How much is too much? If you’re Hassanal Bolkiah, the answer is a resounding ‘No such thing’. The Sultan of Brunei’s car collection is home to over 7,000 of the finest cars in the world. Valued at over $5 billion, with over $15 million sitting in just Ferrari 456 models he owns, this is one car collection where quantity over quality wins every time. Though the Sultan of Brunei helped keep Rolls-Royce and Bentley afloat during turbulent times, his buying four Bugatti EB110 Super Sport models couldn’t do the same for the French supercar company.
Ironically, the EB110 is the very car that drove Bugatti to bankruptcy, because it was made to the same exacting standards that founder Ettore Bugatti would have wanted. The EB110 was the first new Bugatti made since Ettore’s death in 1947 and was meant to signal a revival of the French company under Italian Romano Artioli’s ownership.
Considering the launch of the new factory in Modena a stone’s throw away from Ferrari spread across two days, some would say there wasn’t really an effort to curb excessive spending.
Heck, the EB110 itself was engineered to be an excess in itself. Its 3.5-liter V12 had quad-turbos strapped to it: early EB110 models made around 550 horsepower, and the later SS made over 600 horsepower. It was enough to make the EB110 SS the fastest and quickest car in the world in the early 1990s. The price tag on an EB110 SS when new would have stood around the $300,000 mark, not adjusted for inflation.
Of course, the new Bugatti caught the eye of the Sultan of Brunei, who bought three in 1993 and one more in 1994, for good measure. A flex of wealth for sure, most of the Brunei Bugatti EB110 SS models have likely not seen the kind of use they were built for.
In typical Brunei collection style though, one EB110 SS is specced in poor taste: all black with red, yellow and blue stripes along its sides, with an interior that can only be described as Rastafarian.
Funnily enough, the Sultan of Brunei went on to own 10 McLaren F1s, the car that toppled the EB110 SS from its throne of fastest car in the world. Now, if only all these cars sitting stationary in the collection can be put back on the road and used as they were meant to.
