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| Look no further than farm equipment for truly alien wheels. |
I haven't owned nearly as many vehicles as he did, but in my 50+ summers as delivery boy, cop, publisher, sheep farmer, trucker and finally transport journalist, I did get to steer some extraordinary wheels.
These wheels range from a 3-speed Challenger bicycle on which I made those runs as delivery boy in between cycling 13 km to primary school, (its internal gearbox is still part-magic, part-science to me); to a Russian Hagglunds tank-track.
Among them were some truly alien wheels used on farms, like above forklift.
But the weird wheels are not the rides I remember best.
But the weird wheels are not the rides I remember best.
When the road stretches out to meet the clouds on the horizon, the rides that stand out from the blur have all enabled a life lesson or a milestone experience -- from chases to races; new liaisons to break-ups; also break-downs, meltdowns and even the odd arrest.
(Which is why I still don't stop in Beaufort West, what with that dead dorpie's thinly disguised hatred for all things trucking.)
I hope the memories below will one day show my son the other sides of his dad. For cars are like metal gloves for our egos, and the rides we remember best say more about us than any autobiography can.
Looking ahead, his transport scene will have passenger drones and neutral-buyancy drones, eVtol trucks and strato jets. (You read it here first!)
Unless of course, a CME, meteorite or Yellowstone eruption force survivors to learn how to walk again.
1960s Ford F150
1950s VW drop-side pickup
1. Put mattress on the back.
2. Pick up mates and pool all money for fuel.
4. Remember to fill up The Can.
5. Fetch the adventurous girls.
6. Park in the middle of the Menlin drive-in parking lot.
7. Make out or watch the movie.
8. On the way there do the heel stomp on the floor knob to dim or bright the lights.
8. On the way there do the heel stomp on the floor knob to dim or bright the lights.
9. On the way back, worry if the few litres of fuel we could buy would get the van back to my two-horse town without having to resort to The Can.
10. Mental note to get a fresh potato.
My 1950s flat bed always smelled of petrol and potatoes inside. The petrol smell came from The Can, a 5-litre petrol can rattling behind the seat, because this VW was made before sissy things like fuel gauges. And in my family, only fools run out of fuel.
The potato smell came from an old tater trying to sink its roots into the cubbyhole. Why a potato in the cubbyhole? Because the van also didn't have sissy things like windscreen wipers. Instead, the two windscreens opened forward to let in a manly breeze. Potato sap is hydrophobic, which (mostly) repelled rain from the glass, see? (And I trust you saw what I did with "see" there and are not left at sea with my wordplay here. Fair warning: lots more of similar ahead.)
The potato smell came from an old tater trying to sink its roots into the cubbyhole. Why a potato in the cubbyhole? Because the van also didn't have sissy things like windscreen wipers. Instead, the two windscreens opened forward to let in a manly breeze. Potato sap is hydrophobic, which (mostly) repelled rain from the glass, see? (And I trust you saw what I did with "see" there and are not left at sea with my wordplay here. Fair warning: lots more of similar ahead.)
1968 Vanden Plas Princess 4-litre R
This car and I got off the assembly line in the same year, but while I was a rosy-faced 16 by the time I got to gently engage her overdrive, her rosewood insets had started to show the ravages of the African sun. However, hidden in the shade of the broad seat-backs, the little fold-out tables with their silver inset cup holders still cantilevered out from their recesses to click into place with a sumptuous precision only the British empire got right.
Then there was the truly gigantic boot. And did I mention the purring overdrive?
But the eye-watering price of any spare part soon taught me to cool my budding love affair for veteran cars and move my affection for this old gal to older gals of the human persuasion instead. They at least paid for their own parts.
Peugeot 504 diesel
Those edged steel panels were hard enough to snap barbed wire. But first you had to borrow "da car" and then drive it like you were racing the Dakar, then understeer into a sweeping turn on the farm road, and then go through that wire while going 'oooofooooooooooo...k!'.
"No dad, I dunno where that scratch could have come from."
A little later in life, I tried to teach the ex how to drive in this French legend. But the whispers her black winter stockings made each time she pressed the pedals... oi vey.
That Peugeot taught me shit happens, but when it does, do as the French, make a full body shrug and say ''tant pis".
Ford Capri
He instead asked me how old I was.
I told him I was 17, about to be freshly licensed to drive, with cash from the postal savings account dad had opened years ago for me burning a hole in my pocket.
The sales uncle looked at me kindly and told me the coupé may look like it could turn me into a god, but in the rain it would turn into a dog around the first corner and he would not sell it to me for any money.
So I sulked and bought a Beetle from a teacher instead.
As if that piece of crap design did not under- and oversteer (mumble, mumble, slam the door in a teenage sulk).
But who knew? Not all car salesmen are out for your money.
VW Beetle
Blegh.
Was there anything to redeem this previous century ... transport ....thing?
Yes! The red pleather seats and the Telefunken tape deck and FM radio that Harry, now Dr van der Elst, helped link to two 500-Watt speakers.
On those speakers, Pink Floyd's ''The Final Cut'', sounded, like, REAL man. Especially the bit where the jet blasts past, followed by the explosion... kaBoom!
Which made the nuclear waste sign I found on the road and promptly stuck between the plethora of stickers in the rear window, like, almost true, hey?
As with an Alfa Romeo, you have to have owned a Beetle to call yourself a petrol head. But if you kept yours, you can only call yourself a mechanical masochist.
Jaguar Mk2
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| The Jag I owned only on paper, beautifully restored and parked 1500 kms down the driveway, the best place for a vintage car. |
Another hole in my psyche, this one beautifully curved in that classic Jaguar shape and not filled one bit by all the drives I've since had in many other Mk IIs.
I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it advertised for a very low price in the used car lot of the two-horse town I grew up in.
I wanted it. Bad.
But now being a savvy 17-year-old veteran with one failed car-buy on my record, I first checked things out. The two petrol caps, one on each rear flank, did not escape my flinty eyes.
Wondering what this was all about, I approached the taciturn salesman chewing on a match.
"S'cuse me uncle, why does she have two petrol caps?" I asked.
Blank stare.
"Is she, like, a little heavy on fuel then?"
Uncle, moving the match from one side of his mouth to the other, gives a slow nod.
"Oh, um, I quess I'll cycle on then."
Another slow nod.
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| Mike working on his 1966 MkII. |
In 2017 I made up for never owning a Jaguar Mk II by having Mike the Mechanic park his Mk II (14 years and counting being restored) under my roof for a month that flew into a year. I learned a lot about the miles of bureaucratic red tape in the car trade when it became time to transfer the old Jag from its long-dead lady owner at the Orange Dairy in Dundee, a three-hour drive one way into northern KZN, into Mike's name. Mike at this stage lived even further away in Gordon's Bay in the Western Cape. In the end, it was simpler to just re-register the Jag in my name, making me the proud owner of a car that was parked 13 hours down the driveway. And having learned a lot about old cars, I can say this is the ONLY way to own an old Jag -- far away in another province. And it put a whole new spin on the "just one little old lady owner" line.
The school bus
Hilux bakkies by the score
I remember nothing from the bland bakkie except pulped kidneys and that if you open both windows on on a hot day in the Lowveld, a gust of wind will blow out ALL the important cash slips collected while paying for the week's food for the holiday sports school, where I was a teenage factotum.
(As an aside: That summer job got me to feel all manly, driving a little Massey Ferguson tractor past swarms of short-skirted hockey and netball girls for the two weeks of sports camp. Two whole weeks, during which I did not score so much as a kiss on the cheek ...maybe driving a tractor is not as rugged and manly as I still think it is.)
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| Laying two tons of grass sods with a little help from a Hilux. |
Moving on in life, the Hilux's repuation and high resale values meant I kept meeting up with newer models on other farms and I'll admit, few drivetrains can idle up inclines like a Hilux does, as I wrote here. But as I learned on that "sports' cool" camp, I am no team player, which all Hilux drivers have to be before being allowed into the pack.
This little sedan was for a long time the fastest car through second and third gears on our yard. It could do the twisty, humpy 13 kms (with one symbolic tap on the brakes before flashing over the railway stop) between my two-horse town and neighbouring mining town of Cullinan (of the big diamond fame yes) in a white-knuckle 12 minutes. Which got me introduced to the rather attractive prosecutor who helped squashed my first speeding fine. The sexy prosecutor taught me clichéd stereotypes are very real.
Had a crush on the girl, then moved the crush to the dream car her mom bought her with the spoils from (allegedly) defrauding a lawyer's company. I'm very sensible that way. And the Prelude left me with a lasting thing for a broader rear end.
Thanks dad, for lending it to me for that first road trip to Durban in the school hols. Obviously even back then I was more square than hip, which is why I never did get that surfer chick. And I still cannot wriggle out of a pair of wet baggies in the beach front without the towel also coming off.
But I learn fast and tried to get surfer chic instead, with a series of VW combis, all with beds in the back.
1976 Toyota Corolla 1.6
1984 Honda Prelude
Toyota Cressida Station Wagon
But I learn fast and tried to get surfer chic instead, with a series of VW combis, all with beds in the back.
Unlike those combis, the Cressida still runs, and runs, and runs... as proud owners of very veteran Cressidas still showed in in the sleepy, steeply-valed hamlet called Bamshela in KwaZulu-Natal:
Nissan Patrol
Just don't try to stop it in a hurry afterwards.
