stuttgart, motorsport legends, rare air-cooled cars and the very latest metal. The first public viewings of the Cayenne Electric, the Macan GTS and a 911 GT3 fitted with the Manthey kit gave purists and tech nerds something new to pore over amid the heritage eye candy.
This is Dubai. So, the car park was almost as interesting as the main display. Porsche owners from across the region drove in and parked on the grounds. Getting your car onto that list is a quiet badge of honour – a recognition that your 911, Cayenne or classic Porsche is Icons-worthy, and deserves a spot in the curated chaos.
Five editions on, visitor numbers have climbed from record crowds of more than 28,000 in 2024 to over 30,000 in 2025, with both days selling out before the gates even opened. What started as a two-day showcase has grown into a bigger event, with side events such as track nights and community drives orbiting the main weekend.
Beyond the cars, there are food stalls from some of Dubai’s best-known outlets, racing simulators, games and dedicated family zones, which make it easy to spend an entire day without anyone in the group getting bored. Art installations, creative zones and kids’ build areas blur the line between car show and cultural festival, which is exactly why it pulls in people who might never have opened a Porsche brochure in their lives.
What really makes Icons work is that the emotion feels genuine, not manufactured. Even people who have never driven a Porsche turn up in merch; argue about their favourite generation of 911; and photograph historics such as the 356, the first of the great Porsche sports cars, or a Le Mans racer they have only seen in books.
For Porsche, the festival showcases not just cars but community. Over two days, Dubai becomes the Porsche capital of the world, and every car, from a perfectly restored classic to the latest electric SUV, gets the same love.
From HT Brunch, December 06, 2025
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