Jeremy Clarkson - Motorworld

And he’s built a larger version of it. A much larger version. It’s so much larger that inside there are four bedrooms, a sitting room and a bathroom, all of which are cooled by twelve air-conditioning plants.

To get to the ‘cab’ you climb a spiral staircase where you will find the master bedroom, complete with a view down the bonnet.

At the back, the tailgate can be lowered electrically so that you have a patio, which can be accessed through French windows.

All this is possible because, though it’s an exact replica of the real thing, it’s 64 times bigger. From ten miles away, the 50-ton monster looks like a normal-sized Dodge that’s just ten feet away. Every last detail is correct, even the wipers, which came from an ocean liner, and the headlights which cost £1,000 each. Their beam is so powerful that you can use them to read a book a kilometre away.

He would have made the whole thing bigger still but was limited by the size of the wheels and tyres, which are the largest ever made. They came from a trailer used to move oil rigs.

No one knows how much it cost to build because no one was counting, but it wasn’t 4p.

It was a military-style operation because the larger pieces were fabricated in Abu Dhabi and then shipped out to the desert where the vehicle was assembled. No road in the world could take the finished product because it’s tall enough to let a Range Rover pass underneath, and 24 feet wide. It’s one hell of a truck.

And it moves. Between the rear axle and the floor, there’s a 6-cylinder, 300-horsepower engine, which is capable of shifting the truck short distances. You can even steer it. And yes, the brakes work too. When I said exact replica, I meant it.

This may be the Sheikh’s most ambitious project but it’s by no means the first. His first caravan was big enough to have garaging for seven cars and his second is a globe that’s exactly one million times smaller than the earth.

That said, the door fits easily into Western Australia. Again, there are four bedrooms and a sitting room; only this time, there’s a gallery. Hit a button and the top part — from the Arctic Circle upwards — lifts to give a 360° panoramic view of the desert.

He uses these caravans, and his tent — which is so big it has to be transported on a juggernaut — to go on camping holidays with his family and friends.

‘We are Bedouin people. We love the desert and we like to go there in the winter when the north wind blows so it’s cool. But we like to have the comforts we are used to in the city.’

It’s been said that he has too much money but I am delighted to see someone enjoying his wealth, to find someone who doesn’t just sit back and get fat. He was, is, a genuinely humble man who wants a Lear jet now.

Me, I want the Victory boat. This to the world of offshore, class-one racing is what Williams is to Grand Prix. Yet they let me drive it. Well, to be exact, they let me drive it once the rain had stopped. No, I couldn’t work that one out either.

The last time I went in such a machine there were three seats so I could just tag along, but this time I found, to my horror, there were just two. One for the throttle man and one for the person who would steer — me.

My instructions went like this: when it flips, reach out with your right hand, undo the seat belts with your left and pull yourself out. There’s an air hose here in case you are having difficulties and a belt-cutter there. Here’s your helmet. Bye.

Er… how do I drive it?

But it was too late. My throttle man, Saeed Al Tayer, had hit the starter and the starboard motor was up and running.

Now, at slow speeds — anything up to 60 or so — the boat is at a crazy angle with its nose in the air so that way back down the deck the driver can’t see a bloody thing. And there I was trying to steer this £600,000 boat out of a marina where every other boat was worth five times more.

Whoomph, now the port engine was on song too and I could see Saeed, in the neighbouring cockpit, easing the throttles forward.

Attached to my cockpit canopy, taken from an F-16 fighter, was a rear-view mirror and what was going on in our wake can only be described as biblical.

They’d only given us the small propellers but as the engines were now churning out their full 1,800 horsepower, no props at all would still have made a mess.

As it was, our rooster tails were 60 feet high and a hundred yards long. This is not good practice because it means the boat is trimmed badly, but it doesn’t half look good for the cameras.

Then there was a god-almighty bang, the boat slowed and I turned, looking worried, to find Saeed grinning. The automatic gearbox had just taken us from second to third and now we were really moving.

By the time we were in fourth, the boat had levelled out nicely so that just the bottom half of the props were in the water and my GPS speedo was giving a crazy read-out. It said we were doing 106 mph.

I was trying to explain to our on-board camera that the deck which joins the two hulls is like a giant aeroplane wing and that it is supposed to keep the boat out of the water to reduce friction, but I was mesmerised by that speedo.

It said 132 mph. On water. With me at the helm.

Saeed was on the wireless. ‘Um, Jeremy, can we turn now please?’

‘No Saeed, come on, let’s see what she’ll do.’

‘Jeremy turn now, or we’ll be in Iranian waters and that’s not good.’

So I turned and the thrill put my hair on end. Damon Hill described this boat as being like a 300-mph fork-lift truck but he was talking horse shit. This had won the world championship and as I turned that wheel, I knew why.

You can actually feel the hull gripping the water in exactly the same way that in, say, a Porsche 911, you can feel the tyres hanging on. Turn too tight or too fast and just like a car, the boat will spin, and roll and you will die.

As we came out of the turn and Saeed hit the throttle hard again, I heard the helicopter pilot over my headphones. ‘Er, can you slow down, please? We can’t keep up.’

That night, we all went out with the British mechanics from the Victory team, determined to find out about the boat’s innermost secrets. Unfortunately, I must have had a bad pint because my recollections of the evening are a trifle hazy. People think you can’t drink in the UAE, but you can. Unfortunately.

I remember wandering around on a roundabout for a while and I vaguely recall being in a bar with some tinsel in my hair but when it comes to remembering how big the V8s were or what effect the hydra-dynamics have, I’m not really your man. Sorry.

The UAE, as I said on the programme, is the world capital of speed, but it’s much more besides. It’s disorganised like you wouldn’t believe. Arabs are more unreliable than a 1972 Allegro. And it was cold too. But when it comes to having fun, nowhere in the world even gets close.

Night after night, stern-faced men and politicians come on the television to tell us that Britain’s roads are the modern-day killing fields. Alongside the M4, the Somme looks like a stroll in the park. Severe, blood-red captions flash up, warning us that excessive speed causes 100,000 deaths and serious injuries every year.

The Department of Transport spends millions on gory, X-certificate commercials that tug at our heart strings and lift our right feet. We are shamed and beaten into submission.

But despite what the doom-mongers say, British drivers are the best in the world, by a country mile. We invented queuing and it shows on the roads. We don’t lean on the horn every time the lights go red. We don’t simply ignore cycles and nor do we dawdle, American-style. We’re fast, organised and, despite what the suits say, safe. I’m not playing with statistics when I say that nobody does it better.