Not a hedge fund or Volkswagen, but it was the Sultan of Brunei who saved Bentley from bankruptcy, the royal is single-handedly responsible for purchasing more than half the cars the company produced for years at an end

At over 7,000 cars strong and valued at over $5 billion, the Sultan of Brunei’s garage stands as the largest car collection in the world. Housing everything from bespoke Ferraris with night vision, customized Lamborghinis, and exotics in just about every color imaginable, the Brunei collection is an exercise in the strange and wonderful. At one point, the Sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, and his brother Prince Jeffri were the most prized customers of luxury marques around the world.

One of the garages housing the Sultan’s collection. Image – Instagram / brunei_car_collection

None more so than Rolls-Royce and the marque it owned till 1998, Bentley, who can credit their survival through the 1980s to the Sultan of Brunei. It’s estimated that the brothers spent nearly $14.8 billion on cars, including billions in Bentley handouts to fund research and development. This came at a time when all Bentleys were essentially Rolls-Royces, so it’s safe to say the Sultan had an exacting taste for cars.

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No wonder then that the Sultan of Brunei owned over 20 unique cars purpose-built for himself or the Royal family. These include the “first” Bentley SUV before the Bentayga was conceived, and the first Bentley Continental GT, back when it was still a concept car known as the Bentley Java.

It’s said that several features on later Bentleys were, in fact, first implemented on several of the Sultan’s commissions before making their way to production Bentleys. The Bentley Continental GT has of course gone on to become one of the marque’s bestselling models next to the Bentayga SUV.

The Bentley Grand Prix. Image – Instagram / brunei_car_collection

The Sultan owned six models of the specially-commissioned Bentley Dominator SUV, 13 of the Bentley Java concept as fully-running cars years before the Continental GT, a factory-converted four-wheel drive Bentley Grand Prix with coupe bodywork, and many, many more.

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The Bentley Silverstone. Image – Instagram / brunei_car_collection

All put together, you’ll find roughly 380 Bentleys and over 600 Rolls-Royce models, earning the Sultan of Brunei a Guinness World Record for the largest private Rolls-Royce collection.

Considering Bentley sold 13,560 cars in 2023, its third-best retail sales number, it’s somewhat of a stretch to imagine a company with operating profits over $600 million needing to be saved by one man, even if it was the largest car collector in the world.

But the truth is, without the billions the Sultan of Brunei funneled into Bentley for his whacky one-offs, the British marque might not have lived to see the light.