Dillon Houck’s Painstakingly Prioritized Porsche Cayenne

WORDS BY CHAD HOUCKPHOTOS BY DILLON HOUCK

Dillon Houck isn’t new to doing things differently. He started competing in robotics with his older sister Emily when they were only 12 and 13. They later co-founded a media company at the ages of 16 and 17 that they still operate today. So when he dove head-first into the overlanding community to learn how he wanted to build his next project, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the path would be… unique.

Dillon’s love for life on the road was instilled early. The Houck family moved full-time into a 34-foot RV for nearly two years, traveling the country doing ministry and consulting work when Emily and Dillon were only 3 and 4 respectively. “We saw over 20 states and went to Mexico a handful of times before I even knew that wasn’t ‘normal,’” says Dillon, who credits the family’s road tripping for his current nomadic habits. “So when I started thinking about how I wanted to work when I got done with high school, I knew I wanted a mobile element to it. Media lends itself to that, especially editing, so that made sense.”

Houck also got an early start in automotive customization, buying his first car at the age of 12 for $900. That build, a ’65 Falcon, eventually landed an 18-year old Dillon at SEMA with Optima Batteries in 2023, where he saw JMatt Garcia’s 2023 SEMA build (and TREAD cover vehicle)—a fully outfitted Lexus GX460 overlander. It was in that moment, Houck says, that he gained the full vision for where he could take the overlanding build he’d been contemplating.

Since mid-2022, Dillon had been following the growing number of off-road and overland Cayenne builds starting to show up online. Cayenne generations are described by their model numbers, and two in specific were the most popular. “There was already a lot of development in the 955 (2004-’08) and 957 (2009-’12) models, but nobody was really doing 958s yet (2013-’17s). I wanted to do something unique, so I focused on finding one from the newer generation,” says Houck. In December, he found the perfect fit in San Francisco, a 958.2 Cayenne S with a red interior—his unicorn. He sold another vehicle for the funds, and flew out with his dad to buy it and drive it home the same week.

The original plan was to build a simple overlanding rig that would serve as a mobile production office, to allow him to work and camp at the same time. After returning from SEMA in ’23, however, he realized he wanted to do it at a level that could take him back to SEMA for a second year in a row. Finally, in order to not go broke in the process, he knew he’d need to work directly with manufacturers to help them prototype products for the 958 Cayenne market, so he started reaching out and building those relationships.