Motorworld

Dubai

Mine’s been an easy life. At the age of eight my mother thought it would be a good idea to take me on a bus. This turned out to be a bad idea when, in a loud voice, I asked why it kept stopping. She pointed out that other people needed to get on and off but I was still confused. And the confusion turned to horror when I asked whether it would stop at the end of my grandfather’s drive, or whether it would go all the way to his front door.

‘No,’ she said, ‘it doesn’t even go down Spring Lane. We have to get off at the Ivanhoe and walk.’ WALK? What was this new verb? What is the possible point of a bus if you have to do walking? But all was well because my grandfather was waiting at the bus stop in his Bentley.

At around this time, my mother designed Paddington Bear, which provided the funds for my education at Repton School in Derbyshire.

I was able to land a job in journalism on the Rotherham Advertiser because grandfather, a doctor, had delivered the editor’s baby during an air raid in the war.

And I found myself on Top Gear after sitting next to the producer at a party.

And my luck didn’t run out on Motorworld. It only rained when we specifically wanted it to. People turned up at the appointed hour and said exactly what we had hoped. Machinery never broke down. The camera never jammed.

This, for two years and eleven countries, was the law.

But then we arrived in Dubai and absolutely everything that could go pear-shaped ended up looking like an artichoke.

The customs confiscated bits of vital equipment. Our Range Rover caught fire. And on the last night, the very last night of our two-year world tour, we found ourselves in the middle of a religious festival and that all the bars were forbidden from selling alcohol.

Let’s take it step by step. In order to demonstrate how Arabs are now more interested in power than purple-velour headrests, we borrowed an Escort Cosworth which had been tuned to develop 420 horsepower.

You may recall that our interview with the driver was conducted at the roadside. This was because it broke down.

Then the falconers didn’t turn up, and when they did, three days late, the hunting vehicles had disappeared. Then the heavens opened and in the next ten days Dubai received more than two years’ worth of rain.

There were floods so deep, smaller people needed an aqualung just to go shopping.

We were having to rejig our already vague schedule on an hour-by-hour basis, which would have been hard enough in a media-aware country like America. But in the United Arab Emirates to change a long-standing arrangement is to ensure it won’t happen. We know this because even if you don’t change anything, it won’t happen either.

Take the fun run for an example. This was an event where 750 cars and upwards of 2,000 ex-pats head into the desert in their off-road cars for two days of getting stuck and lost, and then stuck again.

The only way it was possible to demonstrate the enormity of such an event was from the air, which is why we’d hired a helicopter.

This had been organised for weeks. It had the backing of their government. The pilot had been briefed. But air traffic control decided fifteen minutes into the flight that it was a military area and that the chopper should return to base.

That meant we had to spend all day playing catch-up with the rest of the competitors — a problem that was made even harder because we had to lug half a ton of film equipment around.

Just 50 yards into the soft sand and a call for help came over the radio from Keith, the cameraman. His Discovery was stuck up to its axles in powder.

Happily, the producer, Andy, was in a 4.5-litre 24-valve, 6-cylinder Toyota Land Cruiser pickup which looked like shit but which, off-road, was unstoppable. It became known as the Millennium Falcon.

And it pulled the Discovery out. And 20 yards later, it did it again. And then, 250 yards on, it repeated the process once more.

Tactfully, we took Keith on one side and explained that, in order to keep going, he must stick the gearbox in first, in high range and never, ever, ever lift his right foot from the carpet.

Keith, we said, it doesn’t matter if the valves begin to bounce through the bonnet, or if you’re about to crest a brow which may be the precursor of a sheer drop. No matter what, Keith baby, you must drive everywhere absolutely flat out.

Now this was all right in my Jeep, and the director’s Range Rover and the Millennium Falcon because they were empty. But on the first bump taken at speed in the Discovery, £150,000-worth of camera equipment leapt out of the boot, ricocheted off the roof and ended up in the passenger footwell.

