King Saud’s Gift – 1966

“In this context, a notable event occurred in 1966 in Asmara, where King Saud Ibn Abdulaziz, who had been forced to abdicate two years earlier, was due to meet the emperor. To avoid a diplomatic imbroglio, Haile Selassie chose not to receive the king in Addis Ababa but to shift their meeting to Eritrea instead. King Saud came over two weeks beforehand in order to enjoy some rest and recreation on the Red Sea coast. On his arrival, he was met by my father Ras Asserate Kassa, who was governor-general of Eritrea at the time. One evening, the Saudi king asked Asserate Kassa to cast an eye over the presents that he had brought for the emperor. These included a monstrous grandfather clock mounted on a vast chest of drawers and two huge and extravagantly decorated vases maded of fire-gilded bronze. The king cannot have failed to notice the sceptical look of my father’s face. When asked if these gifts would be to the emperor’s taste, Ras Asserate replied, with all due diplomatic circumspection: ‘The emperor already has a great many vases and grandfather clocks’. With a sigh, King Saud enquired: ‘But what on earth doesn’t he have ?’ Quick as a flash, the viceroy responded: ‘A Mercedes 600 Pullman’. The king thanked him for the tip and directed his underlings to obtain such a car as quickly as possible. A call was hurriedly put through to the Mercedes-Benz factory at Unterrukheim, and the Swabian car manufacturer duly lived up to its reputation for reliability: 48 hours later, a six-door, burgundy-red Mercedes Pullman was standing outside the palace in Asmara, gleaming in the African sun. And when Haile Selassie arrived in the Eritrean capital a few days later, King Saud picked him up in the Mercedes and announced to him: ‘Your Majesty, this is your car!’.

(Taken from “King of Kings”, Asfa-Wossen Asserate, Haus Publishing, 2015 p. 211-212)