The 2004 model I drove later sported much the same lack of any modern technology and I liked it too, despite the second tank's fuel gauge being stuck, which led to a Land Rover towing me past the long line of Free State sheep farmers at Vrede's Co-op.
Oh, the ignominy!
I have one fond memory from delivering a rally-tuned 2005 Patrol from Pretoria to Cape Town, taking dirt roads across the Moordernaars Karoo. Ever unable to stay awake at dawn after driving all night, I parked off somewhere near Sutherland. In the Karoo's pre-dawn chill, I turned up the Male Cossack Chior with Ivan Rebroff as starring guest, and stretched out on the long, warm hood, to awake as Rebroff's glottis stretched from baritone to falsetto in his rendition of "Tubular Bells".
There is no other way to listen to Russian songs but under a big sky country.
Regrettably, what I later had to say on Wheels24 about the underwhelming 2014 year model Patrol vs the Toyota Land Cruiser got me struck off Nissan's Xmas list for many years.
The truth? Public relations officers cannot handle the truth!
Bought it off a chap sentenced for a long spell in prison and WHAT a car it turned out to be.
The 2004 model I drove later sported much the same lack of any modern technology and I liked it too, despite the second tank's fuel gauge being stuck, which led to a Land Rover towing me past the long line of Free State sheep farmers at Vrede's Co-op.
Oh, the ignominy!
I have one fond memory from delivering a rally-tuned 2005 Patrol from Pretoria to Cape Town, taking dirt roads across the Moordernaars Karoo. Ever unable to stay awake at dawn after driving all night, I parked off somewhere near Sutherland. In the Karoo's pre-dawn chill, I turned up the Male Cossack Chior with Ivan Rebroff as starring guest, and stretched out on the long, warm hood, to awake as Rebroff's glottis stretched from baritone to falsetto in his rendition of "Tubular Bells".
There is no other way to listen to Russian songs but under a big sky country.
Regrettably, what I later had to say on Wheels24 about the underwhelming 2014 year model Patrol vs the Toyota Land Cruiser got me struck off Nissan's Xmas list for many years.
The truth? Public relations officers cannot handle the truth!
Datsun Stanza 1800 SSS
Went courting in this once a week, driving the 600 km from the Police College in Pretoria West to the ballerina in Durban on what was then a narrow, two-line highway.
She taught me two important maintenance lessons. First -- leave the carb well alone.
Second -- before adding lube, firmly screw in the plug. Into the Stanza, I mean. Not the ballerina. There its the other way around.
My sister ended this, a ha, stanza in my life. She did not see the BMW coming down the road, which T-boned her. Luckily, only the car got badly bent.
That was when I learn how tow-in operators steal from you. May they all see the light. A fast one. At the end of a short tunnel.
She taught me two important maintenance lessons. First -- leave the carb well alone.
Second -- before adding lube, firmly screw in the plug. Into the Stanza, I mean. Not the ballerina. There its the other way around.
My sister ended this, a ha, stanza in my life. She did not see the BMW coming down the road, which T-boned her. Luckily, only the car got badly bent.
That was when I learn how tow-in operators steal from you. May they all see the light. A fast one. At the end of a short tunnel.
Casspir
That's where I refused to shoot at grannies and kids with my R1 automatic assault rifle. That first little act of rebellion against the State's illegal orders sparked many more and was worth all the disciplinary hearings that followed. Such questioning of authority and refusing to obey illegal orders kept me healthy a few decades later, when Big Pharma got their bought-and-paid for politicians to mandate the taking of experimental gene-altering therapies and lock down society against an airborne virus.
The first VW Combi
Datsun Skyline
Getting the tail-heavy Skyline to oversteer was as easy as blinking and then you could slide it all over the place. Holding a drift was a lot more challenging, what with my limited driving talents. But the attempts left me suffering a huge soft spot for any big-ass car from the 80s, like the fantastic Honda Prelude above (and don't tell my partner, but well-rounded lasses too).
Uno Fire
Especially not in the dark. After spinning several 360s, we drove our shaken selfs back the way we came for a long while before realising we wuz wronged.
The story of how Fiat's engineers basically drove an Uno the same way, replacing parts as they broke with stronger ones for "Sufferica", is still my favourite story of how to customise a car for local market conditions. And the "lezione uno" I learned from this little 'taljun? Find your bed before nightfall.
The last model introduced to South Africa had the spare wheel in the engine. What the constant heat would do to the rubber I don't want to know and it made the unloaded new Uno even more prone to understeering, but it did free up boot space and still provided a spare tyre, unlike the German car builders, whose beancounters decided around then that South African drivers do not need spare tyres anymore.
A brown one, aka Liesbet from the registration plate LZB. Had a couple of good road trips in her, even planning were to get wed to that ballerina. The love only lasted until she failed to pop the clutch right and had to start pushing while I sat behind the wheel to jump-started the van.
The second VW Combi
I did not know it then, but now that my Yung is not so young, I realise her inability to pop the clutch spoke volumes.
The last car I bought new and the first car I made debt for. Used to race it against the mates in their VW City Golfs and Fiat Unos. Discovered if you don't have much driving talent, being fearless in the corners helps. Did not replace the timing chain (there is a timing chain!?) until I was forced to -- along with most of the engine, which by then had piston rings so worn out from my high rev driving I had my own permanent cloud formation belching from the exhaust.
Driven normally, these hatches are so tough, at Africa's longest continuously published newspaper, The Witness (est. 1846), the car pool had two of these hatches that lasted generations of journalist drivers -- for over 20 years.
Clearly, it sits not in everyone pants to kill a Toyota engine, but let the record show, I managed. Later on the sheep farm, looking at the tiny shards to which I had reduced a tractor's hardened steel clutch, it was agreed I should sell my ability to find metals' shearing limits to companies like Nasa. They could save billions in not having to do destructive tests.
I wrote my first motoring article about this little hatch, in the form of a teary-eyed letter left in the cubby hole when I traded it in for the Scribe company's Fiestas. I like to think it is still running somewhere out there with the letter in the cubby hole, in the way of unemptied cubbyholes the world over.
Bought a clapped-out Suzuki 650cc to have a second set of wheels in the already rocky marriage. Soon realised why bikers say rather a sister in a brothel than a friend on a used-up Suzi. Serijass.
But the many, many, MANY kick-starts on those freezing mornings in Mafeking (aka Mafikeng aka Mahikeng) did train me to casually kick into submission all the subsequent thumpers. This turned out to be a very useful skill one full-moon night when a short-ass blonde asked if I could start HER Yummy after the another suitor had failed.
This bike taught me via the school of hard knocks not to go slower on mud, but to open up the throttle. I rode it to work and after the weekly double shift to put the Mafikeng Mail to bed on Wednesday nights, I'd return at midnight using the short cut made by fire breaks along a game farm's fence. I'd putter along helmetless next to shadowy herds of game browzing under the low-hanging stars, hoping the young zebra foals will race me again. Only the horseback safaris I did later in the Songimvelo Reserve near Barberton is a better way to appreciate Africa than riding a bike in the bush.
The bakkie I most love to hate. Not just because there used to ALWAYS be a fricking 1400 changing a tyre or something in the middle of the road around the next blind corner, but because this vehicle constitutes an industrial design assault on anyone over 4,5 foot.
And. They. Just. Won't. Die.
Which is why Mr Veggie told me he sold his flashy Ford Ranger when he got retrenched as farming foreman, bought two clapped-out 1400s -- one to fetch fresh veggies from the market and one to peddle these vegetables, now in R5 packets, to office buildings.
We bought two of these in the publishing and media liaison business I was founding partner off. It was Car of the Year in SA in 1998, mainly due to it being sold with a radio that had a proper base speakers and tweeters as standard.
Doing the weekly, 350km, Gauteng-to-Lowveld run in this, I could listen to casettes (remember those?) of Del Amitri, Pink Floyd and Mozart like these musos meant their sounds to sound. The cabin was also moulded around an average obese American's body. Anyways, the ergonomic cabin meant you did not have to be a contortionist to fit your legs under the steering wheel, (see the abysmal Nissan 1400 above). Really the only thing I did not like about this hatch was the constant hot air venting onto the windscreen. Good for demisting in cold and clammy Europe. Very uncool in sunny South Africa.
The Scribe Publisher's very conservative flagship. (What sensible directors we were.) It later underpinned the Jaguar, as Ford still owned Jag then, before Tata took over. Like most Fords since then, (I'm looking at you Figo) it handled with surprising aplomb and made me ask new questions about the premium prices people are willing to pay for the German triumvirate.
The hay and sheep farm's truck, aka Slet. A battered Isuzu bought cash and refitted by the self-taught genius blood brother on Syferfontein, the farm where I healed a broken heart with hard work, making hay and chasing my flock of sexy Dorper ewes, (so called because they liked to escape and then run from dorp to dorp).
None of the other touring vehicles in my life come close to the loads of character this little turtle had. It not only had a soul, but was sentient. Not like Christene in Stephen King's haunted car story, but more in a friendly Casspir the Ghost kind of way. The lil' turtle's engine would pick only the most beautiful spots to over-heat, be it a snowy mountain or a quiet beach. Where the passenger and I would proceed to get bruises in the unlikeliest places.
All my best road trips were made in this one and she taught me to stop and eat where security guards, cops and truckers stop. There, the food is always good, cheap and plentiful.
