Mideast Magnates Fill Their Garages With Luxury Cars
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When Omar bin Sulaiman takes delivery of the red Ferrari F430 he ordered in January, he’ll have two of the company’s sports cars in his collection. He also owns a Bentley Flying Spur and a Porsche Cayenne sport-utility vehicle.
“If God blessed you with wealth, you should enjoy it,” said Mr. Sulaiman, 33, who runs the Dubai International Financial Centre, a hub for investment banks in Dubai, a sheikdom in the United Arab Emirates. The F430 is an eight-cylinder, 483 horsepower speedster that goes from zero to 62 miles an hour in four seconds.
Middle East magnates, flush with cash from high oil prices, are filling their garages with sports cars and SUVs, helping cover the costs of developing super cars such as the 1,001-horsepower Veyron. Buyers in the U.A.E. have ordered 15 of the $1.2 million coupes since Volkswagen AG’s Bugatti division began selling them in December.
Both Ferrari SpA, a unit of Turin, Italy-based Fiat SpA, and Porsche AG reported that sales in the Middle East grew faster than in America and Europe last year. Residents of the region have to wait two months for Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford Motor Company to deliver a $90,000 Range Rover Sport.
Range Rover has sold 67 of its 35thanniversary edition Vogue Supercharged model in the Middle East, two-thirds of the planned production. With 20-inch chrome-alloy wheels, the SUV sells for the equivalent of $152,450.
