The Sultan of Brunei: A Mysterious Car Collector Worth $5 Billion
There is a car collection worth over $5 billion just rotting away in the jungle right now, leaving many to wonder about its mysterious owner. Who is this individual? How did they become so wealthy? And why are they letting such an enormous amount of money's worth of cars decay in the wild? The answer lies in the enigmatic figure of Hassanal Bolkiah, the 29th Sultan of Brunei.
Owning One Exotic Supercar: A Luxury Beyond Measure
For those who have ever dreamed of owning a luxurious supercar, imagine the sticker price being just the beginning. In addition to the initial cost, there are also insane maintenance costs that come with owning one such vehicle. Basic parts like brakes and tires can be more expensive than buying an entire new car. And then there's the matter of caviar - yes, you read that right. To fit in with other supercar owners, one would have to indulge in this luxury food item. But let's put these costs into perspective by imagining the expense of owning 108 Bentley Continentals, 70 Ferrari 456 GTs, and 28 Aston Martin Virages.
The Wealth of Brunei: A Tiny Nation with Big Oil Reserves
Brunei is a tiny Southeast Asian country, less than half the size of Connecticut. Despite its small size, the nation has access to some of the most productive oil and natural gas reserves in the world. This wealth has led to the funneling of funds directly into the Royal Family and the Sultan himself, making Hassanal Bolkiah one of the richest people in the world. Brunei gained independence from Great Britain in 1984, which marked a significant shift in power and gave the Sultan the right to control the country's gas reserves. In just three years following its independence, Hassanal Bolkiah became the world's richest man with a staggering $40 billion.
A Sultan with a Wild Side
Hassanal Bolkiah is not your average leader. He has been known to commission statues of himself having sex with goddesses, which says a lot about his unconventional personality. His love for luxury and excess is evident in every aspect of his life, from his massive yacht that he's named after himself to his extensive car collection. When it comes to the Sultan of Brunei, one cannot help but wonder what other secrets lie beneath the surface.
The Car Collection: A Jungle in Decay
As we continue our exploration into the world of Hassanal Bolkiah, we come across a fascinating yet peculiar fact - his massive car collection is worth over $5 billion. This staggering amount of money has left the cars to rot away in the jungle, with many wondering what happened to them. It's clear that owning such an immense collection requires an enormous amount of wealth and resources. Unfortunately, the costs associated with maintaining these vehicles were likely too high for the Sultan, leading to their eventual abandonment.
The Sultan's Love Life: A Story of Luxury and Excess
As we delve deeper into Hassanal Bolkiah's life, his love life becomes a topic of interest. The Sultan has been known to indulge in caviar and other luxury items not only for his cars but also for himself. This extravagant lifestyle is often associated with wealthy individuals who have made their fortunes through business or investments.
In conclusion, Hassanal Bolkiah, the 29th Sultan of Brunei, is a complex individual with a unique personality. His love for luxury, excess, and caviar is evident in every aspect of his life, from his car collection to his personal relationships. While owning such an immense amount of wealth comes with its own set of challenges, it's hard not to admire the Sultan's wild side and his willingness to indulge in all things luxurious.
WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- There is a car collectionworth over $5 billionjust rotting away in the jungle right now.Who is this mysterious car collector?How did he get so rich?And why is he letting$5 billion worth of carsjust rot away?Let's get you up to speedon the Sultan of Brunei.(upbeat electronic music)Owning one exotic supercar is expensive as hell.The sticker price is just the beginning.Then you have insane maintenance costs,basic parts like brakes and tiresthat cost more than a brand new Beamer.And not to mention all the caviarthat you have to shove in your facejust to fit in with theother super car owners.But you can imagine how insanely expensiveit would be to buy and maintain108 Bentley Continentals,70 Ferrari 456 GTs, 28Aston Martin Virages.You gotta be dummy rich.You gotta be a sultan.Like the dad from Aladdin.This is Hassanal Bolkiahand he's the 29th sultanof the nation of Brunei.If you've never heardof Brunei, that's fine.Brunei is a tiny Southeast Asian country,less than half the size of Connecticut.But what Brunei lacks in size,it makes up for in oiliness.The country has access to someof the most productive oiland natural gas reserves in the world.And because they're such a tiny country,a lot of that wealth is funneleddirectly into the Royalfamily and the sultan himself.Brunei gained independencefrom great Britain in 1984.And with the shift inpower came the rightsto the country's gas reserves.So in just three years,following Brunei's independence,the sultan became the world's richest manwith a cool $40 billion bag.I mean, can you imagine, dude?Look, I'm not going tobeat around the bush,Hassanal is a horny dude, all right?He commissioned statues of himselfhaving sex with goddesses.And he's got a huge yachtthat he named "Tits".Tits.But the sultan's younger andconsiderably more buck brother,Jeffrey, is even more hornier.He turned out to be apretty strong influenceon how his older brotherspends his fortune.Prince Jeffrey, AKA the Playboy Prince,basically had carteblanche from the sultanto buy whatever he wantedfor the royal palaceand buy whatever he wantedfor royal palace he did.