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| Professor Gordon Murray, genius car designer. Originally from Durban - where else? |
WORLD famous car designer Professor Gordon Murray last week told
media the OX, a 4x2 box on wheels designed for Africa, is the car he is most
proud of.
TopGear magazine quoted
the designer of several Formula One race cars and the McLaren F1 road car as
saying of the OX: “I’m more proud of this than any other vehicle I’ve
done.”
The Durban-raised Murray has long left the world of super fast and
super expensive cars to enable people to build cheap and safe transport using
his patented iStream process.
This process, already deployed by Yamaha for the City Car concept
and TVR at the new factory in Wales, uses the race car approach to build a car,
starting with the roll cage, adding the drivetrain and suspension and cladding
the result with panels in the sponsor’s colours.
The Ox truck caps all Murray’s ideals to construct affordable,
reliable transport. The roll cage is clad with wood composite panels that are a
lot tougher than steel. Murray tested it by dropping a 200-litre steel drum of
water from two metres onto the wooden truck bed. It did not so much as splinter.
But if a panel is broken, a new one can be bolted and glued into place in the
field.
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| While looking Spartan, the OX's interior has lots of custom loading space. |
The diesel engine and five-speed gear box come from the Ford
Transit parts catalogue and all the parts, from the rear hinge, to the three
front windscreens, are made with Africa’s robust users in mind.
Murray was co-opted to design the car by philanthropist Sir Torquil
Norman, who five years ago founded the Global Vehicle Trust (GVT), to pursue his
ambition of helping people in the developing world by providing cost-effective
mobility.
The GVT briefed Murray on a unique humanitarian programme to create
a revolutionary lightweight truck.
Murray said the truck, which can be flat-packed inside its own
frame and shipped worldwide, met all the design briefs and then some. “I had no
idea how good the OX would be, until I’d driven it,” he told TopGear, explaining how the high ground
clearance and suspension were designed to ensure the two-wheel drive truck can
go over terrain that most of today’s heavy 4x4 bakkies would find a challenge.
“Above the core humanitarian concept, I now think there’s a huge
commercial opportunity for a farm vehicle in the developed world … just as the
Defender goes out of production,” Murray said.
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| The OX does with two wheels what few 4x4 can manage: cheap delivery over the rough. |
Getting over Africa’s bad roads was only half the brief. The other
half was for the OX to carry stuff, and having grown up with the way we load our
bakkies, Murray made sure the OX can handle anything the owner wants to strap
down on the back.
The load bin carries a payload of 1 900 kg and can comfortably seat
up to 13 people, or carry eight 44-gallon (166-litre) drums or three
Euro-pallets.
The OX’s cabin provides spacious accommodation for three people,
and the driver is seated centrally. To ensure the OX can operate on left- and
right-hand drive roads, the steering wheel is in the middle.
The tailgate detaches completely from the OX and can be rotated
lengthways to double as a loading ramp. The long plastic “egg crate” frames
under the rear bench seat can be used as sand ladders under the wheels to help
the OX ride over mud or sand.
The OX is designed to be manufactured in the UK but assembled
locally, avoiding import duty in many countries. All the welding and bonding,
and safety-critical stuff such as connecting brake lines and electrics, is done
in the main factory. Murray designed the OX to be flat-packed within its frame,
so that six OX flat packs fit in a 40-foot container. Three skilled people can
put an OX together in approximately 12 hours.
In a statement from the global launch, Norman said feedback from
Africa’s buyers and aid agencies has been very positive to date. “Our priority
now is to raise the funding to complete the testing and take the project to
fruition. We believe that the OX has huge potential for charities, aid
organisations and development programmes. My dream is to one day see an OX in
every village in Africa,” Norman said.
