The supercar tour celebrating the Year of Zayed

The reach of Sheikh Zayed can't be underestimated. Good-quality roads were at a premium in the Emirates, before the Founding President of the UAE, whose legacy is being celebrated throughout 2018 with the Year of Zayed, established the country in 1971. Back then, the kind of machines that will be traversing the nation from Saturday (February 3) as part of the celebratory Zayedna event were mere futuristic kernels of ideas in the minds of young future car designers.

Translating to “our Zayed”, Zayedna is the latest and most visible project yet from the Bahrain-based Supercars Club Arabia, which will bring a clutch of the fastest vehicles on the planet to the UAE for the six-day tour. After an opening ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi, Grand Canal, participants will wind their way from the capital city to Dubai, via the celebrated driving roads of Jebel Hafeet, Hatta and Jebel Jais.

Billing itself as the world's most exclusive supercars club, SCA was founded in 2014, and has since set about expanding its now-global membership to more than 300 owners of some serious automotive eye candy included a McLaren P1, a Porsche 918 Spyder and a Ferrari Enzo, plus a wealth of Lamborghini Aventadors, Porsche GT3RSs, Maseratis, a Dodge Viper, and rows and rows of other Ferraris (F12berlinettas, 458s and 488s, among others).

“We have two major tours each year. One takes place in the GCC; one takes part in Europe or the US. Our next tour is going to be focused on the UAE – the culture and certain locations. And being 2018, the Year of Zayed, we have decided to call it Zayedna, said Auf Al Delaimi, SCA's vice-president who co-founded the organisation with club president Sheikh Salman bin Isa bin Mohammed Al Khalifa.

“We’ve limited the participants to 25 cars – we’re already fully booked, although we might increase it because we have some VVIPs wanting to take participate. We prefer to work with quality rather than quantity.”

“The roads that we choose are the best driving roads in each location we go to,” Al Delaimi says. “We send a team to monitor and check out the roads to make sure they’re suitable for these cars and also fun to drive. It’s also a location to showcase these cars. We’re spending an extra day to do probably the best driving road in the GCC and the Middle East, which is Jebel Jais, and this is going to be completely closed for us by the RAK Government and the RAK Police. Then we’re finishing in Dubai for a big showcase.

“We are going to have two major cars at the opening ceremony [in Abu Dhabi]: a limited-edition LaFerrari and a limited-edition McLaren P1 – there’s only five in the world.”