$70 million Renoir painting.Fricking throw it in the cart.Yacht, jets, art, lavish events.Including building a $17 million stadiumand enough cash to hire Michael Jacksonto celebrate the sultan's 50th birthday.Hell yeah, that's a good brother.He also had a gold plated hottub, because those are sick.But none of that comparesto the insane amount of cashthat Jeffrey and Hassanal dropped on cars.Just to let you know the sheeramount of cars they boughtsales of Rolls Royce to the brothersaccounted for half of allRolls Royces sold in the 90s.Half!To put that into context,that's roughly how muchof an Arnold Palmerthat's made up by lemonade, huh?And it's not just classic luxury carslike Rolls Royces and Bentleys,Jeffrey also boughtextremely rare cars in bulk.Mercedes CLK GTR,one of the sickest lamal styleproduction cars ever built.It's one of my favorite cars.It's got a 6.9 liter V12,makes 600 horsepower.They only made 26 of them total.20 in the hard top version, six drop tops.And the sultan has one of each.McLaren made five special edition F1 LMs.The Saltan has three of those.He has owns five Bugatti EV110s.Who needs five of those?Prince Jeffrey needs five of those.And one of them is painted like this.Now before long,the Brunei boys owned almost 200 Ferraris,400 Bentleys, and over 200 BMWs.Their favorite car company though,gotta be Rolls Royce.They owned over 600 of them.I'm no mathematician, right?But if you drove one Rolls Royce per day,without repeating,it would take you over 11years before you repeat a car.I think.What's even more impressivethan my math skillsare the custom one-off carsthat the brothers have made just for them.Sure, a fleet of luxury cars is cool,but for the guys who have doublesand triples of everything,triples are better.What's the most impressivecar that you can buy?Why, it's the one thatdoesn't exist, of course.At this point, I shouldmention that by the early 90sanother family member,just as crazy as the others,is now getting into cars.And he was all aboutordering them crazy customs.I'm talking about Prince Abdul Hakeem.More on him in a bit.Anyway, the sultan and his familyhave some of the mostinsane one-off custom carsto ever exist.They get whatever they want.You ever heard of a Bentley Dominator?It's a Bentley station wagonthat kind of looks like apredecessor to a Bentaygabut it's a bit squatter.Since it was a secret project,not much is known otherthan he made six of themat a cost of $4.6 million each.But even if you had the cash,you couldn't get your dirtylittle fingers on one of thesebecause all six Dominatorswere made specificallyfor the sultan and his family.Sorry, Mark Davis.Bentleys known for havingtons of different thingsthat you can customize on their cars.Like type of wood,leather pattern, and color,a million different paint options.But what about stubborn car companiesthat don't like to customize?Someone like Ferrari.Never in a million years wouldbow down to some rich guy.So apparently Ferraribowed down to the rich guy.The story goes that PrinceHakeem started getting sickof ordering regularFerrari's, the poor guy.He wanted to help design one on his own.Just to let you know the scaleof this kids spoiled-ness,all right, when he turned 18,he got a billion dollarsin cash as a present.When he started gettinginterested in American football,his family paid to fly out JoeMontana and Herschel Walkerto coach them.When they ran a football scrimmage,nobody wanted to tackle him.So he scored a touchdown every timehe was passed the ball.It's like Mr. Burns.Oh, you want a warehousefull of Ferrari Enzos?No problem.You want to Bentley modifiedso it looks like a cara cartoon villain would drive?Sure, dude, here you go.That football story is so funny to me.Like, did he have fun?That seems embarrassing.Anyway, in the 90s,when Pince Hakeem reallywanted a semi-automatictransmission in his Ferrari,everyone bent over backwardsto make it possible.There's just one problem.That kind of technologywasn't in production cars yet.Semiauto transmissionscan be found in race carsand rally cars,but they were just toojerky to put in a road carthat was supposed to ridesmoother than a race car.So what did the Royal family do?They call it up Pininfarinawho had already designed50 models for them.Like this Ferrari F50 Bolide.Which, believe that, hadthe same internals as an F50but a body kit and a wing.They also modified nine of 11 Ferrari F40sthat the family owns.Jesus.Pininfarina put theirprototype manager on the job.A dude named Paolo Gorilla whoworked on the Ferrari Methos,a prototype only supercarthat is honestly one of thesickest concept cars ever.It never went to market.In fact, Ferrarispecifically made it clearthat they would never sell the Methos.But somehow the sultan gothis grubby little fingerson two of them.Tasked with making a customsuper car with technologythat didn't exist yetfor a demanding uncompromising client,Palo got to work and contacteda company called Prodrive,you may have heard of them.They'd been makingsemi-automatic transmissionsfor their WRC cars for a while now.And they wanted to bring the technologyto the consumer market.The Ferrari project seemedlike the perfect first step.I don't think they're Italian.Palo's stallion of choice, boom,Ferrari Testarossa, great looking car.He used