Standout memory: The best sunset yet, after puttering along all night and all day through the Karoo, to crest the shadowy side of Camps Bay Road in Cape Town and emerge into a sudden, wall-to-wall sunset blaze of pastel pinks and purples. That feeling of being a tiny pixel in the blushing western sky inspired me to start the Sundowner Sect. (We believe the colour of our sundowners will go into the palette of tomorrow's sunset. We have one commandment: "Drinketh with, if not luurve for the people in the west, then at leasteth with a modicum of arthistic intenth, verily.")
Their high prices meant I never got into Volvo's cars as much as I would have liked (apart from this S60R), but the big old Volvo tractor had me feeling like Don Quixote as I raced over the bumps of Syferfontein's freshly shorn hay fields to impale another huge bale, aiming the huge hydraulic forks just so with my right hand while holding on for dear life to the bucking steering wheel with the left.
The Volvo also taught me how to drive with millimeter precision through narrow farm gates using only power to the rear wheels. For with a heavy implement hooked on the back, a tractor's front wheels becomes merely decorative -- much like a Porsche's front wheels at speed around Sunset Corner at Kyalami race track, as I later learned at the hands of a French driver.
Loaned money to photographer Mariola to buy one when her Opel Kadet finally packed up. Turned out it was in a crash. But she wanted it because it looked nicest among a lot of bad choices. I'll grant you, the curves on that rear still looks as good as those on Mariola's.
You just have to luurve that little three-cylinder's burbly growl.
We won a Total Economy Run in this with the Wiel magazine team, back when it was a proper race under the cruelly murdered Jan Hettema. The average speed over rough gravel roads on a 300-km time trial was 70km/h. For those of you who don't race, this means going twice as fast most of the time to make up for the stops. Many sumps did not make it. The little Charade's did. Which shows us again, all you have to do to win is add lightness, as Lotus founder Colin Chapman said.
For a while there in the mid 2000s the Bantam was South Africa's most stolen bakkie, which is the highest compliment bakkie-mad South Africans can give a pick-up.
The first Volkswagen Passat happened in the mid-1970s, when the Western world wore bell-bottoms, and the casettes the matric girls would hand the school bus driver (my dad) was Abba or Queen.
An third Passat experience also revealed my morals. At that stage, I was living my dream, co-hosting Siele op Wiele as well as RSG Wiele with Hennie Maas on national Radio Sonder Grense, writing travelogues for Wiel magazine and being the publishing editor of The Driver tabloid for truckers.
I've put foot in several versions of the many BMW Ms, Merc's AMGs, but if I have to have a very fast family saloon, zis German wagen gif me un groß hapenis, ja?
Standout memory, racing the RS4 against the blood brother Gert on his KTM 990 along the curvy temporary service road snaking alongside -- and over -- the old Pretoria road to Cullinan. It had lovely little jumps each time it slalomed back over sections of the old road. As Sarel van der Merwe proved with a top podium in many races, quattros love to play dirty. Ditto Katrien, who sat in the shotgun seat.
Because at heart, I am a Van Man. And as I allus avow to my Sufferikan brethren, the best "bucky" (what we call a Ute or pickup) is always a panelvan. Any panelvan. Even the middling Chinese Maxus.
Because I had a trucker licence, my long-term test car while at Wiel magazine was a long-wheelbase, high roof Sprinter with the old five-cylinder diesel. That diesel made 320 Nm almost from idle to deliver fantastic consumption, especially when pushed by the howling, sandblasting gales that blow in from Lüderitz on Namibia's west coast at dusk.
The cabin was so spartan I used a little plug-in fan and water pistols as my air conditioning system. But loaded with camping gear and few odd passengers of the female persuasion, not even an Autovilla makes a better vehicle to go touring with. Or pull the race car with. Or take staff to places in. Bloodbrother Gert bought and refitted two, the second one in Oz.
As seen on the 'Desperate Housewives' soapies. Now, I'm as surprised as anyone that a car that needs product placement on a soap opera to sell, could end up on this list. Yet this here fine SUV is another standout from the blur. Mainly because the Redhead (as below)
(for real yes) ...who mothered the son for which this list was written, liked it so much while we explored dirt roads on the escarpment. Partly because Nissan was honest in designing it only for smooth gravel, saying this was because so few SUV owners go offroad.
If the zombi apocalypse ever happen, you want to be in this tank. No, not the Yank truck in front -- the drab, olive-green double cab in the back.
The SUV version of the double cab is based on my all time fave panzer car, called an RG32M, which I wrote about here.
Here the double cab is shown lapping the Yank in a little race I staged for the photo, which photoshoot quickly saw the famous red mist descend on both drivers.
The first really larney test car I got to drove for the now dead Wiel magazine and weekly RSG Wiele programme. Quirky does not come more classy than this.
In France, the Vel Satis cars I saw were basically treated like big ash trays on wheels by their chain-smoking, Renault-executive owners. They were the only people who drove them, as no-one outside Renault wanted to be seen alive in this hearse-like vehicle.
A few were sold in South Africa, and one ended up with mate Rehann.
The trip we did in his to Upington (ironically, to a funeral), saw us eventually sleep under the stars next to the Orange River in the Kalahari. But first I smuggled some snuff to my grandpa's second wife where she was awaiting death in the old age home, and Rehann went to pay last respects at an open grave. There are still brown spots on the roof of his Vel Satis after a bottle of Sishen-made ginger ale exploded. And yes, he paid the localpiratical extorter Renault dealership way too much money to keep the many sensitive bits functioning.
I recall not so much the car as the long trips delivering various models of this two-seater to the Car, Wiel and Getaway magazines in Pinelands, Cape Town from Nissan's HQ in Midrand, a journey of just under 1,900 km (1,180 miles) -- one way.
While designed for big-boned Americans, the cabin is still relatively cramped, but I found driving for two days and a night would make one sufficiently tired to sprawl comfortably comatose over the central console.
The standout memory is not from Sufferika, but France, where I was pushing a 350Z, painted in golden bronze like the one pictured, around the Arc de Troimphe in Paris.
Literally pushing on my two feet, mind, fingers splayed as far as possible on the rear so as not to put dents in the back. This after a rather attractive lady had stalled and could not restart it.
Being Paris, where my bourgeoisie Villion ancestors still like to remind the rich of the Guillotine, neither the three traffic polieste nor the road maintenance crew right next to the Nissan bothered to help the lady as she dammed up traffic.
Me: "Pardon mademoiselle, parles vous Anglais?"
She: "Of course I speak fucking English, I'm American."
Me: "Shall I help you move the car?"
She: "Toot suit, please."
After huffing and puffing the car up a gently inclined 50 metres to sidewalk, I get into the driver seat and started the car.
She: (admiringly): "How did you do that!?"
Me (in manly humble mode): "Aw shucks ma'm, you just forgot to press the clutch pedal", then, noticing the curves of the auntie, "Sooo... I see you went for the optional Bose sound system, much better use of the rear parcel seat, I always think."
She: "I did not choose the fucking thing, I just removed it from my soon to be ex-husband's garage. That fucking cheating bastard."
I got out quick and moved away slowly, scanning the sidewalks for angry soon-to-be exes with axes.
Glaciers are quicker between traffic lights, but sally forth out of the city and into the rough and the 4x4 Panda will clamber anywhere you point its nose. And it will give 5,8 litres per 100 km to boot. On dirt roads, it is a like a rally car with trainer wheels, being too slow to put you in any danger and just fast enough to enable four-wheel drifts.
Had the kind of road trip to Nambia in this that photographer Jay is still talking about, decades later.
But the Namibians were total noobs to the Subaru.
"Wot kinda karr is dis?"
"A Subaru."
"A sjoe bru? Woo myks it den hey?"
After experiencing the start of the annual three-week Bacchanal carnival which the Namibians call their Wikka, Jay and I now know that God created Namibia's dirt roads especially for this Japanese all-wheel-drive. And his angels drive big yellow machines to maintain them thar fabulous dirt roads like billiard tables. Corner pocket, here I come! Wheee!
There should be many more standout memories after a day of carnivalling with the Windhoekers, but I unwisely made the Jaggermeifter float our moving HQ, where I am afraid the sexy sales reps plied me with test tube after test tube filled with that that vile green fermented herb mix.
All those buttons and all that design really hits home at first, as I enthused here. But in the end, classic status was not to be. The lesson: Less is always more, preferably wrapped in a little black number.
A really personable lil' ute. (As for why I like it, see the Redhead's view on the ridiculously small Copen.)
My advice? Don't go driving it round and round on gold mine dumps. When that seemingly solid crust burps and breaks, that would be cyanide water that bubbles out.
Along with at least a gram of gold per ton of highly acidic slurry, so they told me.
With the vacuum effect of the acidic quicksand, it took hours to dig ourselves out, even with the bulldozer to pull. Wonder if any gold dust remained behind?
And the new one is even better, as I wrote here.
There is transport, then there is tranesport (teary sports).
Johan and I managed to "brake" even for while, but then 2008's recession arrived in Sufferica and I lost my savings in this lorrie. (I'm still awaiting that payment, Daan Enslin!)
But a for few moments there, for example deep into the second icy night and hypnotic trance that comes from the drone of slow, long-distance driving, when the half gears on the 24-speed crash box click in just so on only the revs, and a happy little blue flame dances in the stack, then you get to understand why some guys never get over lorries. Like me.
As oom Stiaan "Die Melkman" said whenever he could get through to the Siele op Wiele show which I co-hosted on RSG: "Al wat lekkerder is as lorrie ry, is rooi koeldrank drink en meisies vry."
For the record, I still am grateful for this gifted wheels, for reasons of a world-wide recession, stolen bakkie, gift horses, teeth, etc.
