Some of the Sultan of Brunei's famous car collection comes up for sale.
Last night a chance discovery from a random tweet revealed a rather mysterious website with a collection of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and other exotica for sale.
The site, simply titled ferraricollectionforsale, is basic, with very few details and photos of the the cars, all of which are shown stored in a warehouse. My first thought that it was some kind of scam along the lines of those long-lost relative inheritance letters. However, further investigation and talking to a few people in the know indicated that this is genuine, and something rather more interesting since these cars appear to be part of the Sultan of Brunei's car collection.
The Sultan's famously extensive and eclectic car collection is one of the topics that can keep petrolheads talking for hours. His cars are said to number in the thousands, many of them custom-built specially for the Sultan by Ferrari, Bentley, Aston Martin and Lamborghini. It's even been suggested that at one point Bentley had a special department set up purely to build and maintain cars for the Sultan.
The cars listed on the site are mainly 'normal' rather than custom builds, but two examples really stand out as unusual. The first is a BMW Nazca, a custom-built supercar based on Giugiaro's Ital design, and the second a Cizeta V16. Only eight of the latter were made, and this is possibly the only one with right-hand drive.
Of the others, twenty-five Ferraris are listed, although one of these - a light blue Daytona - is listed as sold, and looks like the same car that was sold with no reserve at the recent RM Auction in London. Two of the Ferraris are Testarossa-based Spiders said to have been converted into the open configuration by Pininfarina. There are also three Lamborghinis: two Countachs and a Diablo SE30, and a Jaguar XJ220. The list is completed by two lightweight Porsche 911 Turbo S cars. Almost all of the cars are right-hand drive.
Many of the cars are listed as only having delivery mileage, which may be both a blessing and a curse, since cars left standing can potentially need more maintenance than when regularly used. Indeed, photos of the F40 listed seem to show a trail of fluid leaking from the engine bay, which could be from the fuel tank. F40s using racing style fuel tanks that need to be replaced every ten years, and it's likely that this hasn't been done.
Who is actually selling the cars is unclear. The prices are listed in New Zealand Dollars, but the advert states that most of the cars are stored outside of New Zealand. Some of the cars were displayed at Singapore's Hang Seh Motors during their 40th anniversary celebration, but there is no indication that they are the brokers. The cars are on the expensive side when the prices are converted into Sterling (approximately NZ$2 = £1), but also reflect the fact they are in most cases virtually unused.