Autolease In Sharjah Car Rental Shock Horror

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every now and then I have to give my car to Al Habtoor so they can annoy me and then charge me the national aid budget of Chile for servicing it. Occasionally they keep it in overnight so they can charge me more and fix something like the engine mountings which are, for a 4WD, oddly prone to breaking.

I may treat my car badly.

Because Al Habtoor owns Sharjah car hire company Diamond Lease, it clearly makes no sense to have a car hire facility tied to your Mitsubishi service centre so your customers can hire cars when theirs are in the shop. That would be convenient, provide an excellent service and make money to boot. So we'll not do that, then.

Luckily, there is Sharjah based car rental company Autolease.

I've been using 'em for years, ever since I first got here in fact, when I hired a 4WD for a day out (In the process hitting - and negatively life-enabling - an Omani goat, but that's another story). They hire out Nissan Altimas for a daily rate of some Dhs175 (inclusive), which sort of suits me. Their website, incidentally, is one of the most charmingly retro UAE experiences to be had outside the Hatta Fort Hotel's Roumoul Bar.

They've decided I now qualify, me with my measly occasional one day hire, as an 'old customer'. Yesterday, I got there to find the paperwork all pre-completed - they'd taken my documents from the previous car rentals in their files - just a signature and then outside to find a chap ready by my car, engine running and AC on. The staff even lent me Dhs10 to pay off my taxi because I didn't have change.

At the end of a long and weary day, it was a wondrous - more so for its rarity - thing to find. Really good customer service. Staff who are friendly, helpful, intelligent and simply delightful, who have anticipated your needs and who are genuinely solicitous. I was grinning all the way home.

Braving the 611 (or, these days, 'Emirates Road') this morning in a Nissan Altima, I have to say, was blood-curdling. Trying to negotiate four jostling lanes of close-packed, bad-tempered commuters hammering 140kph and realising you have the road presence of a curdled gnat. Not good.

The Childish Game Of Number Plates

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sarah and I for some time now have been playing a most diverting and totally childish game - number plate spotting. It's remarkable how seriously a 'good number' is taken here in the Emirates - landline, PO Box, mobile, number plate. All of these should reflect a chap's status and so, ideally, be in single figures or failing that all the same digit or otherwise auspicious. A palindrome is always good...

Car license plates in the UAE consist of a single letter and then a number. A pilot with A 777 is therefore top banana, while H 71534 is a complete duffer altogether. Clearly, a number like 25 denotes super-star status and we have actually seen one such number plate pull a massive wheelspin in front of police officers who initially started towards their bikes then saw the plate and just shrugged it off.

You'll often see the swankier breed of car on the UAE's roads sporting 30503 or 12121 and we have taken to giggling at those who have just missed the mark, for instance a Lambo with a 24749 plate has us laughing and doing 'You had one job...' impersonations.

Yeah, it probably is time we went home...

Anyway, The National today reports on the latest number plate auction in Dubai, where a bunch of two-digit plates are expected to fetch Dhs250,000 (about $68,500). That's not the whole story, though - the RTA has published a list of the plates it's got up for grabs this time around (it's by no means their first auction, the boys at the RTA have been making pin money this way for years) and we can see that Dhs 3,000 ($822) gets you a relatively unexciting H33311 while upping the ante a bit to Dhs 40,000 ($10,950) will net you 0 50005 which is a pretty neat plate, all things considered. Start getting serioo with the amount you're prepared to shell out, and you start seeing real results: Dhs 120,000 (almost $33,000) could see you sporting three figure plates, in this case M 202 or N 707.

Although I must confess, neither of those really 'do it' for me.

If you're keen on holding the clean end of the stick, you can go for I 98, L 51 or N 34. Those are the biggies. The full list of plates, just in case you're interested, is linked here. Personally, I think the Dhs40k for 0 50005 is the best deal. Anyway, happy bidding!