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Look no further than farm equipment for truly alien wheels. |
1960s Ford F150
I learned to steer in one like this as an 11-year-old on the Legemaat's dairy farm in a two-horse town called Rayton, (I counted both horses, twice). I was too short to see over the dash while seated, so I'd duck below it to tug with both hands on the thick, rusted gear lever, then pop up like a meerkat to see where the big truck was lurching as I frantically stretched a leg to reach the brake pedal somewhere down there. Was that the go faster pedal? Oops. Sorry wall.1950s VW drop-side pickup
Saturday to-do list:1. Put mattress on the back.
2. Pick up mates and pool all money for fuel.
4. Remember to check if The Can had fuel.
5. Fetch the adventurous girls.
6. Park in the middle of the Menlin drive-in parking lot.
8. On the way there do the heel stomp on the floor knob to dim or bright the lights.
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
Just look at those taut lines -- still as classic today as curves wrapped in a little black number. Under the hood, they had bullet-proof engines in petrol or diesel that helped to built Francophone Africa (and still do service in Dakar).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 'oooo fooooooooooo...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
OK, I never owned one. But I treasure the Capri-shaped hole I have had in my psyche ever since the first honest car salesman I met, did not sell me a Capri coupé as I stopped by on my bicycle.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
My first car bought with those postal savings.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. |
The school bus
This was the first vehicle that made me think about the difference between driving and transporting. I remember sitting high, wearing dad's jacket in some hair-brained attempt to look older in case cops pulled me over, gingerly holding that big steering wheel and knowing the lives of all my fellow, sweaty teenage athletes in the back were at the mercy of my new drivers' licence. It made me feel important and paranoid at the same time -- what I later learned in Holland to be a bus driver's typical feelings. Back then no one checked the brand of bus. It was probably a Hino or Merc.Hilux bakkies by the score
You have not driven in South Africa if you have not driven a Hilux -- for many years the best-selling vehicle on the country -- verily, even the continent -- before the Ford Rangers displaced Toyota's trusty but increasingly middle-of-the-road offering.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.
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Laying two tons of grass sods with a little help from a Hilux. |
1976 Toyota Corolla 1.6
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.1984 Honda Prelude
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.Toyota Cressida Station Wagon
Thanks dad, for lending it to me for that first road trip to Durban during 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 so I tried to get surfer chic instead, with a series of VW combis, all with beds in the back.
Nissan Patrol
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 magical glottis stretched from a subsonic baritone to a high 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
Bought it cheap off a chap sentenced for a long spell in prison and WHAT a car it turned out to be.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
Still my second favourite panzer car. I had me my own Rubicon in one during the height of the apartheid year in 1988, when I was conscripted cannon fodder for the regime. I was parked on the dusty outskirts of a smoking township from which long lines of flame-silhouetted grandmothers emerged, shepherding their grandchildren away from the ongoing riots.
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. The lesson learned: You cannot spell politician without "li".
The first VW Combi
A white one. Engine blown. Made me think about the Teutons' supposed engineering prowess. Would a Scottish or Indian engineer ever place an air-cooled engine in the Torecelli air pocket at the back and then drive it in sun-baked Africa? Apart from a healthy distrust in the VW family, (which was not lessened any by their Dieselgate scandal decades later) it taught me not to trust a word colleagues have to say about their cars. And it kept me out of all the Golfs that followed.Datsun Skyline
Continuing the theme of driving The Man's cars like cannon fodder, I managed to borrow a Skyline a few times from the detectives' car pool. They were next door to where the poliestes made their magazine. (The magazine unit was where conscripted cops who didn't toe the apartheid regime's shoot-all-blacks line got shunted to join the rest of the "faggots".)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
I never owned any of these fun hatches, but had trips to the Vaal river in several friends' Unos. They really rewarded enthusiastic cornering with a bit of handbrake on dirt roads, but not with a load in the boot, do note.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 in our direction.
The story of how Fiat's engineers basically drove an Uno the same way, replacing parts as they broke with stronger ones "that-ah could-ah last-ah inna Suffaricah", is still my favourite story of how a team of engineers customised a car for local market conditions.
The second VW Combi
A brown one, aka Liesbet from the registration plate LZB. Had a few 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 for a push-start, forcing her to start pushing while I sat behind the wheel. Coz why I couldn't afford a new battery on the measly conscripted cop salary I got. 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.1,3 Toyota Tazz
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 through 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 Fiat tractor's hardened steel clutch, it was agreed I should sell my ability to find metals' shearing limits to companies like Nasa. They could have me just stand next to new parts and 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 still 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.
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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 years later in Pietermaritzburg, Mr Veggie told me he had 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 ladies in office buildings.
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. |
I told him no, but I can make her eyes widen...
