London: Hands gripping the steering wheel, I am perched in the front seat of a garish white Mercedes so enormous it makes me feel like one of the Borrowers.
My every move is being watched by an equally enormous man dressed head to toe in purple velour, who identifies himself only as ‘The Wolf of Knightsbridge’.
I am forbidden from touching the plush red-and-white leather interior; forbidden from pressing the astounding array of buttons and levers that dot the dashboard; and, above all else, forbidden from putting my foot anywhere near the accelerator.
For this is no ordinary Mercedes. It’s a £400,000 G63 AMG 6x6, the most extravagant vehicle ever made by the marque, one of only 100 in the world.
It has six gigantic wheels, which come up as high as my waist.
Originally developed for the Australian army, it’s capable of powering through the desert heat at 110mph.
And it’s currently parked outside Harrods, the upmarket department store in London’s Knightsbridge, where it’s causing quite a stir.
A crowd of gawping onlookers has gathered beneath the shop’s famous green-and-gold frontage to jostle for a photograph of this astonishing car.
‘That’s enough, that’s enough now,’ bellows The Wolf, dispersing the group with his colossal bulk.
Another man, known only as ‘Angelo’, with a distinctive gold-capped front tooth, ushers me out of the vehicle and towards a chap dressed in jeans and a grey T-shirt.
This is the owner, a Saudi Arabian billionaire who has come to the UK — as he does every summer — for three weeks to shop, socialise and cruise around in his ostentatious automobile.
The tycoon, who doesn’t give his name or so much as glance in my direction, is in good company.
It’s at this time of year — two weeks after the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting — that millionaires and billionaires from across the Middle East flock to London.
They come to escape the oppressive heat in their home countries, to relax, to party — and, above all, to flaunt their wealth.
Five-star hotels, jewellers, casinos, concierge services, designer shops and restaurants roll out the red carpet to cash in on the £120 million of Arab money that floods in during the so-called ‘Ramadan Rush’.
Karen Jones, editor of Citywealth, a magazine aimed at the uber-rich, says: ‘They’re like kids in a playground. The people I’ve come across are mainly Saudi, Kuwaiti and Qatari.
'They are the upper echelons of those societies, with a type of money that is beyond comprehension.
‘Most come with an intention of spending around £100,000 each. Money is no object. One Qatari I know bought his girlfriend a Porsche here just because she asked for it.’
The influx of Arabic high rollers for a few weeks a year is not a new phenomenon.
But this time there are not only more of them (Saudi visitors are up 22 per cent, while those from the United Arab Emirates have risen by ten per cent, taking up four-fifths of the rooms at London’s five-star hotels), they’re showier, gaudier and more flamboyant than ever.
While their wives spend £6,000 on necklaces at Chopard and shell out £12,000 on Gucci handbags, the men cruise the streets of Knightsbridge, Kensington and Chelsea in their brash, brightly coloured wheels.
From diamond-encrusted Mercedes to neon-tinted Range Rovers, racy red Ferraris and loud Lamborghinis, the more garish and expensive the supercar, the better.
Some own only one, but most boast a fleet of four or five, which are transported to Britain by cargo jet at a cost of up to £25,000 per car.
Already spotted on our streets this year are a black Bugatti Veyron, worth around £1 million, an orange and black McLaren P1 (£850,000), a purple Rolls-Royce Wraith (£235,000) and a yellow Lamborghini Aventador (£300,000).
This is no ordinary Mercedes: The G63 AMG 6x6 is the most extravagant vehicle ever made by the marque, one of only 100 in the world.
Outside the five-star Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane on Wednesday afternoon, I counted not one but five supercars, parked cheek-to-cheek opposite the main entrance.
Two Ferraris, a gold Range Rover, a metallic purple Rolls-Royce and matt black Mercedes, this was £1.7 million worth of wheels.
These cars may be dazzling to look at, but with them comes trouble: traffic chaos as they stop on yellow lines, hurtle down one-way streets and fail to pay parking fines.
Then there are the noise complaints as they whizz through residential areas, causing drivers and pedestrians to swing out of their way.
In response to complaints from enraged locals, Kensington and Chelsea council last week announced plans to introduce ‘car Asbos’, whereby engine revving, racing, performing stunts and playing loud music would be dealt with by strict, on-the-spot fines and prosecution for repeated rule-breakers.
Millionaire Qatari businessman Mohammed Al Kubaisi, 26, who has been driving his blue-and-white customised Aston Martin Vanquish (£200,000) around Knightsbridge this summer, admitted earlier this week that supercar owners could be better behaved while in Britain.
‘We need to respect the UK law and the people that live here,’ he said. ‘If the law is made, we will abide by it.’
Others, however, are reluctant to take the blame.