The fact that Toyota remade this 1980s Land Cruiser 70 model some 30 years after it was originally built, says it all. I've wanted one ever since I matriculated in 1986 and credit those Fibonacci proportions for this yearning. And Fate, for 25 years later on showing the same model twice four months apart in the classifieds. So I quickly traded that auto-ageing Camry for the rusting Land Cruiser and immediately started to feel young again.
Big, bruised and unstoppable while there was grip, the Cruiser fitted my ego like a metal glove. It immediately bestowed my family's weekends with adventure, even if we in the process added to the hard miles it had as a bush ambulance around the port of Richards Bay. As I told the boy and the bull terrier, "hey, if you don't get stuck, you are not trying hard enough!".
Never mind that its coastal past meant Waraza was rusted beyond hope and cost a bomb in electric faults. Each time I drove it, I ended up with a big, fat, post-coital grin on my face.
The name? She made a lot of noise, or 'geraas', pronounced g'raz in Afrikaans, so the boy, then six, called her Waraza. In the end, the 4,2 litre's thirst meant Waraza had to go back to the North Coast, where she lives out her days on a local's homestead, being fixed by wires and pliers, and loving it.
While loving Waraza despite its 4,2 km per liter at any speed, I did make up for it with a scooter that used not a drop of fuel. Yes, I was the first and still is the only oke on an Whispa electric scooter in KwaZulu-Natal.
Being the only bloke out there on one maybe should have told me something, but in my pioneerish way I still argue electric two wheelers is the most effective and efficient way to commute in a sunny city. (As Gogoro has since proved.)
Only, in my case, it seems two wheels always end up costing me more than four would have. First the scooter's control unit rusted inside. No, crossing the foot-deep water flowing over a flooded low water bridge built over the Duzi river was not the cause. Rather blame nine months on a slow boat from China and many nights of riding home in the rain.
The nine months it spend at sea also depleted the lead batteries to the point where they were basically DOA, giving me only two years of short commutes instead of five years of silent buzzing about. This made the electric a lot more expensive than a petrol unit would have cost me. Sorry Andy, such realities makes yer sums suck!
Spent pocket change to buy a Matis that was running on two of it's three cylinders.
Jens fixed it to run like a sewing machine on all three, but then instead of swinging it, it seemed like a good idea at the time to cut out the floor at the back and shoehorn into the tiny space:
- a real wheel drive Corolla's axle;
- a forklift's electric motor;
- a motorbike's cogs and chain; and
- four (4) heavy truck batteries.
It could not have happened to a better car, really. The end result was the word's fastest all wheel drive Atoz hybrid. Even with two passengers, it easily made -- well, almost easily made -- 32km/h, given enough of a run-up and a bit of a downhill, and two inches more tyre wall on the rear axle to add some leverage.
We never did get to the Kalahari Speed Week at Hakskeenpan for which the car was built.
Lesson: As soon as batteries get lighter and last longer, DIY evees will take over from the fossil fuels, but not before.
Just the best family car ever.
Not 'yet', or 'currently' or 'as far as we know'.
EVER.
And the second car I loaned money for.
Of course the double chin makes the Multipla the fugliest car in the world, and as this pic above shows, it understeers a tad when a rod snaps on the steering arm. We all have our faults, OK? But consumption from this 1,9 turbo diesel is not one of them.
Every father should wish his son a girlfriend like this car for at least a weekend.
Gorgeous curves outside, but just a little cheap on the inside, and an engine that just wants to be revved until the earth moves for you too.
There are many better-built and much faster cars for the same money out there.
But not one has schoolboys follow in a breakneck, ties-flapping run for another glimpse at the traffic light, and no other car would have those gum-chewing teenagers' faces light up in pimply smiles when invited to sit inside.
Pity the electronic stability control keeps interfering when taking off rubber in above manner. And let us not even talk about the fuel injection system, which operates in the manner of a sinkhole.
The newer one is even better, as I wrote here in Trust The Thrust.
The lesson despite their primal appeal: V8s suck. As the coloured oke said, "you put in fuel, you rev it and its wie yt ."
- pulling my beloved Multipla (with a holed sump) over hill and dale without changing gear,
Whenever I tried to test drive this Pug during the week I had it, I first had to wrestle the keys from the tiny but trained-in-pressure-points biker cop below,
...and later from Miss Sanduriva, an equally petite and even-better-trained-in-pressure points Thai masseuse, both of whom insisted "I'll drive, thank you very much".
The problem, I think, sits in the massaging seat. There is only one, and it is for the driver.
Grant you, perhaps the pheromones in the scented cockpit also played a role.
Whatever, this 2017 Euro Coty ticked two more boxes than any of the other family hatches in this price range at the time.
Lesson: Future cars will have to be lifestyle accessories, rather than transport modules.
Five centimetres is just shy of two inches, which make all the difference (or so I'm told). The 5 cm wider spacing of the wheels on the X-Class certainly makes for a noticeable difference from the handling of its chassis clone, the Nissan Navara, when driven at the speeds shown above.
But the pleasure of attaining anything over 150 km/h in a bakkie -- as one can easily do the in Ford's Ranger Raptor -- is not why the X-Class will always have a special place among the six-of-one-half-a-dozen-of-the-other bakkies [pronounced 'buckies'] out there.
Instead it is the first mind-bending psychonautic memories made with the Mad Scot and fellow explorer, of whom perfectly befits a Hunter S Thompson line from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas": "There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
Ditto the X-Class, which is now no more.
Lesson: Its never too soon to expand the mind, but it can easily become too late.
People movers are not supposed to stir gearheads. Which I ain't. For me, driving is not about going fast but about finding the other side of the horizon. If you cannot find an old VW Autovilla or converted Merc Sprinter for such long distance road trips, the next best car is a people mover. Among these, the SsangYong Stavic and Peugeot 5008 with their swivel seating, Mercedes-Benz Vito and V-Class, VW vans, even the six-seat Multipla, all stand out as purpose-built for comfort on long roads, but they are all topped by the Palisade, the first R1 million passenger car sold by Huyndai in Sufferika back in 2021. AWD enabled it to go anywhere most Land Cruiser 300 owners go, but at half the price and with a GVM that is 560 kg less. And as we should all know by now, for better motoring, just add lightness.
Oh, and this was the first car the then 13-year-old jaded teen (the same one whose first drive from the maternity ward as a baby was in the totally unsuitable Audi R8) loved the moment he sat in it.
1,3 Toyota Tazz
Driven normally, these hatches are so tough, at Africa's longest continuously published newspaper, The Witness (est. 1846), the car pool had two of these hatches that lasted generations of journalist drivers -- for over 20 years.
Clearly, it sits not in everyone pants to kill a Toyota engine, but let the record show, I managed. Later on the sheep farm, looking at the tiny shards to which I had reduced a tractor's hardened steel clutch, it was agreed I should sell my ability to find metals' shearing limits to companies like Nasa. They could save billions in not having to do destructive tests.
I wrote my first motoring article about this little hatch, in the form of a teary-eyed letter left in the cubby hole when I traded it in for the Scribe company's Fiestas. I like to think it is still running somewhere out there with the letter in the cubby hole, in the way of unemptied cubbyholes the world over.
Suzuki 650cc
But the many, many, MANY kick-starts on those freezing mornings in Mafeking (aka Mafikeng aka Mahikeng) did train me to casually kick into submission all the subsequent thumpers. This turned out to be a very useful skill one full-moon night when a short-ass blonde asked if I could start HER Yummy after the another suitor had failed.
This bike taught me via the school of hard knocks not to go slower on mud, but to open up the throttle. I rode it to work and after the weekly double shift to put the Mafikeng Mail to bed on Wednesday nights, I'd return at midnight using the short cut made by fire breaks along a game farm's fence. I'd putter along helmetless next to shadowy herds of game browzing under the low-hanging stars, hoping the young zebra foals will race me again. Only the horseback safaris I did later in the Songimvelo Reserve near Barberton is a better way to appreciate Africa than riding a bike in the bush.
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| Father and son looking for the missing basset at the Rooigrond plot near Mahikeng. |
1400 Nissan
And. They. Just. Won't. Die.
Which is why Mr Veggie told me he sold his flashy Ford Ranger when he got retrenched as farming foreman, bought two clapped-out 1400s -- one to fetch fresh veggies from the market and one to peddle these vegetables, now in R5 packets, to office buildings.
And why you still find them transporting huge loads in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Each 1400 stolen from South Africa.
1998 Ford Fiesta
Doing the weekly, 350km, Gauteng-to-Lowveld run in this, I could listen to casettes (remember those?) of Del Amitri, Pink Floyd and Mozart like these musos meant their sounds to sound. The cabin was also moulded around an average obese American's body. Anyways, the ergonomic cabin meant you did not have to be a contortionist to fit your legs under the steering wheel, (see the abysmal Nissan 1400 above). Really the only thing I did not like about this hatch was the constant hot air venting onto the windscreen. Good for demisting in cold and clammy Europe. Very uncool in sunny South Africa.
Ford Mondeo
The plaas lorrie
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| Syferfontein farm lorrie, aka Slet. |
The old Isuzu earned her keep schlepping the bales 200 km from Syferfontein to the mink and manure set around Jo'burg. To give her credit, she broke down only once over two summers of hard hauling. When a speedcop at a crash scene asked if I could make a U-turn with the truck, I told him no, but I can make her eyes widen...