VW Autovilla
The sentient part happened when the lil' turtle picked only the most beautiful spots to over-heat, be it a snowy mountain or a quiet beach. Where the passenger and I would then proceed to get bruises in the unlikeliest places.
All my best road trips were made in this one and she taught me to stop where security guards, cops and truckers eat. 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 from a bank of fog 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.")
Yamaha XT 550
The forerunner of the legendary Tenere 600, the XT 450 (with the single coil-over-oil shock under the seat) was 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 planned by 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 allus preached.
Ford Bantam bakkies 1 and 2
I did not know it then, but the steep river bank had washed away at the end of the slab. This I learned as the Bantam's nose dipped suddenly and the bow wave came over the bonnet, the windscreen and the roof to fill up the bin at the back. It was a lot of brown 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 from the bin and that rubbery feeling of being scared shitless from my thigh 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. Serijaas. If you overload a one-ton trailer on this half-tonner even a litte bit, the springs will just open up like a zonkolo in reverse. I kid you not, only a little bit of standard African 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 and moral lessons learned
Brace yerself, this is going to be the longest entry of this here bio in cars.
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 sung by Abba or Queen.
My best pick-up line
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The sex columnist who showed me my morals. |
Doing important sums in my head
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. Coz why, as Sarel van der Merwe proved with a top podium in many races, quattros love to play dirty.
2003 Honda S2000
The day I got myself of Jaguar's Xmas list in a F-type at Mason's Mill in Pietermaritzburg. |
Old school chum 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 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.
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This 15-year-old rusted Merc Sprinter still pulls the CTM rally team's Polo to the races. |
BMW X5
Look, I enjoy pushing any M into a bend as much as the next petrolhead. But alas, I am not a Beemer man.Bottom line -- Beemers maketh not the metal glove as befiteth my ego.
Just past Middelburg on the N4, where I knew where the speed traps were, I opened her up a bit (that's now the Beemer, neh?) and our Taiwanese friend seated behind me fumbled in his haste to photograph the speedometer over my shoulder.
Turned out he had never seen the needle holding steady on 170.
Nissan Murano
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.
The double cab shown above lapping the Yank was in a little race I staged for Wiel magazine, 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 imperialists' 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 Oh, 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 high-riding Jeep, "Grizelda" up a garden wall.
But he always humbly said this was just how people parked in Benoni.
All RG32 models have a sunroof as standard, what agent Koos calls a gunner's hatch. If you are still doubting the RG32M's 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.
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, across the 300 or so busy lanes 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 blond auntie had stalled in the inside lane and could not restart it.
Being Paris, the armpit of Europe from where my bourgeoisie Villion ancestors escaped after all the fun with the guillotines, 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 across several lanes of honking cars to a 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 depress 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
Glaciers are quicker between traffic lights, but sally forth out of the city and into the rough and the 4x4 Panda Climbing 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.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 diss?"
"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!
An angel driving past in a big yellow machine. |
I do have vague recollections of later 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.
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.In 2025, I got a Hyundai H100. I had a much quieter, more comfortable ride than the little Mitsubihsi.
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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
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
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.
So consider it mentioned.
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 for a 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."
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A load of taters from the Sandveld in transit to Gauteng. |
Nissan GT-R
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.
And the lesson learned? There is always someone faster than you.
1994 Toyota Camry automatic
No, this is not me acting senile. The Camry is guaranteed to make you feel a lot more mature (think at least 60 years more) after each drive.
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. |
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
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. |
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Don't do this at home! Or on the open road! |
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, but years later, the VW Go Faster Stripes helped the wee hatch win some rallies.
Note those VW Go Faster Stripes. They work! |
Fiat Multipla 1,9 JTD
Not 'yet', or 'currently' or 'as far as we know'.
EVER.
And the second car I loaned money for.
Big, fat but fast Benz GLE
This is Teuronic totaliarism at its wurst, and worse, this system cannot be turned off.
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
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 teenage petrolheads' 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 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
Come to think of it, I have made more memories in an Isuzu than even the Autovillas and Sprinters.
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 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. Despite all the high speeds shown above, for me, driving is not about going faster, but about exploring the other side of the horizon.
The Camper
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Ballito caravan park is always fully booked, for good reason. |
The cross country trip planned to Namibia did not realise -- the Redhead and our son having sleep switches in their bums that are activated by car seats -- but as I always preach that Pietermartizburg is only an hour away from all the best South Africa has to offer, we went there instead.
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People travel far for the German chilly wurst from this rural butchery in Fawn Leas. |
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Is there a bigger fig tree anywhere in southern Africa? For scale, spot the large campervan below it. |
Living in the van showed why campervans is the worst vehicle to do a roadtrip in.
Any such trip can always be done cheaper and quicker by driving in a passenger car from A to BnB. And bonus, in the BnB you don't have the kitchen and toilet within an arm's reach of your bed.
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God created BnBs so that man does not have to do this. |