I stop Mohammed Al Nasr, 38, a Saudi oil tycoon, in his black-and-white Pagani Huayra, a £840,000 space-age sports car with doors that open upwards like the DeLorean in Back To The Future.
‘I love Britain,’ he says in broken English. ‘I am not here to cause problems. I am here for shopping.’
He cuts off mid-conversation and puts his foot to the floor — veering into a working bus lane and narrowly missing the No 52 bus as he goes.
Parked outside Harrods is Ganim Althani, 20, from Sharjah in the UAE, looking nervous as crowds of photographers — known as the ‘carparazzi’ — circle his £300,000 SLS AMG Coupe Black Series Mercedes.
Foreign playboys descend on London with their supercars
It’s his first time in London and he — unlike the many other supercars parked illegally on double yellow lines around him — is putting money into the parking meter before he nips inside to buy a suit.
‘I don’t want attention,’ he insists somewhat ironically, as, with a futuristic hiss, the driver door flies open vertically like a bat wing. ‘That would not be good for me back home.’
Most supercar owners are intensely private — many of them so rich they travel with a troupe of security staff, minders and drivers — and I am shooed away as I try to quiz them.
‘The owners range in age from 25 to around 55,’ explains Jon Oakley, founder of Essex-based Oakley Design, which carries out modifications (costing up to £200,000) on Arab-owned supercars.
‘Lots of them are new money; they’ve been driving a Jeep in the Middle East and suddenly they’re in a million-pound supercar on the gridlocked roads of Central London.
'To help them stay safe while they’re here, we offer driving lessons and sort out all their insurance.’
Cars with non-UK number plates can be legally driven here for up to six months.
Around Harrods the roads are bristling with traffic wardens, slapping fines on supercar after supercar.
One of the offenders is a blue Bentley from Qatar; another is a Kuwaiti-registered red Rolls-Royce.
‘It’s not that they don’t care about the rules,’ says Jon.
‘But if they get a £100 parking ticket and it means they can stop right outside Harrods and walk straight in and out, it’s worth it.’
Indeed. But one of the biggest problems faced by Westminster City Council is the number of parking fines that are unpaid.
In 2010, the council revealed that £3,776,490 worth of parking tickets remained unsettled since 2007, with Middle Eastern-owned supercars — including a £300,000 Rolls-Royce with 18 tickets — racking up most of the debt.
Last year, UAE-registered cars alone owed £62,000. Once their drivers return home, there is nothing the British authorities can do.
‘They literally don’t understand what parking tickets are,’ says Karen Jones. ‘One Kuwaiti I know had six ex-military minders with him.
‘He was taking tea and cakes in Harrods and came out to find a door stuck with tickets.
One of the minders just said: “I’ll clear it up.” ’
The same is true of the congestion charge, the £11.50 weekday fee for driving in Central London, which is simply ignored by many supercar owners.
The cameras that monitor the charge can’t read Arabic number plates, so the drivers can evade it.
‘My minders pay congestion for me,’ insists ‘Earl’, a 27-year-old mineral tycoon who lives in Qatar and comes to London to drive his multi-million-pound Ferrari collection.
‘I like my cars, and I like others to appreciate them. For many Arabs, it’s a status thing.’
For most owners, explains Adhum Carter, partner of high-end concierge company Pocketlife, these attention-grabbing vehicles are holiday cars; at home they drive far more mundane 4x4s.
‘They can use the cars properly over here,’ he adds.
‘The climate in Dubai is very sandy and hot, which damages the cars, so they tend to use them more in London.’
So what’s it like to whizz around London in a supercar?
Very stop-start, it seems, with barely time for a rev of the engine before these flashy beasts are ground to a halt by traffic lights.
The climate in Dubai is very sandy and hot, which damages the cars, so they tend to use them more in London.
It’s not until after rush hour on the wide open stretch of Sloane Street that they finally let rip.
From around 7pm, as the light fades, the street is lined with glitzy supercars, their owners taking it in turns to race up and down.
I approach one — a red Ferrari F12 from Dubai. The driver, who won’t give his name, agrees to let me hop in for a quick whirl around the block.
He is visiting with his wife, he says, but she refuses to ride in his car as she doesn’t like how fast he drives (the car can do 226mph).
Seconds later, I see what she means. He revs the car once and it zooms forward like a rocket.
I dig my nails into the shiny red leather seat and ask him to stop. He looks amused as I clamber out.
Back outside Harrods, the six-wheeled monster car has been joined by a £150,000 sapphire blue Bentley, a £100,000 Porsche Cayenne Turbo S and a £55,000 Mercedes covered in tiny Swarovski crystals; all parked on the street as their owners sup tea and smoke shisha pipes in the cafe opposite.
The Wolf of Knightsbridge is leaning nonchalantly against the door of the department store, smiling from behind his expensive sunglasses as he watches the ostentatious scene unfold.