In the end, we were actually saved by the rain, which gave the sand a more gluey texture allowing poor old Keith to drive a little more slowly. The downside was simple. All hopes of catching the other cars up were dashed.

But I didn’t care because I have decided that driving in the desert is better than sex.

Certainly, it’s a damn sight rougher, as you are hurled sometimes three feet out of your seat. This means your right foot leaves the throttle and that, of course, is catastrophic, because the revs die, the wheels bog down and you are then faced with an hour’s digging.

But on the flatter, harder-packed plains, you can get up to 100 mph or more, safe in the knowledge that there is nothing to hit, that you aren’t breaking the law and that your exhaust fumes can’t even find a flower to throttle.

The desert is a big deal in the UAE.

The fun run happens annually, and is organised by the Gulf News newspaper for ex-pats who, very sensibly, would never dream of heading out there alone.

Over the last ten years I’ve been fortunate to see some truly epic scenery. There are the Sierra Nevada mountains in California, the Yorkshire Dales just near Keld and the wall reefs that surround the Maldives.

But for me, the best views are to be found in a desert, and the best desert of all has its eastern fringes 30 miles from Dubai. They call it the Empty Quarter.

There is no life out there, just millions of tons of sand which have been shaped and crafted by the wind. It’s a constantly changing landscape but it is never anything other than extraordinarily beautiful.

Fun too, because most nights teenagers take their tuned four-wheel-drive cars to the wastelands for a bit of dune-bashing.

Every night, hundreds of guys choose a particularly arduous slope and see who can get up it… and before the tree-huggers start to whinge, I should explain that after everyone goes home, one breath of wind is all it takes to erase their tracks.

Now I had a 4.6-litre Range Rover which had air suspension and the pressure in its tyres lowered to 10 psi. Here, then, was the world’s best off-roader which had been modified to do the job. And it failed.

The reason is simple — 4.6 litres is not enough. You need a lot more than that, and special sand tyres which are nearly slick. Some skill is useful too.

One guy had an ordinary-looking Nissan Patrol and he could dawdle up the slope, changing gear halfway up if he felt like it. He could stop at 45 degrees, and then get going again.

On the rear window there was a large question mark, which provided the perfect answer for anyone wanting to know what sort of engine it had. A big one. With some turbos, at a guess.

We were deeply impressed but there was more to come because these guys like to drive home on two wheels. One veered on to the wrong side of the dual carriageway and then swerved back so that his Nissan hoiked itself over… and stayed like that for fifteen miles!

Each to his own. In England, young chaps show off by seeing who can drink the most pints, and who will order the hottest curry. Out there, where they don’t drink, the challenge is to see who can drive the furthest at 45 degrees.

Others do doughnuts while some indulge in full-bore, smoking-tyred, wailing-banshee quarter-mile tests.

The police don’t really care, and nor do passing motorists, most of whom simply pull on to the hard shoulder for a gawp.

Let’s be honest. The average Arab isn’t really in a hurry to get anywhere. I mean, it’s not like the next meeting will be make or break. And they don’t need to get the cheque into the bank on time.

These guys are so rich, it makes your teeth itch. If Elton John lived out there, they’d put him on income support. We worry about winning the lottery when most of the Arabs are getting that sort of cash every day. Some, I suspect, make millions every hour.

It made the news in Britain when a Dubai sheikh wandered into a London furniture store and bought every single item in the showroom. The bill was £325,000 which is nothing. They lose £325,000 down the back of the sofa most nights.

I know of one woman who made a set of curtains for someone’s house. He paid the £340 bill… and gave her a Jaguar XJS convertible as a present.

When Mohammed Bin Sulayem said on the programme, ‘I am not a rich man,’ viewers all over Britain gasped because I’d already explained that he had a Ferrari F50, a tuned F40, a Jaguar XJ220 and a Porsche 959. In 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 Twelfth Night.

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 Citroën 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 Top Gear.

