Visited by both tourists and royalty, the Royal Motor Museum of Jordan is a symbol of the country’s history. The museum features dozens of vintage and modern cars, demonstrating the Jordanian royal family’s obsession with automobiles.
It was the king’s last journey. The car, a 1975 Mercedes-Benz 600 Pullman limousine, was equipped with a custom footboard for safety.
Beloved King of Jordan Hussein bin Talal was suffering from lymphatic cancer. Even though he was a heavy smoker, he received chemotherapy for five months at the Mayo Clinic in 1999.
That October, he returned home to a hero’s welcome. Hussein, who was frail and thin, declared himself cured and stepped out of the Royal Jordanian and into a Pullman Mercedes, waving to a dense crowd of fans as a member of the Royal Guards Brigade, brightly dressed and wearing a keffiyeh. I began my final ride through the streets of Amman, escorted by the police. His Defender, a red Land Rover from the Puma era, has an open top, a short windshield and plenty of rotating machine guns.
The king won’t last long. But the car did.
Less than four months after his triumphal convoy, Hussein suddenly returned to the United States. After he received a bone marrow transplant, he fell into a coma and was flown back to Jordan, flanked by American, British and Israeli fighter jets. He did not pilot it himself.
As hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets, chanting his name and weeping openly, a Jordanian Air Force helicopter transported him to the medical center that bears his name. At 11:43 on February 7, 1999, Hussein, 63, was pronounced dead due to organ failure.
The next day, his coffin, draped in the pan-Arab green, red and black flag, was taken from Raghadan Palace to the Royal Cemetery in Al Maqqar in a tan flatbed military Land Rover hearse.
“When you see King Hussein in one of these cars, you realize what a special person he was, whether it’s driving a race car on the Le Mans Hill Climb or wearing armor as he returns from his first treatment at the Mayo Clinic. Cars were always special to him, whether it was sitting on the roof of a Mercedes or driving himself through the Amman traffic,” says director Raja Gargar. A living memorial to Hussein at the Royal Motor Museum in Amman. Mr. Hussein has various reputations as a politician, Middle East peacemaker, and heir to the Hashemite dynasty, but he is a man who gained fame in his youth for the honorable title of “Royal Gasoline President” and his love of fasting. No one disputed one thing. Cars, agile planes, and just about anything else with an engine.
That passion is on full display at the Royal Motor Museum, dedicated in 2003 by his son King Abdullah II. While most of Jordan’s decades-old archaeological museums are outdated themselves, the car museum provides a fresh perspective on Jordan and the modern era of the Hashemite dynasty. Learn history through his over 70 cars and motorcycles on display. All the historical photos, English signage and multimedia presentations are on the side.
“When Abdullah asked us to create a museum, the idea came to us to create a museum not from what we saw about cars, but from what cars have seen: the royal itinerary from 1916. ” said Gargol. “Other museums tell Jordan’s history through art and stones. This is Jordan’s modern history through cars.”
Most of these wheels were not purchased at auction, but were either purchased privately or given to the king and his sons. Many are still in active use, toured around the park once a week, and are used by members of the royal family, including Abdullah, who is known for speeding through the streets of Amman in his 2003 Porsche Carrera GT. For his wedding to Saudi Arabian architect Princess Rahway Al Saif in June, Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah wore a 1984 white ‘sheer’ dress specially created for Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Jordan.・Rover” public evaluation car was rented. As usual, a horde of Puma Defender vehicles followed.
A stroll through the museum begins with a collection of motorcycles, led by the red Harley-Davidson used by King Hussein and his last wife Queen Noor in a 1996 Condé Nast Traveler photo shoot about Wadi Rum. Aside from its small charm, Gargher said he came to the museum “out of curiosity about how the socio-political and cultural environment changed during King Hussein’s time and moved forward with King Abdullah.” I suggest that you take a tour.
Hussein, who took the throne at the age of 17 and had the ability to operate and repair most motors, helped him cope with the stress (and several assassination attempts) of the early years of his reign, but some eccentricity However, he continued to pursue more realistic hobbies.
After several years of riding around in a 1952 steel blue Rover P2-75, one of his first purchases was a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL ‘Gullwing’, which he used to complete three rounds of runman hill climbs. race). A 3,000 meter course that climbs 243 meters above sea level in Jerash. Hussein then settled on a fleet of Mercedes and Rolls Royces, sensible cars for a monarch in the midst of Middle Eastern politics, and these opened the museum. A 1987 Mercedes GE 280 4×4, his conservative 1979 Mercedes 450-SL, a luxurious Mercedes 1961 white Phantom V and his 1968 black Phantom V.
The king also owned some strange and exotic objects, including the Amphicar, a combination of a red tugboat and an old Volvo, in which he took excursions to the Gulf of Aqaba. “I think King Hussein was fond of cars since he was a child. His first car was a Rover, which is on display. He quickly got bored with it,” he said. As the years went by, he developed a keen sense for all things mechanical…He loved German engineering, so all his official cars were Mercedes for a year. ” said Garger. for a long time. “
The second half of the Royal Motor Museum will further cater to Abdullah’s fierce style, including a DeLorean, Ferrari, Porsche and BMW motorcycles. According to Gargar, although King Abdullah II prefers motorcycles to cars, he remains one of the country’s best drivers, and was Jordan’s champion in various desert rallies in 1986 and 1988, as well as an exhibition driver. He won the race with his Opel Mantra. ”
And while some may wonder why the king needs to display his $100 million car collection, especially in a country known for its high refugee population and other internal strife, Gargar All he can say is this.
“The Royal Motor Museum is consistently voted the best thing to see in Amman on TripAdvisor and other sites.” Could it have been better if there had been one car, the one that got away? “This is the Porsche 904 GTS that I owned and raced in 2008. This is the 904 that is currently on display at the Porsche Museum. It was replaced by several 911 Turbos in the 1970s,” Garger says. “I couldn’t maintain it and I couldn’t go back.”
Adrian Brune is a journalist, freelance writer and multimedia specialist. Her work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Air Mail, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and OZY.com on a variety of topics, including world affairs, social justice, the United Nations, human rights, and culture.
Follow her on Twitter: @amagebrune