Austerity? What austerity?
(Sarah Rainey, Daily Mail)
My every move is being watched by an equally enormous man dressed head to toe in purple velour, who identifies himself only as ‘The Wolf of Knightsbridge’.
I am forbidden from touching the plush red-and-white leather interior; forbidden from pressing the astounding array of buttons and levers that dot the dashboard; and, above all else, forbidden from putting my foot anywhere near the accelerator.
For this is no ordinary Mercedes. It’s a £400,000 G63 AMG 6x6, the most extravagant vehicle ever made by the marque, one of only 100 in the world.
It has six gigantic wheels, which come up as high as my waist.
Originally developed for the Australian army, it’s capable of powering through the desert heat at 110mph.
And it’s currently parked outside Harrods, the upmarket department store in London’s Knightsbridge, where it’s causing quite a stir.
A crowd of gawping onlookers has gathered beneath the shop’s famous green-and-gold frontage to jostle for a photograph of this astonishing car.
‘That’s enough, that’s enough now,’ bellows The Wolf, dispersing the group with his colossal bulk.
Another man, known only as ‘Angelo’, with a distinctive gold-capped front tooth, ushers me out of the vehicle and towards a chap dressed in jeans and a grey T-shirt.
This is the owner, a Saudi Arabian billionaire who has come to the UK — as he does every summer — for three weeks to shop, socialise and cruise around in his ostentatious automobile.
The tycoon, who doesn’t give his name or so much as glance in my direction, is in good company.
It’s at this time of year — two weeks after the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting — that millionaires and billionaires from across the Middle East flock to London.
They come to escape the oppressive heat in their home countries, to relax, to party — and, above all, to flaunt their wealth.
Five-star hotels, jewellers, casinos, concierge services, designer shops and restaurants roll out the red carpet to cash in on the £120 million of Arab money that floods in during the so-called ‘Ramadan Rush’.
Karen Jones, editor of Citywealth, a magazine aimed at the uber-rich, says: ‘They’re like kids in a playground. The people I’ve come across are mainly Saudi, Kuwaiti and Qatari.
'They are the upper echelons of those societies, with a type of money that is beyond comprehension.
‘Most come with an intention of spending around £100,000 each. Money is no object. One Qatari I know bought his girlfriend a Porsche here just because she asked for it.’
The influx of Arabic high rollers for a few weeks a year is not a new phenomenon.
But this time there are not only more of them (Saudi visitors are up 22 per cent, while those from the United Arab Emirates have risen by ten per cent, taking up four-fifths of the rooms at London’s five-star hotels), they’re showier, gaudier and more flamboyant than ever.
While their wives spend £6,000 on necklaces at Chopard and shell out £12,000 on Gucci handbags, the men cruise the streets of Knightsbridge, Kensington and Chelsea in their brash, brightly coloured wheels.
From diamond-encrusted Mercedes to neon-tinted Range Rovers, racy red Ferraris and loud Lamborghinis, the more garish and expensive the supercar, the better.
Some own only one, but most boast a fleet of four or five, which are transported to Britain by cargo jet at a cost of up to £25,000 per car.
Already spotted on our streets this year are a black Bugatti Veyron, worth around £1 million, an orange and black McLaren P1 (£850,000), a purple Rolls-Royce Wraith (£235,000) and a yellow Lamborghini Aventador (£300,000).
This is no ordinary Mercedes: The G63 AMG 6x6 is the most extravagant vehicle ever made by the marque, one of only 100 in the world.
Outside the five-star Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane on Wednesday afternoon, I counted not one but five supercars, parked cheek-to-cheek opposite the main entrance.
Two Ferraris, a gold Range Rover, a metallic purple Rolls-Royce and matt black Mercedes, this was £1.7 million worth of wheels.
These cars may be dazzling to look at, but with them comes trouble: traffic chaos as they stop on yellow lines, hurtle down one-way streets and fail to pay parking fines.
Then there are the noise complaints as they whizz through residential areas, causing drivers and pedestrians to swing out of their way.
In response to complaints from enraged locals, Kensington and Chelsea council last week announced plans to introduce ‘car Asbos’, whereby engine revving, racing, performing stunts and playing loud music would be dealt with by strict, on-the-spot fines and prosecution for repeated rule-breakers.
Millionaire Qatari businessman Mohammed Al Kubaisi, 26, who has been driving his blue-and-white customised Aston Martin Vanquish (£200,000) around Knightsbridge this summer, admitted earlier this week that supercar owners could be better behaved while in Britain.
‘We need to respect the UK law and the people that live here,’ he said. ‘If the law is made, we will abide by it.’
Others, however, are reluctant to take the blame.
I stop Mohammed Al Nasr, 38, a Saudi oil tycoon, in his black-and-white Pagani Huayra, a £840,000 space-age sports car with doors that open upwards like the DeLorean in Back To The Future.