And will you credit that with a full load of timber, Slet could do 140 km/h? In neutral. Going down a long, steep hill. At night.
And will you credit that with a full load of timber, Slet could do 140 km/h? In neutral. Going down a long, steep hill. At night.
As a responsible driver now, I have to shudder at my youthful folly.
VW Autovilla
All my best road trips were made in this one and she taught me to stop and eat where security guards, cops and truckers stop. There, the food is always good, cheap and plentiful.
Standout memory: The best sunset yet, after puttering along all night and all day through the Karoo, to crest the shadowy side of Camps Bay Road in Cape Town and emerge into a sudden, wall-to-wall sunset blaze of pastel pinks and purples. That feeling of being a tiny pixel in the blushing western sky inspired me to start the Sundowner Sect. (We believe the colour of our sundowners will go into the palette of tomorrow's sunset. We have one commandment: "Drinketh with, if not luurve for the people in the west, then at leasteth with a modicum of arthistic intenth, verily.")
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| Serendipity being cleaned after another weekend away. |
Years later, I upgraded for a few months to Serendipity, which was the name given to an 2,8 diesel Iveco Daily with a Discoverer camper on the back.
That naturally aspirated engine, a tough-as-nails 6-speed gearbox and a strong ladder frame were why Namibian taxi drivers rated the Daily above the Sprinter for long distance people transport. But as to why anyone would want to holiday within arms' reach of a chemial toilet and smelly stove remaind a mystery to me.
Yamaha XT 550
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| The forerunner of the legendary Tenere 600, the bike all the boys who knew what was what, wanted. I wrote an ode to this Yummy she-bitch here. |
Volvo tractor
The Volvo also taught me how to drive with millimeter precision through narrow farm gates using only power to the rear wheels. For with a heavy implement hooked on the back, a tractor's front wheels becomes merely decorative -- much like a Porsche's front wheels at speed around Sunset Corner at Kyalami race track, as I later learned at the hands of a French driver.
Daewoo Lanos hatch
Daihatsu Charade
We won a Total Economy Run in this with the Wiel magazine team, back when it was a proper race under the cruelly murdered Jan Hettema. The average speed over rough gravel roads on a 300-km time trial was 70km/h. For those of you who don't race, this means going twice as fast most of the time to make up for the stops. Many sumps did not make it. The little Charade's did. Which shows us again, all you have to do to win is add lightness, as Lotus founder Colin Chapman said.
Ford Bantam bakkies 1 and 2
I had me the scariest moment yet in a Bantam, driving on the farm road during a thunderstorm to meet up with the lass in Maselspoort outside Bloemfontein. The river was flooding over the 20m low-level bridge. I got out to walk the bridge almost to the other end to check the surface. Finding all to be sound underfoot, I turned and sloshed my way back in the pouring rain to drive at steady speed over the bridge, in order to keep pushing the bow wave as once does when crossing water.
I did not know it then, but had turned back just before the half meter section of the that had washed away. This I learned as the Bantam's nose dipped suddenly and the bow wave came over the bonnet, the windscreen the roof to fill up the bin at the back. That is a lot of water.
Praise be the washed out gap was narrow and I was going fast enough for my front tyres to claw their way up the rocky slope. I sat there until all that water had drained out and that rubbery feeling of being scared shitless had drained from my legs muscles.
The Bantam's little Rocam engines were bulletproof but their clutch plates were made from bits of foil paper that Quality Street had rejected as too thin to wrap around their toffees.
Overload a one-ton trailer on this half-tonner even a litte bit and the springs will eventually open up. I kid you not, only a little bit of standard Africa abuse and it cracks, I arsk ye!?
Number 1 was insured. Number 2 wasn't. Neither was my mobile office in it.
It was the start of the 2008 recession for me and my young family.
I did not know it then, but had turned back just before the half meter section of the that had washed away. This I learned as the Bantam's nose dipped suddenly and the bow wave came over the bonnet, the windscreen the roof to fill up the bin at the back. That is a lot of water.
Praise be the washed out gap was narrow and I was going fast enough for my front tyres to claw their way up the rocky slope. I sat there until all that water had drained out and that rubbery feeling of being scared shitless had drained from my legs muscles.
The Bantam's little Rocam engines were bulletproof but their clutch plates were made from bits of foil paper that Quality Street had rejected as too thin to wrap around their toffees.
Overload a one-ton trailer on this half-tonner even a litte bit and the springs will eventually open up. I kid you not, only a little bit of standard Africa abuse and it cracks, I arsk ye!?
Number 1 was insured. Number 2 wasn't. Neither was my mobile office in it.
It was the start of the 2008 recession for me and my young family.
VW Passat
The first Volkswagen Passat happened in the mid-1970s, when the Western world wore bell-bottoms, and the casettes the matric girls would hand the school bus driver (my dad) was Abba or Queen.
Dad bought a powder blue Passat on credit with his teacher's salary and a cash deposit from driving those school buses. It was a dud, obviously built during the last hour of a Friday shift and one of the very few cars he lost money on in the resale.
We were not the only dupes. In Afrikaans the popular joke soon became "Pas gekoop en sat gery" (Freshly bought, already broken). Which is why I was totally blown away by the 2003 model. It tought me in the VW group, everything gets shared, and this Passat may as well carry an Audi badge.
Like my father, I also had a driving side hustle, delivering mageu (ground and flavoured maize) to mines and depots for nice lumps of cash.
In between all the driving and media, my social life was ... busy, what with being an eligible bachelor with a slew of shiny cars and money to spend.
My best pick-up line
My best pick-up line then was delivered in two parts. The first was: "I'll pick you up Friday night. Pack a panty and a passport."
The second part, delivered in my deepest radio voice late on a Thursday, was: "On second thoughts, about tomorrow's trip ...leave the panty."
Inevitably, this led to scares of the "I'm late kind". Which is why I was on my best behaviour when my third Passat experience came around. It was a weekend "partner launch", in George.
Following the latest scare, I had no partner, but as I had to meet up with my sexy young Sex Advice columnist for The Driver, who lived in George, it was all good.
She was a lissome 20-year-old whose answers widened the eyes of the truckers asking advice about women. She was also very excited about the gala function. Bought a little black number, did the hair, waxed and everything.
The boring gala ended early, as these things do, and three of us Afrikaans media okes were looking for watering hole to drown our sorrows after the latest lay-offs.
My date, being a native of the nearby Wilderness village, led us to the only pub still open at 10 on a Friday night. It was a nice enough place, with a reed ceiling and cement dance floor next to a tiny bar. By now, the young sex columnist was throroughly bored with me, who was all business not wanting another "I'm late" scare, and her eyes lit up as the rowdy members of a victorious Sevens team filled up the only open bar in town to celebrate winning some tournament.
Soon she was dancing in the centre of the lads as we boring old balies propped up the bar and continued our morbid talk of lay-offs. Then two more girls arrived, teetering on very high heels.
I moved up a chair to make space and, as I was buying, asked them what they were having.
"Absinthe, oom" they said without hesitation and the bar tender lined up the glasses.
Now, while they were young enough for me to have been their dad -- had I not been so shy after school -- being called "oom" did sting.
So I turned my back on them and continued talking with the bearded Landbou Weekblad guy, until he nodded at the pair behind me and said, "But they are now kissing each other!"
Then they were dancing up a storm -- gyrating against each other as the Sevens guys cheered them along. We were about to leave when the one of the girls tapped me on the shoulder.
"Our parents don't understand us but our friend, who was at school with us last year, say you have a room at the hotel and we wonder if we can crash with you guys tonight?"
Now, just pause for a moment here and do the sums.
Two very young, very drunk lesbians. My sex columnist looking ravishing and sweaty in her tight little black number. And me with only one double bed in the hotel room.
I could see the Landbou Weekblad bloke doing the same sum and coming (no pun, promise) to the same conclusions. But I was thinking of a different, erm, outcome.
One more in the lines of three calls of "I am late". Because if I've learned one thing in life, it is that condoms break. Like Passats, you could say.
So I arranged with the designate driver to drop the lasses off at their non-understanding parents; and tossed a coin with my sex columnist, saying, "Tails get the couch. Heads or tails?"
"I always do the head," she said, doing that thing with the fluttering eyes and biting of the lower lip.
"Too bad," I said, "It's tails, you sleep on the couch."
The next day, feeling virtous and moral and a shining example of all that is proper, I phoned my father and told him of my evening and how I handled the three temptresses.
After a long silence, he asked me in a broken voice, "Son, are you sure you are not gay?"
So I called the blood brother. Told him the same story. His response with nary a pause? "You moffie!"
Whatever. Years later, I still like the view from up here on the pinnacle of my moral mountain. Old people may say you are always sorry about the things and the people you didn't do, and they are mostly right. But in this case, I remain proud for doing what I thought the right thing.
We get so few of those chances in life.
Audi RS4
Standout memory, racing the RS4 against the blood brother Gert on his KTM 990 along the curvy temporary service road snaking alongside -- and over -- the old Pretoria road to Cullinan. It had lovely little jumps each time it slalomed back over sections of the old road. As Sarel van der Merwe proved with a top podium in many races, quattros love to play dirty. Ditto Katrien, who sat in the shotgun seat.
2003 Honda S2000
Among the blur of two-seater sports cars on test, including the MX5 and RX8, several versions of the 350Z, the Peugeot RCZ , the wee willing Copen and of course the little drifting incident in the Jag below, the S2000 stands out most.
