Loomis, Steven, IC3

Those Saudi License Plates (photo is in my album)

About a month after I met Barbra we decided to buy a car, together. Knowing she could not drive in the kingdom this was quite an investment in me and our future. It provided us with the ability to go anywhere we wanted at anytime. Something you may take for granted unless you've been on a contract in the middle-east. Anyway, we settled on a Toyoto Corolla Coupe and within a month or so we had saved up enough to make a purchase. A three inch stack of 100 Riyal notes worth about $30 each. 100 Riyal notes were the largest denomination in circulation. The Toyota dealer would not take any other form of payment, nor do they extend credit... a religious condition concerning usery.

So... the car paid for I was handed papers of ownership and a set of license plates and shown the door. One of the scraps of paper had a map showing the location of their storage locartion.

I'd been warned about this so I went back to my office and got my boss, Grant, who had offered to go with me to pick the car up. Storage facility my ass. We arrived at the gate of a desert area where thousands of cars stood lined up covered with sand. It was hard to even tell the colors of them because they still had that white paste shipping wax on them.

We located my car via coordinates on the map scrap. Within a few minutes I had collected shift knobs and radio dials from other cars to replace any missing from mine and we started her up. I got to the gate, showed my papers and I started for the highway, where Grant was still waiting...chug chug... spit.

It was out of gas and the gate had just closed behind us. Bastards. Grant laughed, got a piece of hose out of his trunk and I syphoned enough gas to at least get me into town.

They don't provide holes for mounting the license plates, you had to drill or pound a nail through them yourself before screwing them to the bumper. I told Grant I'd meet him back at the office and I swung by my apartment to get a hammer and nail to pound holes in it when I cut my finger on the sharp edge. Three blocks away I was broadsided by a taxicab. I got out and stood there looking at the damage and then at my bleeding finger. He had taken out most of the driver's side of my car. By now the place was crawling with Arabs. I was so pissed. My brand new car had 15 clicks on the odometer. That's TEN MILES total. As I rant and raved at the taxi driver a Saudi in a white thobe made his way through the crowd and over to me. He had the gull to tell me I should feel sorry for the cab driver... "The poor man. He's nearly blind". I got off a few more choice suggestions of my own and drove off.

Without an accident report I was unable to get the car repaired. Worse, I stood the chance of being charged with hit and run because I didn't have an accident report to explain the damage. The English manager at Toyota import took pity on me and had the car repaired in his shop and listed it as 'shipping damage". It still cost me nearly a thousand dollars for the cost of the work and paint for a car I had just paid $4,000 cash for.

Barbra and I got our money's worth. We traveled at will and I only got hit a couple more times. In the end, 18 months later, I sold the car for just over $3000. Not bad for a car that had no safety glass, no seat belts and no catalytic converter. A 1978 Toyota that I couldn't have imported back to the US if I wanted to. I know, I checked into it with a Saudi shipping company. They told me the car would cost nearly $1500 to get it upgraded to American import standards. One nice thing though... it had air-conditioning, a five speed transmission and a 15 band short wave radio/cassette player in it. That was stock! The Saudi's have an entirely different set of priorities.