Low-digit license plates are big in Arabia. Abu Dhabi’s 1 sold for $14 million in 2008 while in neighboring Dubai 1 is registered to Sheikh Mohammed, the emirate’s ruler. This is plate number 1 from Oman attached to 612 hp of German bliss and I saw it go like hell.
I took the photo at the Dubai Autodrome in the spring of 2006 at a track day. The Carrera GT’s owner was a very friendly young master of the universe from Muscat who graciously allowed me to have a seat in the car. Good news for 6'2" humans in love forever with the Carrera GT: you’ll never fit! Only very painful and very bloody surgery would have made my thighs fit under the steering wheel and the GT’s owner would have faced one hell of a carpet job.
Lacking a bone saw in my backpack that day, I handed the driver’s seat back to the man from Muscat who proceeded with some hot laps in the fading light. It was the first and last time I heard Horacio Pagani’s favorite Porsche on track.
Listening to that car redline at 8,400 rpm and knowing that you’ll never fit behind the wheel is one motherfucker of a mental balancing act. It revs like nothing else. As if momentum was an alien concept to its heavenly combustion chambers.