addition, he has a Bentley Continental R and a Toyota Previa.
Here are some more details. None of them is insured and every night, they sit in his drive with the keys in the ignition. Sure there isn’t much crime in the UAE but we’re talking here about maybe ?2.2-million-worth of cars.
And yet he’s right. Comparatively speaking, in Dubai, he’s just an average, ordinary Joe.
The Rainbow Sheikh, on the other hand, is not at all average. Even by Sultan of Brunei standards, this guy is a serious player.
We were shown first of all to the garage at one of his homes in Abu Dhabi and I must confess that I was dumbfounded. To my left, I was dimly aware of a biplane and a helicopter and a couple of rather nice gin palaces, but they were bit-part actors in an RSC performance of
I walked around the white-painted… hangar is the only word, taking stock of the machinery. It was so diverse: over there a Mini, and here, a Dodge Viper. There was an amphi car, a Lamborghini LM002, a Citroen 2CV, a wild array of pickup trucks and vans and, over on the left-hand wall, seven S-Class Mercs, each one painted a different colour of the rainbow.
It was the same story on the inside, too. The leather-work and the dash matched the exterior and, when you opened the boot, even the three SLR rifles were colour coordinated.
It turns out that these had been built for the Rainbow Sheikh’s wedding, and that Mercedes had stopped their production lines in Germany to paint and trim them specially. He really is an extremely good customer. He even has an SL where the bumpers, door handles and gear lever are gold. And I’m talking real, solid, gold.
What I adored about that collection of cars is that they were not themed and ordered. There was no structure as you would find in a museum. This was one man’s collection of cars he simply likes.
Cars he doesn’t like, in case you’re interested, are given away to the staff.
It took the best part of two hours to tour his garage, and then we were shown into another garage where he keeps his everyday cars.
Here there were maybe 30 or 40 Mercedes G Wagens and Hummers. Let’s be conservative and guess at ?1.5 -million-worth of metal.
I turned to an aide and asked jokingly if the Sheikh had more garages we should see. ‘Certainly,’ he said, ‘but it is a long drive to his other houses.’ Jesus Christ.
Having met his metal, it was now time to meet the man — His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan.
He strode down the steps, resplendent in a dishdash and a silk Savile Row jacket. A titanium Breitling was on his left wrist. He was 35 years old.
His youthfulness was one shock, but the next one sent me reeling. ‘It is a great honour to have you here,’ he said. ‘I have had many television companies at my house but never before has the British Broadcasting Corporation been here. It is the ultimate thing for me.’
Well now, all over the world the BBC is revered like some kind of god and doors that would remain closed to ITV are flung open, but this was something else. Here was a genuine piece of Arab royalty explaining that by far the best programme on his 400-channel TV was
We strolled through the grounds and he explained he had just bought an AMG tuned Mercedes C-Class for his son — who is eleven — and that in all his life, he has never sold a car. ‘It would not look good. It would not be the done thing, so I give them away.’
Has he ever left one in the desert, when the ashtrays were full, I wondered. ‘No,’ came the reply. ‘But if you know where such a car is, do let me know.’
He then asked why my Range Rover had Kuwaiti plates. And I explained that Land Rover had been unable to source one for us in the UAE, and that we’d had to have it flown down from Kuwait.
I even made him laugh as I explained how I’d had to go to the airport myself and drive the fork-lift truck to get it down from the ramps because the Indian workforce didn’t have the right form signed 68 times in triplicate.
When I finished the rather dull story, he clicked his fingers and told an aide that he was to buy us a new Range Rover that afternoon.
Oh God, no sir, really, please, we’ve already got one and honestly…
I’m damn sure he would have done it but, before he had a chance, the cameraman asked where he could borrow some lights.
The garage was a great deal bigger than we’d expected and the candles we carry were not good enough. Keith explained that we needed two blondes, some redheads and various other bits and bobs, all by eight the following morning.
It was done, and no one ever bothered to explain why the local news station delivered its broadcasts that day in the dark.
On our tour, he also pointed out his jet boat, on to which he is bolting a Citroen people carrier. He has recently acquired an island off Abu Dhabi and needs to get there as comfortably as possible.
He also showed me his workshops where engineers are currently trying to make a skidoo float. He’d seen our Iceland programme and figures you can combine a jet-ski with a snowmobile.
We wandered into another room which was chock-full of discarded quad bikes. ‘Do you have children?’ he asked.
‘Yes, one, but she’s only two,’ I said.
‘Well now listen,’ he said conspiratorially. ‘When you buy her a quad bike, you must make sure it is the 80cc machine. The 50cc versions are no good at all. They keep tipping over.’
‘Right,’ I said, knowing that Emily will get no such thing as a quad bike, ever, because they’re too damn expensive.
We weren’t there though to talk about jet boats, or Mercs or quad bikes. We were there because the Rainbow Sheikh has built a truck, the likes of which the world has never seen.
He says that his favourite vehicle of all time is the 1950s Dodge Power Wagon, a four-wheel-drive pickup truck much favoured by the oil prospectors who made Abu Dhabi the boom town it is today.
And he’s built a larger version of it. A much larger version. It’s so much larger that inside there are four bedrooms, a sitting room and a bathroom, all of which are cooled by twelve air-conditioning plants.
To get to the ‘cab’ you climb a spiral staircase where you will find the master bedroom, complete with a view down the bonnet.
At the back, the tailgate can be lowered electrically so that you have a patio, which can be accessed through French windows.
All this is possible because, though it’s an exact replica of the real thing, it’s 64 times bigger. From ten miles away, the 50-ton monster looks like a normal-sized Dodge that’s just ten feet away. Every last detail is correct, even the wipers, which came from an ocean liner, and the headlights which cost ?1,000 each. Their beam is so powerful that you can use them to read a book a kilometre away.
He would have made the whole thing bigger still but was limited by the size of the wheels and tyres, which are the largest ever made. They came from a trailer used to move oil rigs.
No one knows how much it cost to build because no one was counting, but it wasn’t 4p.
It was a military-style operation because the larger pieces were fabricated in Abu Dhabi and then shipped out to the desert where the vehicle was assembled. No road in the world could take the finished product because it’s tall enough to let a Range Rover pass underneath, and 24 feet wide. It’s one hell of a truck.
And it moves. Between the rear axle and the floor, there’s a 6-cylinder, 300-horsepower engine, which is capable of shifting the truck short distances. You can even steer it. And yes, the brakes work too. When I said exact replica, I meant it.
This may be the Sheikh’s most ambitious project but it’s by no means the first. His first caravan was big enough to have garaging for seven cars and his second is a globe that’s exactly one million times smaller than the earth.
That said, the door fits easily into Western Australia. Again, there are four bedrooms and a sitting room; only this time, there’s a gallery. Hit a button and the top part — from the Arctic Circle upwards — lifts to give a 360° panoramic view of the desert.
He uses these caravans, and his tent — which is so big it has to be transported on a juggernaut — to go on camping holidays with his family and friends.
