Stop What You’re Doing, The Sultan Of Brunei’s Insane Car Collection Just Got Leaked

If you were reading about cars in the late 1990s, you’ve probably heard about the most expansive, exclusive, and amazing car collection of all time. Before Jay Leno’s Garage or wealthy collectors posting their Chiron, Huayra, and Regera hypercars to Instagram, there was the Sultan of Brunei. We heard about the thousands of luxury and completely custom models through rumor and story, but only rarely did we get a chance to see even a couple of the cars hidden inside.

Until now.

This weekend, a trio of Instagram accounts started posting rolls of photos, said to have been taken in 2001 within the collection of the royal family of Brunei. The pictures are old, but the collection is amazing. You need to check these out, especially if you’ve never seen a Ferrari in fancy dress.

The Brunei Collection Was The Stuff Of Legends

The exact numbers in the collection were never known, and at this point, they may never be known. We’ve seen estimates putting the total at nearly 10,000, with valuations estimated to be in the billions of dollars. The collection was amassed by the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, and his brother Prince Jefri Bolkiah. Throughout the 1990s this collection grew. Custom cars from Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, Bugatti, every brand with even a hint of prestige. These aren’t “custom” cars with some fancy paint, either. Think fleets of Ferrari station wagons, Rolls models that only exist in this collection, and even a Bentley SUV years before Bentley would build an SUV for the public.

If that’s not enough, there are dozens of copies of more mass-produced specials. When we say “mass-produced,” we mean ultra-rare cars like the McLaren F1, the Ferrari F40 and Porsche 959, or the Bugatti EB110. What makes the collection even more amazing is that there are often multiple examples of a single ultra-rare car, sometimes in a highly unusual color. For example, there are two F40s, and neither is red.

Photos Leaked After More Than 20 Years

These photos are said to have been taken in 2001. The drops of cars to Instagram are photos that are said to have been closely held for two decades until someone decided they wanted the car collection to go public, likely due to some sort of disagreement; the Instagram accounts mention that a Google Drive folder with these images was taken down. Fortunately, it’s back up as of this publication.

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The collection stopped growing in the late 1990s, and that probably has something to do with when the photos were taken. When the Asian financial crisis of 1997 hit, the resulting cash crunch led to charges that Prince Jefri had embezzled more than $15 billion from Brunei. As part of a settlement, he started returning property to the state, and posters on Instagram speculate that’s when the photos were taken, to prepare the collection for sale.

Probably tired of trickling out the photos, on Monday, account brunei_cars_2001 posted a Google Drive link to the entire set. It’s a massive folder, but the images are all very well cataloged, which makes things a little easier. Just don’t be surprised when you don’t recognize many of the model names, because, as we said up top, many of these cars just don’t exist anywhere else in the world. Not even the Ralph Lauren collection comes close, and that’s saying something.