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 Citroën 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.

‘We are Bedouin people. We love the desert and we like to go there in the winter when the north wind blows so it’s cool. But we like to have the comforts we are used to in the city.’

It’s been said that he has too much money but I am delighted to see someone enjoying his wealth, to find someone who doesn’t just sit back and get fat. He was, is, a genuinely humble man who wants a Lear jet now.

Me, I want the Victory boat. This to the world of offshore, class-one racing is what Williams is to Grand Prix. Yet they let me drive it. Well, to be exact, they let me drive it once the rain had stopped. No, I couldn’t work that one out either.

The last time I went in such a machine there were three seats so I could just tag along, but this time I found, to my horror, there were just two. One for the throttle man and one for the person who would steer — me.

My instructions went like this: when it flips, reach out with your right hand, undo the seat belts with your left and pull yourself out. There’s an air hose here in case you are having difficulties and a belt-cutter there. Here’s your helmet. Bye.

Er… how do I drive it?

But it was too late. My throttle man, Saeed Al Tayer, had hit the starter and the starboard motor was up and running.

Now, at slow speeds — anything up to 60 or so — the boat is at a crazy angle with its nose in the air so that way back down the deck the driver can’t see a bloody thing. And there I was trying to steer this £600,000 boat out of a marina where every other boat was worth five times more.

Whoomph, now the port engine was on song too and I could see Saeed, in the neighbouring cockpit, easing the throttles forward.

Attached to my cockpit canopy, taken from an F-16 fighter, was a rear-view mirror and what was going on in our wake can only be described as biblical.

They’d only given us the small propellers but as the engines were now churning out their full 1,800 horsepower, no props at all would still have made a mess.

As it was, our rooster tails were 60 feet high and a hundred yards long. This is not good practice because it means the boat is trimmed badly, but it doesn’t half look good for the cameras.

Then there was a god-almighty bang, the boat slowed and I turned, looking worried, to find Saeed grinning. The automatic gearbox had just taken us from second to third and now we were really moving.

By the time we were in fourth, the boat had levelled out nicely so that just the bottom half of the props were in the water and my GPS speedo was giving a crazy read-out. It said we were doing 106 mph.

I was trying to explain to our on-board camera that the deck which joins the two hulls is like a giant aeroplane wing and that it is supposed to keep the boat out of the water to reduce friction, but I was mesmerised by that speedo.

It said 132 mph. On water. With me at the helm.

Saeed was on the wireless. ‘Um, Jeremy, can we turn now please?’

‘No Saeed, come on, let’s see what she’ll do.’

‘Jeremy turn now, or we’ll be in Iranian waters and that’s not good.’

So I turned and the thrill put my hair on end. Damon Hill described this boat as being like a 300-mph fork-lift truck but he was talking horse shit. This had won the world championship and as I turned that wheel, I knew why.

You can actually feel the hull gripping the water in exactly the same way that in, say, a Porsche 911, you can feel the tyres hanging on. Turn too tight or too fast and just like a car, the boat will spin, and roll and you will die.

As we came out of the turn and Saeed hit the throttle hard again, I heard the helicopter pilot over my headphones. ‘Er, can you slow down, please? We can’t keep up.’

That night, we all went out with the British mechanics from the Victory team, determined to find out about the boat’s innermost secrets. Unfortunately, I must have had a bad pint because my recollections of the evening are a trifle hazy. People think you can’t drink in the UAE, but you can. Unfortunately.

I remember wandering around on a roundabout for a while and I vaguely recall being in a bar with some tinsel in my hair but when it comes to remembering how big the V8s were or what effect the hydra-dynamics have, I’m not really your man. Sorry.

The UAE, as I said on the programme, is the world capital of speed, but it’s much more besides. It’s disorganised like you wouldn’t believe. Arabs are more unreliable than a 1972 Allegro. And it was cold too. But when it comes to having fun, nowhere in the world even gets close.