I encountered this car in a quiet street in Fitzrovia. Luxurious opulence. Opulent luxury. I though, who was dumb enough to demonstrate his small willie inferiority complex so openly?
A Protestant would rather die than even sit in this car. So, Swiss bankers were not even considered. A Russian oligarch? A Russian would go for a black car. A Ukrainian would go for a white one. That left me with the only viable option, really. An Arab.
It turned out I was not the first to ask this question. Google knows this car.
What came as a surprise was the sum paid for the Number “1” on the license plate by the car owner (who was 25 years old at the time).
Let me present Saeed Khouri from Abu Dhabi. Of why he paid an astounding £7,100,000 ($10.7 million) for it in 2008, Khouri commented:
“I bought it because it’s the best number… I bought it because I want to be the best in the world”.
Khouri’s cousin, Talal, has a similar passion for number plates. He paid £3,470,000 for the registration “5” in 2007 (source)
I love this Arab mentality. The best man in the world? Easy. You don’t have to be Leonardo da Vinci. You don’t have to be Albert Einstein. You don’t even have to be the first man in space, for god’s sake. You can become the best by buying the number “1” for you car.
This is why this culture can not produce geniuses and is largely useless. It can’t move the mankind forward. People don’t have to invent, work hard, be creative. The best Arab man is the one who resides at Hyde Park One and has a “1” on his license place.
I just hope that Arabic culture is NOT ALL like this. I really do. For its own sake.
I am sure that this guy is at about 5 handshakes from me now. That’s kinda theory that Facebook has proven some time ago.
Let’s try to reach this guy, somehow. Let’s tell him he’s a disgrace of the human race. Perhaps, there are still some healthy neurons in his mind that can connect into a simple thought: this Rolls Royce is not just vulgar. It is indecent.
Standing Ovation, Seated 
Akmerf What went wrong? I suspect it was oil and extreme Islam. Hacking the heads off sorcerers and adultresses speaks volumes does it not
I think this is the very sad part of the global history. Someone who was able to give the world good things, brings wars.
Algorithm, alcohol, almanac, algebra… actually almost all starting from ‘al’- they invented so many things and were long before da Vinci and Fibonacci and left the great basis for both. But I guess it was long before oil as well… Love the topic, interesting post!
Algebra has nothing to do with arabs, it comes from Babylon and pre-arabic Egypt, as most of the things starting with “al” today. And anyway, it all was before Islam, and a long time before oil )
I’m not talking about ancient times, Greece, Babylon etc. But there was a period when the very Arab world was a center (one of the centers) of science. They used Arab language after and it gave us ‘algebra’ for one. This would be nonsense today. Things have changed long time ago but oil is the contemporary factor that prevents these countries from development I think.