it to developthe Methos years earlier.And it's flat 12 wasa spicy little spaniniand a great building block to work off of.This semiauto transmissionwould be a bit more workthan he expected though.Prodrive's system was super complex.It used both hydraulicand pneumatic arrangementsto activate the clutchand actually switch gears.Pininfarina assigned anengineer just to figure outhow it would mate to Ferrari's stocksix speed manual transmission.Computer systems weredeveloped to make shift timesas short as possible,and shifts less jerky.And in the end, they wereable to make it happen.Gears could seamlessly shift via buttonson the steering wheel,allowing the driver to harness every bitof those 420 hrsprsprovided by the flat 12.Pininfarina even added somespecial touches to the carwith a Sony tape player anda little plaque on the insidethat read "FX".I assume because they werehuge "It's Always Sunny" fans.Ferrari FX was an engineering success.Three of them were made,delivered to Prince HakeeMand he was a delighted boy.He's such a delighted boy.I want three, daddy.Then you will have a three, my son.I'm going to go kill this dog now daddy.Do it, son.You know this kid hurt animals.He liked 'em so much thathe ordered three morebased off the newer Testarossa,the F12M,which had 20 more hourspower and a lighter chassis.You know what they say, triples are best,but sixes are better.Five of the FXs are in Brunei.And one got snatched up by McLaren,which is probably a good thingbecause what you're about to find outabout this stash ofSupercars is heartbreaking.$5 billion worth of cars is a lot of cars.If you live in LA,having more than one caris a huge pain in the asstrying to find a place to park it.But what about in a countryhalf the size of Connecticut?Luckily, like everything else,money can solve that issue.The sultan had multiplemassive concrete garages builtto house his thousandsand thousands of cars.A lot of the collection is kept secret.I mean, the only reason thatwe know about the Ferrari FXis because of a line inFerrari's accounting recordsyears later.But something happened in the late 90sthat forced the royal familyto open up their garage doors a bit.In 1997, Southeast Asia wentthrough a financial crisisand oil prices plummeted.Now as you can guess,this was bad news forthe economy of Bruneiwho made most of their capital from oil.That didn't stop Prince Hakeemand Jeffrey from spendinglike was the end of the world.Jeffrey allegedly kept 40 sexworkers on call at all timesand spent $7 million ona jewel encrusted watch.And that's totally worth every pennybecause the face of thewatch had an animated pictureof people doing sex.Sick.By the time that 2002 rolled around,the sultan was hurtingand he needed to liquefysome of his assets.So he invited a Ferraribroker from California,that's where I live, by thename of Michael Sheehan,not that Michael Sheehan,to come check out some ofthe cars that the sultanwas looking to part with.The offer?13 custom Ferrari'sand McLaren F1 for saleat a staggeringly low price.Like a pack of day old donuts.Mike hopped on a plane to Bruneiand what he saw there wouldmake Jay Leno rolloverin his denims.At first, it wasn't bad, just excessive.Michael was led from garage to garageeach with its own theme.One building was filledwith Porsche's from 911sthe super rare 959s.Another building wasfilled with just blackMercedes S500 sedans.Now this went on for eightdifferent two-story garages,each filled with about 240 cars.Now the heartbreaking partis that some of the garagesweren't temperature orhumidity controlled,which means that theyturned into greenhouses.Excess moisture and heatwere literally cookingthese super rare cars.Paint was peeling,leather and carpet covered in mold.Now I know this pales incomparison to the actual atrocitieshappening in the world.But man, these carsrotting is also a bummer.More than one thing can be a bummer.Like what's the point in havingall these ultra rare cars,if you never drive them andyou just let them disintegratein the corner of a garage in the jungle?And Michael's account was from 2002,that's like 20 years ago.It'd be very safe to say thata good amount of these carsare beyond repair.Some of them have zeromiles on the odometer.They never got driven.They never did what theywere supposed to do.That means they're in hell.That means cars like the Mercedes CLK GTR,the Lamborghini Urraco,Jaguar XJ220, Koenigsegg CCXR,and a BMW Nazca M12 prototype,one of only three ever made,are probably never going to see the roadand that's sad to me.I know that this isn't atypical episode of this showwhere we celebrate theaccomplishments of a racer,or get pumped at how awesome a car is.But if nothing else,I think that we can allagree that this kind of greed(beep) sucks.What's the point of doubles and tripleswhen no one can drive them?It's just like my hero,Benjamin Diesel, saidin the movie Fast andFurious with no thes,"nothing is saddder thanlocking a beast in a cage."Most bad-ass thing anyone's ever said.That guy is tough and strong.I was just working on my old hog hereand you know what I realized?We just hit 6 million subscribers, dudes!One, two, three, four, five, six.Six!And just like with every major milestonethat we have here at Donut,we're going to release a limited edition6 million sub sticker sothat you can show everybodythat you were part of thecrew when we hit this number.This is like one of my favoritedesigns that we've doneso far.I think it's super sick.It's only available fora very limited time.Go 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