Its more tail happy than a Labrador puppy and as idiosyncratic inside as only the inscrutable Japanese mind could make it. Those 1980s bakelite-like buttons. The Beam-Me-Up-Scotty interior. The stupid roof clips. And if you haven't searched for an S2000's fuel flap release button yet, you still have to fully explore your limits as a petrol head.
Sarisa, however, will still not drive with me after I'd tried to discover just how tailhappy this Jap could get around the three hairpins and six turns on the little-known, 5.8-km pass leading up to Steenbras Dam from Gordon's Bay.
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| The Jaguar F-type in action at Mason's Mill in Pietermaritzburg. |
Sarisa, however, will still not drive with me after I'd tried to discover just how tailhappy this Jap could get around the three hairpins and six turns on the little-known, 5.8-km pass leading up to Steenbras Dam from Gordon's Bay.
Mercedes-Benz Sprinter
Because I had a trucker licence, my long-term test car while at Wiel magazine was a long-wheelbase, high roof Sprinter with the old five-cylinder diesel. That diesel made 320 Nm almost from idle to deliver fantastic consumption, especially when pushed by the howling, sandblasting gales that blow in from Lüderitz on Namibia's west coast at dusk.
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| This 15-year-old rusted Merc Sprinter still pulls the CTM rally team's Polo to the race. |
The lesson: Vans are what all family cars want to be when they grow up.
Look, I enjoy pushing any M into a bend as much as the next petrolhead. But alas, I am not a Beemer man. Maybe it's their narrow pedals that always make me feel clumsy in my workboots.
BMW X5
Maybe it was the zero space in the rear of the pocket rocket 3-Series dad bought when he still played front row for what is now the Bulls.
Perhaps its the rival suitor, who after school bought one, automatically forcing me to look instead at any other car. Or blame the 3-Series driver who totalled my Datsun Stanza.
Bottom line -- Beemers maketh not the metal glove as befits my ego. The 2005 year model X5, however, was the exception to this general rule -- thanks to a road trip with a pastor's two nubile daughters, home from being TEFL wenches in Taiwan, along with their Taiwanese photographer friend.
Bottom line -- Beemers maketh not the metal glove as befits my ego. The 2005 year model X5, however, was the exception to this general rule -- thanks to a road trip with a pastor's two nubile daughters, home from being TEFL wenches in Taiwan, along with their Taiwanese photographer friend.
The girls knew a game ranger who'd give us free lodging. I had a long weekend coming up and so we merrily flirted our way across three provinces to the bush, seat-dancing to The Killers most of the way.
Just past Middelburg on the N4, where I knew where the speed traps were, I opened her up a bit and our Taiwanese friend fumbled in his haste to photograph the speedometer.
Turned out he had never seen a needle on 170.
Like The Killers, the De Beer sisters sang like angels and while stumbling our inebriated way under a sliver of moon to those free rooms in the bush, their sweet duet gave me goosebumps of delight. Later, they cut a disk with more songs, one of which is apparently about our brief liaison. I'm not sure if it is "Don't Make Me Wait", or "Skinned" (titles translated). Still, how many BMWs do you know that inspired a song?
Just past Middelburg on the N4, where I knew where the speed traps were, I opened her up a bit and our Taiwanese friend fumbled in his haste to photograph the speedometer.
Turned out he had never seen a needle on 170.
Like The Killers, the De Beer sisters sang like angels and while stumbling our inebriated way under a sliver of moon to those free rooms in the bush, their sweet duet gave me goosebumps of delight. Later, they cut a disk with more songs, one of which is apparently about our brief liaison. I'm not sure if it is "Don't Make Me Wait", or "Skinned" (titles translated). Still, how many BMWs do you know that inspired a song?
Nissan Murano
I even liked the CVT, before it developed cracks and started to leak oil, of course.
Alfa Romeo 156 JTD
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They said a diesel Alfa is the devil's work.
They did not drive it.
Thank you all the driving gods, for this car.
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RG32M
The SUV version of the double cab is based on my all time fave panzer car, called an RG32M, which I wrote about here.
Here the double cab is shown lapping the Yank in a little race I staged for the photo, which photoshoot quickly saw the famous red mist descend on both drivers.
The RGM32 is eight tons of panzered mean machine that eats 3kg of TNT for appetizers. This made them very popular among American and British troops stationed in remote outposts to defend the imperialist / capitalist / Satan's childrens' right to cheap oil during the 90s and 20s.
This double cab version of the RG32M sport ute was built in record time for the Irish army. It rides on what can technically be described as ''suspension'' in the same way mutual orgasms can be described as "procreation". Those leaf springs were specced by Agent K double O, Ess, (Koos to his mates), who hails from Benoni .
This double cab version of the RG32M sport ute was built in record time for the Irish army. It rides on what can technically be described as ''suspension'' in the same way mutual orgasms can be described as "procreation". Those leaf springs were specced by Agent K double O, Ess, (Koos to his mates), who hails from Benoni .
For the ignorant, Benoni is a place that lurks on the East Rand of Johannesburg and the area gives new depths to the words "ruff" and "tuff". Which may explain why the other star from Benoni, Charlize Theron, did so well on the handbrake turns in the remake of the Italian Job.
Did I mention agent Koos was also an extreme-4x4 racer? He won multiple national championships and his party trick was to hang-park his Grizelda up a garden wall, but he always humbly said this was just how people drove in Benoni.
All RG32 models have a sunroof as standard, although agent Koos calls it a gunner's hatch. If you doubt their toughness, check out the nerd who who wrote the technical manual, a bloke called Cassie Booyse, who enjoyed brief fame as 'Vernon Koekemoer'.
Did I mention agent Koos was also an extreme-4x4 racer? He won multiple national championships and his party trick was to hang-park his Grizelda up a garden wall, but he always humbly said this was just how people drove in Benoni.
All RG32 models have a sunroof as standard, although agent Koos calls it a gunner's hatch. If you doubt their toughness, check out the nerd who who wrote the technical manual, a bloke called Cassie Booyse, who enjoyed brief fame as 'Vernon Koekemoer'.
Renault Vel Satis
In France, the Vel Satis cars I saw were basically treated like big ash trays on wheels by their chain-smoking, Renault-executive owners. They were the only people who drove them, as no-one outside Renault wanted to be seen alive in this hearse-like vehicle.
A few were sold in South Africa, and one ended up with mate Rehann.
The trip we did in his to Upington (ironically, to a funeral), saw us eventually sleep under the stars next to the Orange River in the Kalahari. But first I smuggled some snuff to my grandpa's second wife where she was awaiting death in the old age home, and Rehann went to pay last respects at an open grave. There are still brown spots on the roof of his Vel Satis after a bottle of Sishen-made ginger ale exploded. And yes, he paid the local
Nissan 350Z
While designed for big-boned Americans, the cabin is still relatively cramped, but I found driving for two days and a night would make one sufficiently tired to sprawl comfortably comatose over the central console.
The standout memory is not from Sufferika, but France, where I was pushing a 350Z, painted in golden bronze like the one pictured, around the Arc de Troimphe in Paris.
Literally pushing on my two feet, mind, fingers splayed as far as possible on the rear so as not to put dents in the back. This after a rather attractive lady had stalled and could not restart it.
Being Paris, where my bourgeoisie Villion ancestors still like to remind the rich of the Guillotine, neither the three traffic polieste nor the road maintenance crew right next to the Nissan bothered to help the lady as she dammed up traffic.
Me: "Pardon mademoiselle, parles vous Anglais?"
She: "Of course I speak fucking English, I'm American."
Me: "Shall I help you move the car?"
She: "Toot suit, please."
After huffing and puffing the car up a gently inclined 50 metres to sidewalk, I get into the driver seat and started the car.
She: (admiringly): "How did you do that!?"
Me (in manly humble mode): "Aw shucks ma'm, you just forgot to press the clutch pedal", then, noticing the curves of the auntie, "Sooo... I see you went for the optional Bose sound system, much better use of the rear parcel seat, I always think."
She: "I did not choose the fucking thing, I just removed it from my soon to be ex-husband's garage. That fucking cheating bastard."
I got out quick and moved away slowly, scanning the sidewalks for angry soon-to-be exes with axes.
Fiat Panda Climbing
It is also nimble over rocky surfaces and being light, just floats through mud if you kept the revs up.
The interior folded around the driver like a helicopter's panel, putting every button to hand.
Yet they never sold. It must be because most 4x4 drivers are quite insecure and feel they have to get the biggerbreast / penis car, right?
Fondest memory? A quick day-trip down the road in the Panda that became a weekend's adventure over Baine's Pass, the highest in SA, to go skinny dipping in the Tina river with Tina.
The interior folded around the driver like a helicopter's panel, putting every button to hand.
Yet they never sold. It must be because most 4x4 drivers are quite insecure and feel they have to get the bigger
Fondest memory? A quick day-trip down the road in the Panda that became a weekend's adventure over Baine's Pass, the highest in SA, to go skinny dipping in the Tina river with Tina.
Subaru Outback
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| Me chasing corner pockets on Namibia's billard-table-smooth dirt roads in a Scooby. Photo: Jay Groat. |
But the Namibians were total noobs to the Subaru.
"Wot kinda karr is dis?"
"A Subaru."
"A sjoe bru? Woo myks it den hey?"
After experiencing the start of the annual three-week Bacchanal carnival which the Namibians call their Wikka, Jay and I now know that God created Namibia's dirt roads especially for this Japanese all-wheel-drive. And his angels drive big yellow machines to maintain them thar fabulous dirt roads like billiard tables. Corner pocket, here I come! Wheee!
