The dream merchants weave the image of the automobile into an object of desire, the entry point to a world where speed, skill and status combine to make life altogether better and more worthwhile. The new owner becomes a finer person and, through the soft-focus lens, the catalyst of vanity blends reality with fantasy.
The scrap yards of Briman, just north of Jeddah, are the graveyard of those vanities. Twisted carcasses of cars, rusting and indecently eviscerated, lie as mute witnesses of hideous road accidents, discarded lives and broken dreams. Every potential purchaser of a new car should pay a visit before he buys a new car and reflect for a moment on the frailty of life and the fragility of the vehicle he is about to commit his and his family’s lives to.
The yards are filled with the shells of vehicles of all sorts. Cars predominate, but littered throughout the metallic charnel house are pieces of derelict earth moving equipment, airline steps and even the odd boat.
To many just an eyesore and dumping ground, the yards have a life of their own and serve a need that keeps them alive. Just as the natural ecosystem plunders the carrion of nature, so there is a thriving business living off the remains of decaying cars.
"People come from all over the Gulf to buy spares," said Jamal Adam who manages a well-known breaker’s yard from behind a desk that was once the complete front end of a small BMW. Although there is a computer on the site, he keeps the location and stock level of everything in the yard in his head. He proved the point by spontaneously rummaging in a pile of dust-covered boxes and litter and pulling out a grotesque lighting cluster. "1954 Oldsmobile!" he grinned.
Owned by Bandar Al-Abadi, the site is distinguished by a magnificent 56-year-old black limousine, an elegy in steel by Detroit perched atop a scaffolding column at the entrance. "That car belonged to Mr. Bandar’s father," Jamal explained. "It’s known all over the country to people who want special spares. We haven’t the heart to sell it."
Despite the chaotic appearance of the yards, there is a loose but efficient organization. A steady supply of local wrecks from the Jeddah municipality percolate outward from a central point in the yards and end up with the hundreds of privately managed sites. Insurance write-offs and abandoned cars supply most of the rest, plus cars purchased at local auctions.
When the wrecks have been completely stripped of anything remotely salable, the body shells are crushed and transported to Jubail Industrial City for recycling.
Tucked away among the piles of wreckage are some real gems. A gleaming white 1955 Cadillac ready to drive was parked incongruously amidst a litter of rusting oriental wrecks. "We have car parts from the 1930s," Jamal told us. It seems that the current owner has begun to attract collectors of classic marques and has taken to buying rarer vehicles at auctions. The generally arid conditions mean that many of the older cars are in a remarkable state of preservation.
There is the silence of the graveyard hanging over the scrap yards. The few people in evidence were given to lounging on scavenged car seats or taking their ease under rudimentary shelters. Again this inactivity is deceptive, for there is a floating pool of labor that the individual sites can call on when spares need retrieving. Moreover, and it’s quite difficult to comprehend, the trade is seasonal. Ramadan and Haj see an increase in business. "We get a lot of people buying motorcycles and cheap cars for the pilgrim trade," we were told.
This led us to uncover a darker aspect of the Briman’s business.
A little further into the yards, we discovered a site where the main trade was in half-cars. Ranks of recent model cars had been carefully halved along structural joints, door pillars severed and floor pans cut across with machine precision. Ali, the site manager, showed us some of the imports. "These are all from Japan," he said, indicating a row of well-preserved modern half-cars. "They are right-hand drive, you see?" Other cars, neatly and carefully halved, were local. "Many local people come to buy those," he told us. "They join front halves to back halves after a crash. Limousine drivers take a lot."
Nearby, a forklift truck was loading the rear end of a large Mercedes, carefully padded and protected, onto a flat-bed truck. Wither bound, we speculated.
Driving two taxis at once might account for the high prices, but is it safe? Most production cars are based on the chassis-free monocoque construction method where the shape of the pressed steel cage is designed to give the car rigidity and strength. When cut and rejoined, that structural source of strength is seriously compromised, the car is weaker and has been known to snap in two on impact.
A recent newspaper description and photograph of a major accident describe the car involved as having "broken in half." The practice of joining two cars, known as "ringing" and outlawed in Europe on safety grounds, seems to be alive and well here. Whilst the admirable drive to reduce road deaths is in full swing, hidden danger in the practice of "ringing" cars is subtly putting death back on the roads.
Briman would not exist if it served no purpose. Refurbishing vehicles and recycling materials is a positive attribute. The sites we visited provided jobs and a service to the motoring public.
However, outside the yards there are less innocent practices that represent a positive danger to that same motoring community.
The dream merchants though still operate here, fulfilling ambitions of a car for many people — but at a discount. If that means discounted safety and lives are extinguished as a result, what price dreams then?