Brunei’s 7,000-Car Legend
Ferraris Ferrari didn’t normally make, ten McLaren F1s, a Bentley SUV years before the Bentayga, and thousands of cars hidden away from the public.
There are big car collections, and then there is Brunei.
For years, the number most often repeated has been 7,000 cars.
Was it exactly 7,000? Probably impossible to prove.
There is no public master list, the cars were spread across different members of the royal family, and much of the buying was linked to the Sultan’s brother, Prince Jefri Bolkiah.
But once a collection reaches into the thousands, the exact number becomes slightly less important.
Especially when some of the cars simply did not exist anywhere else.
Buying rare cars wasn’t enough
The collection included Ferrari F40s, Porsche 959s, Bugatti EB110s, Dauer 962s, Rolls-Royces and McLaren F1s.
Cars that would be the centrepiece of almost any collection were parked in rows.
But the really interesting part came when buying rare cars apparently stopped being enough.
The Brunei royals started asking manufacturers to build their own versions.
Ferraris that weren’t in the catalogue
One of the best examples was the Ferrari FX.
Built through Pininfarina using Ferrari hardware, it featured completely different bodywork and a semi-automatic transmission developed before Ferrari offered similar technology in its normal production cars.
It was less about choosing options and more about asking Ferrari to build something that did not officially exist.
Then came perhaps the strangest one of all.
The Ferrari 456 GT Venice Estate.
Yes, a Ferrari station wagon.
Pininfarina developed a proper five-door estate body around the V12-powered 456 GT, complete with rear doors, an extended roof and a tailgate.
And there was more than one.
The wider Brunei programme included estates, saloons, open cars and heavily personalised 456s.
Somehow, the V12 Ferrari wagon might also be one of the better-looking cars they commissioned.
Ten McLaren F1s
Then there were the McLarens.
Only 106 McLaren F1-family cars were built in total.
Ten went to the Brunei royal family.
That included five road cars, three F1 LMs, one F1 GT and one F1 GTR.
Only five customer F1 LMs were ever produced.
Brunei had three.
Today, seeing one McLaren F1 is a major event.
In 1990s Brunei, there were enough of them that you would have had to ask which one.
Bentley didn’t make an SUV, so Brunei asked for one
In 1996, Bentley didn’t sell an SUV.
The Brunei royal family wanted one anyway.
The result was the Bentley Dominator.
Six were built using Range Rover underpinnings with bespoke Bentley bodywork.
That was roughly twenty years before the Bentayga arrived.
Looking at the luxury car market today, it suddenly doesn’t seem like such a strange idea.
Then everything changed
This is where the story gets more complicated.
A huge amount of the spending was linked to Prince Jefri, whose business empire collapsed in the late 1990s.
A major legal and financial dispute followed, and as part of the settlement, large numbers of assets were returned to the Brunei government.
That included cars.
Reports at the time suggested roughly 1,700 to 2,000 vehicles were handed back.
From there, the collection became much harder to follow.
Some cars stayed in Brunei.
Some were sold.
Some moved into other private collections.
Others simply disappeared from public view.
And now they keep coming back
Over the last few years, more ex-Brunei cars have started appearing publicly.
A former Brunei McLaren F1 sold in 2025 for $25.3 million.
A Ferrari 512 TR Spyder commissioned for the royal family has appeared at auction.
So have other rare Ferraris, Lamborghinis and one-off cars with Brunei history.
That doesn’t mean the Sultan suddenly decided to auction 7,000 cars.
The reality is much less dramatic.
Cars have been leaving the wider collection for years, and as they change owners, get restored or return to auction, we are slowly getting a better picture of what was actually there.
What happened to the rest?
That is still difficult to answer.
Some cars are believed to remain with the royal family.
Others have clearly left.
There have also been reports that parts of the collection suffered from poor maintenance after specialist staff left, although the condition of the entire collection has never been publicly documented.
Then, in 2024, hundreds of old photographs from inside the garages appeared online.
Suddenly, people could see rows of F40s, Porsche 959s, McLaren F1s and coachbuilt Ferraris that had previously existed mostly in stories and old chassis records.
The photographs were years old, so they didn’t answer the biggest question.
What is still there today?
That might be why people are still obsessed with it
The number 7,000 gets the attention.
But the real story is what those garages contained.
A Ferrari wagon.
A Bentley SUV before Bentley made SUVs.
Prototype technology.
Multiple McLaren F1s.
Cars built specifically for one family, then hidden away for decades.
And now, every so often, another one appears.
An auction catalogue.
A chassis number.
An old photograph.
Another car with a strange history that leads back to Brunei.
That is probably the best part of the whole story.
Thirty years later, we are still finding out what was actually in those garages.
REVVED
For people who get it.