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| An angel driving past in a big yellow machine. |
There should be many more standout memories after a day of carnivalling with the Windhoekers, but I unwisely made the Jaggermeifter float our moving HQ, where I am afraid the sexy sales reps plied me with test tube after test tube filled with that that vile green fermented herb mix.
Now, as above Passat story will show, normally I would just say no. But they asked so prettily...
I do have vague recollections of dancing lang arm with a bevy of increasingly jummmy mummies in a blur of school halls; kids sleeping under tables; and young and old blokes "pens duelling" outside.
I do have vague recollections of dancing lang arm with a bevy of increasingly jummmy mummies in a blur of school halls; kids sleeping under tables; and young and old blokes "pens duelling" outside.
Pens duelling is perhaps unique to Windhoek. This sport requires a 10-metre run-up and jumping into the air to crash paunch first into the other guy, who is doing ditto. It requires a surprising amount of balance, or a lot less alcohol, as I found out.
Then there was a midnight "lets go braai" invite. Then Jay flying horizontally through the air to hit our host for klapping his wife for hitting on Jay. The ending was ...complicated. We awoke later that morning sleeping on the road next to the Subaru somewhere outside Windhoek, soft Kalahari rain on our faces.
Three times now I have slept out in the Kalahari, and each time it rained. Maybe I should become a rainmaker?
Mitsubishi's 'tiny truckie' L300
Myself getting trout from the scenic Lunsklip Fisheries in Mpumalanga in the tiny truckie. The waterfal on the farm is a must-swim.
These decades-old little workhorses are the engines that still make the profits of many a small business throughout southern Africa and keep several municipalities functioning.
I bought a rusted one as a run-about for the adventure business. Bear in mind just getting to the bit where the running about happened, entailed a 450 km drive through the worst parts of rural KZN and Mpumalanga.
This bakkie made money for me from the word go and I never had a moment's hassle out of it -- EXCEPT FOR THE WIND NOISE IN THE CABIN! For a comfy, safe and quiet ride it is not. Sold it for the same price I bought it too.
This workhorse reinforced my philosophy: Its not the looking, but the cooking.
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| Myself getting trout from the scenic Lunsklip Fisheries in Mpumalanga in the tiny truckie. The waterfal on the farm is a must-swim. |
I bought a rusted one as a run-about for the adventure business. Bear in mind just getting to the bit where the running about happened, entailed a 450 km drive through the worst parts of rural KZN and Mpumalanga.
This bakkie made money for me from the word go and I never had a moment's hassle out of it -- EXCEPT FOR THE WIND NOISE IN THE CABIN! For a comfy, safe and quiet ride it is not.
Citroën DS4
Daihatsu Copen
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If cars can be a little black number, the Copen is it.
Even in gun metal grey. Yes, it is a tight fit in there for big okes when you put the roof up.
But with the roof down in cruising weather, absolutely everybody smiles at you, while a few women and many more men even try to pass you their numbers on fluttering bits of paper.
The Redhead said my liking of small cars like this is all about reverse compensating. Whatever that means. Being a Daihatsu, that engine will last and last. Show me another two seater sports car that can say the same.
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Toyota Condor
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Touch wood, the only car I've managed to roll. What a piece of shyte on wheels.
The awful, top-heavy wagon, I mean. Not the oke against the wheel, who would be me. |
Suzuki Jimny
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| Photo: Jay Groat |
My advice? Don't go driving it round and round on gold mine dumps. When that seemingly solid crust burps and breaks, that would be cyanide water that bubbles out.
Along with at least a gram of gold per ton of highly acidic slurry, so they told me.
With the vacuum effect of the acidic quicksand, it took hours to dig ourselves out, even with the bulldozer to pull. Wonder if any gold dust remained behind?
And the new one is even better, as I wrote here.
Land Rover Defender
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| A Defender in the disused 2km-long railway tunnel under Hilton. |
While on the topics of legendary 4x4s, one cannot NOT mention the Land Rover Defender.
So consider it mentioned.
So consider it mentioned.
If you insist on knowing more about this torture on wheels, read here why the Landy's design combines the worst effects of Stockholm Syndrome with that of sunstroke.
The Eagle lorrie
Johan and I managed to "brake" even for while, but then 2008's recession arrived in Sufferica and I lost my savings in this lorrie. (I'm still awaiting that payment, Daan Enslin!)
But a for few moments there, for example deep into the second icy night and hypnotic trance that comes from the drone of slow, long-distance driving, when the half gears on the 24-speed crash box click in just so on only the revs, and a happy little blue flame dances in the stack, then you get to understand why some guys never get over lorries. Like me.
As oom Stiaan "Die Melkman" said whenever he could get through to the Siele op Wiele show which I co-hosted on RSG: "Al wat lekkerder is as lorrie ry, is rooi koeldrank drink en meisies vry."
Which translates to "All that is more fun than lorry driving is drinking red cooldrink and smooching girls". And now can we please have a moment of silence for oom Stiaan, once a very successful owner of a fleet of yellow machines who, after his divorce, rented a flat in Cape Town and had his secretary word an advert for his services as a gentleman of negotiable affection.
And he was a true gentleman. "I always took a third of my weight on my elbows, slept on the wet spots and never had the heart to charge the ladies either," he told me as we drove to fetch a Tata Telcoline bakkie he had won in an SMS competition I had in The Driver newspaper. He sent over 500 SMS entries. What a bloke.
Worlds removed from that tail-heavy lumbering Skyline that I borrowed as often as I could from the detectives' car pool, the 2009 and later GT-R models are all mechanical miracles I'll exchange a kidney for.
The GT-R really is closer to being in a PlayStation game than in a car.
The one shown here was the first to do a sub-10 quarter mile run at Matubatuba, on the hot and steamy KwaZulu-Natal north coast on Sunday, 13 June 2015.
Lesson: in some cars, you get the looking AND the cooking.
Nissan GT-R
The GT-R really is closer to being in a PlayStation game than in a car.
The one shown here was the first to do a sub-10 quarter mile run at Matubatuba, on the hot and steamy KwaZulu-Natal north coast on Sunday, 13 June 2015.
Lesson: in some cars, you get the looking AND the cooking.
Audi R8
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| Two 'orries' ready for another round at Dezzi's Raceway on the KZN south coast. |
Dear son, the Audi R8 in front was the car in which your daddy drove you to get your first shots, when you were but a week old. And it was the first car I learned how to really gooi Audi's quattro drivetrain out of a corner, thanks to Audi's patient race driver Gennaro Bonafede at the scenic Dezzi Raceway near Marburg. At which point I should explain that with all-wheel drive, the trick is to brake before the apex and then use the Audi's power to push AND pull you out, for trying to push like you would with a rear-wheel drive BMW just delivers screeching understeer.
To see what the R8 V10 can do, there is no better video than this illegal road race in Brazil:
And the lesson learned? There is always someone faster than you.
And the lesson learned? There is always someone faster than you.
1994 Toyota Camry automatic
Let us see now, what do I remember... it was, um, white?
With... um, brown velour seat covers?
No, this is not me acting senile. The Camry is guaranteed to make you feel a lot more mature (think at least 60 years older) after each drive.
No, this is not me acting senile. The Camry is guaranteed to make you feel a lot more mature (think at least 60 years older) after each drive.
Which may be why, each time I peeled myself off those eerily sticky velour seats, I felt like I should wear baby-blue knee socks held up by elastic bands and short polyester pants with sharply ironed cleats.
In this drabness on wheels, I learned its OK to check the teeth of gifted horses, so as soon as the electrics started playing up, I traded the dreary Camry for.... Waraza!
In this drabness on wheels, I learned its OK to check the teeth of gifted horses, so as soon as the electrics started playing up, I traded the dreary Camry for.... Waraza!
1986 Land Cruiser, aka Waraza!
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| Not making light of deep mud. |
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| Making light of deep snow in tropical KwaZulu-Natal. |
The name? She made a lot of noise, or 'geraas', pronounced g'raz in Afrikaans, so the boy, then six, called her Waraza. In the end, the 4,2 litre's thirst meant Waraza had to go back to the North Coast, where she lives out her days on a local's homestead, being fixed by wires and pliers, and loving it.
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| The last trip we took in Waraza to see the aftermath of a big fire in a nearby plantation. |
Whispa 3000 electric scooter
Being the only bloke out there on one maybe should have told me something, but in my pioneerish way I still argue electric two wheelers is the most effective and efficient way to commute in a sunny city. (As Gogoro has since proved.)
Only, in my case, it seems two wheels always end up costing me more than four would have. First the scooter's control unit rusted inside. No, crossing the foot-deep water flowing over a flooded low water bridge built over the Duzi river was not the cause. Rather blame nine months on a slow boat from China and many nights of riding home in the rain.
The nine months it spend at sea also depleted the lead batteries to the point where they were basically DOA, giving me only two years of short commutes instead of five years of silent buzzing about. This made the electric a lot more expensive than a petrol unit would have cost me. Sorry Andy, such realities makes yer sums suck!
Electric bike on snow tyres
They sell for twice what I'm willing to pay for a used car,
mudguards are expensive optional extras
and all the little voices in my head are clamouring
"remember wheels in twoes just bring woes".
But dang, those fat snow tyres make even MY butt look toit!
mudguards are expensive optional extras
and all the little voices in my head are clamouring
"remember wheels in twoes just bring woes".
But dang, those fat snow tyres make even MY butt look toit!
