From the 1969 silver Porsche 911T to a 2010 Porsche 911 (997) GT3 RS, Dubai-based brothers, architects and classic Porsche collectors Hasan and Husain Roomi have supercharged their childhood passion for Hot Wheels into a grown-up collection of automotive gems.
There are few automotive marques that are known to hold their value and driving pleasure better than Porsche. It’s all down to Ferdinand Porsche, the Austrian engineer and businessman who famously declared, “I could not find quite the car I dreamed of, so I decided to build it myself.” From the Porsche type 356 No. 1 Roadster that hit the tarmac in 1948 to the ultra-rare silver 1961 Porsche RS61 that came up for auction last year and the famous 911 series (which since its 1963 debut has become somewhat of a rite of passage for car collectors), Porsches stand the test of time.
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“Back then, automotive design was led by craftsmanship and developed by designers and engineers, not by finance teams,” say the British-Iraqi brothers Hasan and Husain Roomi, who bought their first classic automobile, a black 1990 Porsche 911 (964) Carrera 2 Targa Manual, in 2010 to celebrate Hasan’s university graduation. “We’ve always felt more connected to cars of previous eras, maybe due to nostalgia more than anything,” they add.
The brothers’ passion for supercars stems from a childhood spent around their uncles’ car business, and when the family started trading in Porsches, the duo – who now head up Dubai design studio H2R – got a driver’s seat introduction to what makes the marque so desirable. “There’s something extremely charming about the Porsche family story, and you feel this in the way they design their cars,” says Husain. “Even today, they follow the philosophy of evolution and not revolution. So to own a Porsche is really to be part of that story, which started with the dream of a car that could do it all.”
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In the 15 years they’ve been collecting Porsche classics, the Roomis have rarely gone shopping for a particular model; it’s been a case of coming across something they simply couldn’t get out of their minds. Their most expensive purchase, a 2010 Porsche 911 (997) GT3 RS, is one such speed machine (they prefer not to divulge its price). “We found it on Instagram – its front red cage I’d only ever seen once before, in Japan,” recalls Hasan. “The car was in Paris, so we paid and prayed for a month that it would arrive safely.”
For the brothers, research and trust go hand-in-hand when it comes to growing their collection. In Dubai, they rely on Nine Eleven RSR, an independent workshop dedicated to classic Porsches, to keep their cars in top shape. And if they were to ever venture outside the Porsche family? “If money was no object, you’d definitely see a 1960 Aston Martin DB4 GT or a 1970 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona parked in our garage.”
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