Dubai is home to many of my favorite things; camel-racing robots, the world's tallest building,
vending machine gold and a lot of supercars. Now, thanks to Dubai being smack dab in the
middle of the Arabian Desert, these supercar owners have a lot of sand to bury them in.
Yes, Dubai is also home to the world's largest junkyard dedicated to burying the car of your
dreams. And mine, to be honest. Dubai's luxurious car graveyards accumulate
up to 3000 cars in a single year alone. And a great deal of this number includes cars
that have no business - at all - being tossed away like last week's leftovers. Now it's
a tough pill to swallow; who in their right would dump a fully functional Maserati in
the middle of nowhere? Well, the likely answer is two facts about the Dubai government and
its people. Fact 1, Dubai is a playground for the rich.
A whopping 90% of its population are expatriates from all over the world that have come to
have a sip from the country's deep oil wells. There's a lot of money to be made, and a lot
of space to flaunt it. Heck the police drive Bugatti Veyrons! It's only normal that everyone
else try their hands at getting one. And that's where Fact 2 comes in.
Dubai has what I'd like to call Pro supercar vibes; great weather, cheap gas, low crime
rate, zero income tax and very generous banks. You could get a car loan in almost no time
and pay it back in five years and just a little interest. Now imagine you're living in this
Supercar Xanadu and the government is equally willing to help you own one, what's the harm?
Well. There's none unless you miss your payments and run the risk of getting thrown in jail.
A likely possibility you can easily remedy by dumping the car and fleeing the country
ASAP. Like the alleged ex-owner of this one in 399 limited edition Ferrari Enzo that sold
for $2.4 million at a R.M Sotheby's auction earlier this year.
To get the hang of how these two facts come to play, let's tell the story behind a viral
photo from years ago. A white Porsche Boxster was abandoned in a parking lot, like a thousand
other cars. But the reason it went viral was because of a strange message on the car. Turns
out the owner of the car decided to leave a message on the car's bumper in permanent
marker before making a run for it. It had the car owner's name -some guy named Andy
Blair- his phone number, job title and a simple message "Made Redundant Today" (Creepy) Why?
Well a Porsche is more efficient than a sticky note or some cardboard, don't you think?
A likely scesnario probably goes like this, Andy Blair has just recently moved to the
UAE to a high paying job as a Project manager. Everyone around him drives a supercar so he
finally succumbs to the pressure and gets one of those easy loans Dubai never runs out
of. Fast forward to 2008 and the market crashes, our guy Andy suddenly finds himself out of
a job in a foreign land with no way to meet his payments. To stay means risking prison
time and so he scribbles this message and makes a quick escape.
Prison might seem like a harsh treatment of a man down on his luck but you should know
that the UAE works with the Islamic law known as Sharia. Fun fact, the punishment for drinking
alcohol under Sharia law is flogging. We're not kidding here people. Now there are sections
of the constitution that are Western law but the part that talks about loans and debt repayment
is Sharia, which means that being late on debt repayments of any kind is considered
stealing. Technically the punishment for that is amputation, but you could just serve time.
I really don't know which is better. Now if this were to happen to you in a country
for example, you could file for bankruptcy and avoid the penalty. However, the UAE didn't
get a similar version until 2016. So yeah, it's pretty understandable to run. Some even
leave their keys in the ignition. Andy Blair is not the only one who had the
genius idea of defacing his car before abandoning it. Someone spray painted a "Cash only" message
on a shiny blue 216,000 Lamborghini Aventador one time. If you were wondering why these
people wouldn't just sell the cars and clear the debt, it's because they are bound by law
to not do that. There's also the fact that Dubai already has a thriving market for used
cars and they'd probably have been picked up by the authorities before they are able
to sell it. Still, it is important to note that the government
does not exactly enjoy having hundreds of super expensive cars just rotting away. They
don't even move these cars sometimes because of how tedious it gets. So, until a car is
blocking the road or the people living in the neighborhood complain about it, it's totally
normal to have a Maserati collecting dust in front of a storefront for like a year.
Only slight upside to it is you get to see it being used for dust art. Airports are notoriously
known for lacking parking space thanks to these guys.
Another reason the government is quite desperate to put an end to this is because leaving these
cars unprotected basically makes them more likely to be sold on the black market. So
it's become a free capital sourcing business for criminals. The silver lining is that this
is probably not the end of the story for these really expensive cars. Some of them end up
being flashy police cars I mentioned earlier. a good deal of them are in good condition
and the authorities could occasionally hold auctions where you can get them for a good
bargain .Some of these sell would end up being sold for less than forty percent of their
market value. It takes quite a few steps: First you have to find an auto auction firm
online. The most popular ones are Copartmea.com and EmiratesAuction.com. You can also check
out sites like Auctionexport.com or Gigapromo.com since they would be the first to pop up on
your google search results. The rest is pretty easy; wait for your dream
car to pop up and bid on it. Then you have to find a site to help ship out your car like
Alphaworld.me which ships to Europe and Gulf countries. But there's a few red flags.
I said earlier that a car owner cannot sell a car unless it's been paid for in full. Guess
what, the government can't do that either. So if you buy from a government auction, you
could still have to pay the full cost of the car left unpaid. Probably including interest.
Add that to the fact that you probably have a lot of damage to fix thanks to the sand
and the heat. What to do about the likely extensive damage from being exposed to the
elements for so long? It's like a gift box, you don't know what you'd get; flood damage
or a knocked out engine. Well, there are in fact companies who buy
these cars in bulk, fix them up and then resell them for a profit. Examples of such companies
are Hush Hush and Carrera Garage. P.S This is not a sponsored video and we are
not affiliated with either the Dubai government or the other companies mentioned in this video.
That would be it for today guys. Leave a comment if you found this video interesting or have
any questions. Also take this as your reminder to click on the like button and subscribe
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