Chevrolet Sonic RS
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| Moi, and the Chev Sonic with ticking engine outside Radio Overberg, where I also never made cent on air. |
Had me an informal little dice with a few other car hacks during its launch on the long rural roads on the Cape coastline, on which I managed to get the little 1,4 hatch's speedometer over 200 km/h. The other driver did so too, but had bigger balls around blind corners (or less knowledge of just how often a stalled 1400 is parked in the middle of the road.)
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| Don't do this at home! Or on the open road! |
Driving thus would be considered serious shunting in any hot hatch, but in the Sonic RS, things get downright adventurous at this speed, with the suspension feeling like it would bottom out over the slight undulations and the suddenly over-eager power steering making even long sweeps feel like hairpins.
Talking about the car in Radio Overber'g studio the next morning, I was still suffering from self-induced alcohol and cigar poisoning. But I asked for the local hangover cure and learnt snoek-kuite (fish roe) indeed works wonders to restore some colour to the cheeks.
Daewoo Matis hybrid AWD
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| Jens cutting space to fit and old Toyota RWD axle. |
Jens fixed it to run like a sewing machine on all three, but then instead of swinging it, it seemed like a good idea at the time to cut out the floor at the back and shoehorn into the tiny space:
- a real wheel drive Corolla's axle;
- a forklift's electric motor;
- a motorbike's cogs and chain; and
- four (4) heavy truck batteries.
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| Note the higher rear tyres to add more leverage to the electric motor driving them. |
We never did get to the Kalahari Speed Week at Hakskeenpan for which the car was built.
Lesson: As soon as batteries get lighter and last longer, DIY evees will take over from the fossil fuels, but not before.
We drove our DIY evee a few more years before opting not to renew the four truck batteries. Instead, the stripped-out Mighty Matiz became the Clubman's Champion in our local picnic rallies, thanks to the effect of the double VW GFS stickers on the side. (For Variable Width Go Faster Stripes.)
Fiat Multipla 1,9 JTD
Not 'yet', or 'currently' or 'as far as we know'.
EVER.
And the second car I loaned money for.
Some say it's low shoulder endows the Multipla with a somewhat squat appearance, like a bloated pumpkin. And that the double inverted chin up front does not improve matters aesthetically.
But those haters know nothing about moving children about. Those low window sills mean all three kids in the back can look out and be visually entertained, a basic but very, very important bit of industrial design that most of the childless eejits who over-design new cars on their CAD systems don't know about.
Check it out: 4.8 to a 100. Yep, your eyes ain't lying. Four Point Eight!
That was not a once-off either, but the norm, driving with a load up from the coast to Pretoria. Without a load, I even had a few 4.2l/100, but that was after long stretches of slow driving through swirling, pea soup fog.
Bonus features:
- When you drop the phone, it cannot disappear between the seat and hand brake. It just lands on the center seat.
- When you park under a tree, leaves cannot accumulate in the ventilation slots above the engine. Because there ARE no ventilation slots. Just that fat and friendly double chin.
Show me another used car that sells for so little and does so much for this kind of diesel thrift while carrying six people AND their luggage, and I will make that the next best family car on this list.
Big, fat but fast Benz GLE
"When will anyone EVER get to use the smooth diesel's 620 Newton metres of brute power, which the three-liter turbocharged diesel can deliver at a workrate of 190 kW?" I asked myself upon getting the test car.
I really did. It's something I always wonder about re overpowered vehicles. As it turned out, 'twas I who could, and did get to use every sinle Newton.
After missing the second flight that month (its a Freudian thing) I decided to race the plane to the final destination, which happened to be in a rural area north of Pretoria where I drove that school bus mentioned far above in this blog entry.
Now from experience, I know any door-to-door trip under 500 km is faster by road than via two airports and a bus or rented car, escpecially during peak hour. But this was a 606,7 km trip from a small town with no peak hour, and I had already missed the book-in hour's head start.
So I put foot as hard as I could, aiming to stop with the bus at the final destination after six hours' of hard driving from spinning out of Pietermaritzburg's Oribi airport. In the end, the bus beat me by 26 minutes.
In my defence for taking so long, first there was a burning truck blocking all four lanes on the infamous Van Reenen's mountain pass, which forced me to make a U-turn to go via SA's last cannibal town Geluksburg, like I did in this Citroën.
But then a nice farm lady flagged me down to warn about the giant potholes, and I made another U-turn to take the long way around over the gravel roads that makes the De Beer pass. There a big herd of Drakensberg cattle also forced me to crawl along past serried ranks of swishing tails, which meant I had to up the pace even more when those wide tyres eventually hit the highway again.
Now the rain was sifting down and at the first long sweep I cut across the lines, Merc's haptic lane departure warning system nudged the wheel to remind me to keep on the straight and narrow.
At legal speeds these nannying nudges are a pain in the ass, but they do not bother too much. But with the needle swung all the way on the other side on a wet road, those nudges had my ass leaving bite marks in the seat covers.
This is Teuronic totaliarism at its wurst, and worse, this system cannot be turned off.
This is Teuronic totaliarism at its wurst, and worse, this system cannot be turned off.
On the leisurely return journey, I found the big GLS can also jump in no time from a legal 120 in 5th gear to a thoroughly illegal 185 km/h in ninth gear, as was verified by the officer who chose that time to himself jump from the bushes.
At which point I am proud to relate the last copy of my Wheels supplement (copies stored here) proved to provide enough fascinating information to let me get off with a warning and a ''hamba khale'' (go well) from the officer.
Lesson: Information is money.
At which point I am proud to relate the last copy of my Wheels supplement (copies stored here) proved to provide enough fascinating information to let me get off with a warning and a ''hamba khale'' (go well) from the officer.
Lesson: Information is money.
The Pony
Gorgeous curves outside, but just a little cheap on the inside, and an engine that just wants to be revved until the earth moves for you too.
There are many better-built and much faster cars for the same money out there.
But not one has schoolboys follow in a breakneck, ties-flapping run for another glimpse at the traffic light, and no other car would have those gum-chewing teenagers' faces light up in pimply smiles when invited to sit inside.
Pity the electronic stability control keeps interfering when taking off rubber in above manner. And let us not even talk about the fuel injection system, which operates in the manner of a sinkhole.
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| The Ford Mustang V8 guzzles like an oil tanker. |
The newer one is even better, as I wrote here in Trust The Thrust.
The lesson despite their primal appeal: V8s suck. As the coloured oke said, "you put in fuel, you rev it and its wie yt ."
Isuzu pick ups
The only question to ask about a workhorse is how much they charge per Newton metre. Now, on paper, Isuzu charges a lot more for their pickups than say, Mahindra. But that is just the General Motors dealerships' habit of starting high and then offering the client such a steep discount they basically buy loyalty for life.
Isuzu are all like the sensible gumboots I wear when the dress code require shoes rather than my Birkinstocks -- waterproof, tough and lined with the little luxuries you actually need, like four USB ports. (The bakkie, not my gumboots.)
Over the years, I've sung the Suzies' praises many times, after
- helping to cut off rhino horns (above armed ex-soldiers are guarding those horns):
- and camping in Lesotho after all the 4x4 fun that is Ongeluksnek pass.
Come to think of it, I have made more memories in an Isuzu than even the Autovillas and Sprinters.
Come to think of it, I have made more memories in an Isuzu than even the Autovillas and Sprinters.
Yet, I can no more enthuse over this mode of transport than I can over my gumboots. For sensible just doesn't inspire.
Peugeot 3008 GT Line
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| Armed and dangerous, Shay Kalik. |
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| Petrolhead Saifon Sansuriva, note her correct holding of the steering wheel. |
Grant you, perhaps the pheromones in the scented cockpit also played a role.
Whatever, this 2017 Euro Coty ticked two more boxes than any of the other family hatches in this price range at the time.
Lesson: Future cars will have to be lifestyle accessories, rather than transport modules.
Mercedes-Benz X-Class
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While pleading the fifth on the when and how, this kind of speed I have only ever managed to sustain in one 'bucky' -- the X-Class. |
But the pleasure of attaining anything over 150 km/h in a bakkie -- as one can easily do the in Ford's Ranger Raptor -- is not why the X-Class will always have a special place among the six-of-one-half-a-dozen-of-the-other bakkies [pronounced 'buckies'] out there.
Instead it is the first mind-bending psychonautic memories made with the Mad Scot and fellow explorer, of whom perfectly befits a Hunter S Thompson line from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas": "There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."
Ditto the X-Class, which is now no more.
Lesson: Its never too soon to expand the mind, but it can easily become too late.
Hyundai Palisade
People movers are not supposed to stir gearheads. Which I ain't. For me, driving is not about going fast but about finding the other side of the horizon. If you cannot find an old VW Autovilla or converted Merc Sprinter for such long distance road trips, the next best car is a people mover. Among these, the SsangYong Stavic and Peugeot 5008 with their swivel seating, Mercedes-Benz Vito and V-Class, VW vans, even the six-seat Multipla, all stand out as purpose-built for comfort on long roads, but they are all topped by the Palisade, the first R1 million passenger car sold by Huyndai in Sufferika back in 2021. AWD enabled it to go anywhere most Land Cruiser 300 owners go, but at half the price and with a GVM that is 560 kg less. And as we should all know by now, for better motoring, just add lightness.
Oh, and this was the first car the then 13-year-old jaded teen (the same one whose first drive from the maternity ward as a baby was in the totally unsuitable Audi R8) loved the moment he sat in it.