‘I love Britain,’ he says in broken English. ‘I am not here to cause problems. I am here for shopping.’
He cuts off mid-conversation and puts his foot to the floor — veering into a working bus lane and narrowly missing the No 52 bus as he goes.
Parked outside Harrods is Ganim Althani, 20, from Sharjah in the UAE, looking nervous as crowds of photographers — known as the ‘carparazzi’ — circle his £300,000 SLS AMG Coupe Black Series Mercedes.
Foreign playboys descend on London with their supercars
It’s his first time in London and he — unlike the many other supercars parked illegally on double yellow lines around him — is putting money into the parking meter before he nips inside to buy a suit.
‘I don’t want attention,’ he insists somewhat ironically, as, with a futuristic hiss, the driver door flies open vertically like a bat wing. ‘That would not be good for me back home.’
Most supercar owners are intensely private — many of them so rich they travel with a troupe of security staff, minders and drivers — and I am shooed away as I try to quiz them.
‘The owners range in age from 25 to around 55,’ explains Jon Oakley, founder of Essex-based Oakley Design, which carries out modifications (costing up to £200,000) on Arab-owned supercars.
‘Lots of them are new money; they’ve been driving a Jeep in the Middle East and suddenly they’re in a million-pound supercar on the gridlocked roads of Central London.
'To help them stay safe while they’re here, we offer driving lessons and sort out all their insurance.’
Cars with non-UK number plates can be legally driven here for up to six months.
Around Harrods the roads are bristling with traffic wardens, slapping fines on supercar after supercar.
One of the offenders is a blue Bentley from Qatar; another is a Kuwaiti-registered red Rolls-Royce.
‘It’s not that they don’t care about the rules,’ says Jon.
‘But if they get a £100 parking ticket and it means they can stop right outside Harrods and walk straight in and out, it’s worth it.’
Indeed. But one of the biggest problems faced by Westminster City Council is the number of parking fines that are unpaid.
In 2010, the council revealed that £3,776,490 worth of parking tickets remained unsettled since 2007, with Middle Eastern-owned supercars — including a £300,000 Rolls-Royce with 18 tickets — racking up most of the debt.
Last year, UAE-registered cars alone owed £62,000. Once their drivers return home, there is nothing the British authorities can do.
‘They literally don’t understand what parking tickets are,’ says Karen Jones. ‘One Kuwaiti I know had six ex-military minders with him.
‘He was taking tea and cakes in Harrods and came out to find a door stuck with tickets.
One of the minders just said: “I’ll clear it up.” ’
The same is true of the congestion charge, the £11.50 weekday fee for driving in Central London, which is simply ignored by many supercar owners.
The cameras that monitor the charge can’t read Arabic number plates, so the drivers can evade it.
‘My minders pay congestion for me,’ insists ‘Earl’, a 27-year-old mineral tycoon who lives in Qatar and comes to London to drive his multi-million-pound Ferrari collection.
‘I like my cars, and I like others to appreciate them. For many Arabs, it’s a status thing.’
For most owners, explains Adhum Carter, partner of high-end concierge company Pocketlife, these attention-grabbing vehicles are holiday cars; at home they drive far more mundane 4x4s.
‘They can use the cars properly over here,’ he adds.
‘The climate in Dubai is very sandy and hot, which damages the cars, so they tend to use them more in London.’
So what’s it like to whizz around London in a supercar?
Very stop-start, it seems, with barely time for a rev of the engine before these flashy beasts are ground to a halt by traffic lights.
The climate in Dubai is very sandy and hot, which damages the cars, so they tend to use them more in London.
It’s not until after rush hour on the wide open stretch of Sloane Street that they finally let rip.
From around 7pm, as the light fades, the street is lined with glitzy supercars, their owners taking it in turns to race up and down.
I approach one — a red Ferrari F12 from Dubai. The driver, who won’t give his name, agrees to let me hop in for a quick whirl around the block.
He is visiting with his wife, he says, but she refuses to ride in his car as she doesn’t like how fast he drives (the car can do 226mph).
Seconds later, I see what she means. He revs the car once and it zooms forward like a rocket.
I dig my nails into the shiny red leather seat and ask him to stop. He looks amused as I clamber out.
Back outside Harrods, the six-wheeled monster car has been joined by a £150,000 sapphire blue Bentley, a £100,000 Porsche Cayenne Turbo S and a £55,000 Mercedes covered in tiny Swarovski crystals; all parked on the street as their owners sup tea and smoke shisha pipes in the cafe opposite.
The Wolf of Knightsbridge is leaning nonchalantly against the door of the department store, smiling from behind his expensive sunglasses as he watches the ostentatious scene unfold.
Austerity? What austerity?
(Sarah Rainey, Daily Mail)
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