THE PORSCHE PRINCE OF THAILAND

The Porsche Prince of Thailand

Meet the godfather of Bangkok's Porsche scene.

Every great car community starts the same way: a handful of friends, and a Sunday morning with nowhere in particular to be.

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Meet Sihabutr “Tenn” Xoomsai, a Bangkok-based film director and, by most accounts, the godfather of Porsche culture in Southeast Asia. What’s now Das Treffen, the region’s biggest Porsche gathering, and Renndrive, its regular cars and coffee meet, started small: four or five friends taking their cars out on Sunday mornings, in search of good coffee and conversation.

“A lot of people have the car, but they don’t know where to drive it,” Tenn says. A casual Sunday habit grew into a yearly meet expecting a hundred cars that drew twice as many, with Porsche Thailand stepping in to help it grow — last year, the event drew in over 900.

Tenn bought his first Porsche, a 964 Cabriolet, twenty years ago. It was his only car and daily driver. He bought it from a stranger who became a lifelong friend, the real trick of ownership: everyone has a story attached to their car, even the ones they’ve let go.

“You can connect to people easily, you have a Porsche language, and it just clicks.”

A casual Sunday habit grew into a yearly meet expecting a hundred cars that drew twice as many, with Porsche Thailand stepping in to help it grow — last year, the event drew in over 900.

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“You cannot beat the feeling, the sound, the handling. It’s agile, but the back end will step out if you brake it wrong.”

Xoomsai’s garage didn’t start as a garage. It started with the neighbors next door selling their house. He bought it on instinct, and what followed reads like a love letter to car ownership done properly. Bangkok’s heat and humidity were wearing on cars parked semi-outdoors, so Tenn and an architect friend got ambitious: a lift raising a car to the second floor, into the living room. Swap the car, swap the mood. “The car becomes part of the family,” Tenn says. The renovation took a year and a half.

His favorite of the many Porsches he’s owned? A short-wheelbase 911, his first restoration and his benchmark ever since. “You cannot beat the feeling, the sound, the handling. It’s agile, but the back end will step out if you brake it wrong.”

Then the big one: two months, 20,000kms, 18 countries, Bangkok to Stuttgart. Strangers in rural China turning hotel car parks into car shows. Kids in Kazakhstan seeing a real 911 for the first time. The flat Gobi Desert, where the clouds touched the ground.

His advice for the next generation? “Get one as soon as you can. And remember, the best Porsche is the one in your garage.”