In the early 1990s, Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan al Nahyan, a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family, placed one of the most unusual bespoke orders in automotive history. He is said to have commissioned Mercedes-Benz to build seven W126 Sa-Class saloons, each painted a different colour of the rainbow, with interiors fully colour-matched down to the carpets, dashboards and air vents.
The request came with a tight deadline and an extraordinary level of customisation. Multiple reports claim that to deliver the cars on time, Mercedes temporarily halted other production at one of its factories, dedicating staff and resources solely to the sheikh’s commission. While Mercedes has never publicly confirmed the stoppage, the story has endured for decades and earned Hamad a nickname that stuck worldwide: the “Rainbow Sheikh.”
A collector drawn to scale, not supercars
Sheikh Hamad is the son of Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Nahyan and a descendant of the family that has ruled Abu Dhabi for more than three centuries. Much of his wealth traces back to the family’s control of the emirate’s oil reserves, which account for around 95 per cent of the UAE’s oil, according to figures cited by Celebrity Net Worth.
Despite that wealth, his collection defies billionaire convention. He owns a massive, eclectic collection of over 3,000 vehicles which, according to Road & Track, includes no modern hypercars or supercars, no Bugattis or Ferraris, aside from a first-generation Porsche Boxster.
Instead, it favours the unique, the oversized, and the historically curious, with many vehicles customized to eccentric extremes. His vehicles include:
- The world’s largest Hummer H1, standing more than 21 feet tall, fully drivable and fitted with stairs, a kitchen, a bathroom and guest space across two storeys.
- A Mercedes W128 mounted on monster-truck wheels.
- Dhabiyan: A massive 10-wheeled monster truck, based on an Oshkosh M1075 military truck, featuring a 15.2-liter Caterpillar engine.
- Oversized Vehicles: A replica Dodge Power Wagon (eight times larger than the original) that houses a house-like structure, and a, 10-times larger replica of a Jeep.
- Several vintage Mini Coopers, replicas of the 1885 Benz Patent Motorwagen, and classic American Buicks, Chevrolets and Cadillacs.
- The “Mercedes Big Foot”, an extreme custom build, and a motorhome shaped like a giant globe, constructed at one-millionth the size of Earth.
His appetite for scale has earned him formal recognition. Guinness World Records lists him as holding the largest collection of 4×4 vehicles in the world, numbering 718.
Museums, islands and the legacy of excess
Much of the Rainbow Sheikh’s collection is housed at the Emirates National Auto Museum, the pyramid-shaped museum in Al Dhafra that contains more than 200 vehicles. The seven rainbow-coloured Mercedes S-Class cars are displayed there together, alongside off-road behemoths and custom one-offs. He also built a second museum in Sharjah dedicated specifically to off-road vehicles and experimental designs created under his direction.
His taste for spectacle has extended beyond cars. In 2011, workers carved his name into the sands of Al Futaisi Island, a largely uninhabited island near Abu Dhabi, creating waterways visible from the air. Alongside the extravagance, multiple reports have noted his philanthropy, particularly in healthcare, where he funded a complete kidney-stone operating theatre for a public hospital in Morocco and continues to support its staff.
Three decades on, the rainbow Mercedes order remains the defining story of Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan al Nahyan’s automotive legend: not because of speed or rarity, but because it demonstrated a level of custom demand so extreme that, if the accounts are accurate, one of the world’s biggest carmakers stopped everything else just to keep up.
