Author: Tim Ansell

Caffeine & Machine at Port Rashid

Tim Ansell
Lancia Stratos

If there’s one thing I do enjoy it’s a car show and when my friend and serial automotive business entrepreneur Phil McGovern announced his latest “Caffeine & Machine” meet, I realised this would be my first chance to show TTT off to a wide audience and generate some interest in the vehicle, my journey and this blog.  So with TTT duly washed and polished I drove down to the event at the superb Port Rashid venue. The directions themselves were enticing “Go in through the main gate, tell them you are with Caffeine & Machine. Go over the first roundabout, left at the lights, then turn left at the Queen Elizabeth II”.

TTT + QE2
TTT in the foreground, QE2 in the background.

No, Her Majesty was not actually there to meet me in person, but the cruise liner the QE2 has been moored in Dubai for 10+ years now and whilst it’s a shame she’s not been developed as the tourist attraction which she could be (along the lines of the Queen Mary in Long Beach CA), she’s still an imposing vessel.  As I entered the port there was a 1930s Ford pick-up behind me and a modified Unimog in front of me, so I knew I was going to enjoy the show. I drove past my friend Laurie Bridger’s gorgeous 1959 Cadillac convertible, waited for a couple of 1960’s Mustangs to park, queued behind a Lamborghini LM002 4×4 to get to the ‘off road’ display and parked alongside my business partner Ian Barker’s Chevy LS2 powered rally prepped Nissan Patrol (it’s for sale, details here http://newtrixracing.blogspot.ae/ )

My business partner Ian Barker, his wife Sheila, TTT and a Mog…

I hadn’t been out of the vehicle five minutes and was still opening up all the panels and attaching information sheets (to save me explaining things a 100 times) , when the first intrigued passers-by came over to chat. It must have been two hours later when I realised the sun was beginning to set and I’d yet to take any photos. So I made a very brief walk around a fraction of one of the display areas, between the McLaren P1s and Lancia Stratos, vintage Jaguars and Porsches, Ferrari 365 and 308s (mmmmm!), VW split screen campers and…and…and…

Jaguar SS
Rather more beautiful than my own XF SV8

I was in automotive heaven, but sadly lack of light curtailed my photography, and by the time I returned to TTT there was a queue of visitors waiting to take a look around. If I’d have been charging admission I’d have made a fortune. I reckon I showed over 30 groups and families around the truck, met up with a number of my journalist friends who were finally able to see the vehicle for the first time, and generally just had a great time.

Porsche 911
Detail of a classic Porsche 911

Six hours later I drove home, a very happy man, and with any number of new followers of this blog – so “Hi” to you all and Thanks for coming along and meeting me. And Thank you Phil for the trouble I know you must have gone to, to get the event off the ground.

Jaguar E-Type
The most beautiful car in the world. According to Enzo Ferrari

 

A few images from Oman

Tim Ansell
The old and the new.

 

Sorry for the lack of posts lately folks but I’ve been having a few issues with the truck which I didn’t really want to make public, at least not until they’d been resolved. Once again I have to thank EMC in Abu Dhabi and Oberaigner for their amazing support, and KrugXP for their patience as I dealt with what are really just teething problems but which set me back a few weeks. I think I’ll deal with them all in a separate post once I’m on the road full time.

TTT in the mountains in Hatta.
TTT in the mountains in Hatta.

Anyway the truck’s first proving run was an 1,100km or so return trip to Muscat, Oman, so I could meet my parents there as they returned to the UK from Goa. I managed to find a perfect parking place on empty ground just in front of their hotel, the Ramada at Qurum Beach, where I was undisturbed by anyone, yet was close enough to the hotel to be able to pinch their wi-fi, and use their bathrooms when necessary (just as well since there was an issue with the water pressure in my truck and I couldn’t flush my loo !). It was great that my parents could see the vehicle before I head off to Africa, but with only two seats in the truck, it meant I had to hire a car while I was there, to drive us around Muscat. Still, it was easier to park than the truck 🙂

Mum and Dad, TTT, in Muscat.
My father Martin and mother Pauline, got to see my truck in Muscat, Oman.

On the way home to Dubai though I stopped off in Suwayq and a couple of other places along the coast, and again in the mountains at Hatta in the U.A.E., to take some shots of the truck while it’s still in pristine condition. I wonder how long that will last?

TTT, Suwayq, Oman
TTT outside of Suwayq fort in Oman.

We are GO for launch….

Tim Ansell
Happy Days

To say the last week has been emotional, would be an understatement of enormous proportions. To have come so close to getting my truck registered, only to find that the transmission was damaged, was to say the least, heart breaking, but if I’m to make it around Africa I need to have an “OK, problem, let’s solve it” attitude, so that’s what got me through the last few days.

Finally, following the repairs at Emirates Motor Company, my truck arrived (again) at Tasjeel in Warsan on Tuesday 24th January, and this time I was determined not to leave without a registration card. Which is just as well, since in the end it took me SIX hours to obtain the necessary approvals, during which time the vehicle was inspected on three separate occasions, by about eight different people in total. I spent 90 minutes sweet talking the manager of the test centre, persuading him that since Oberaigner was a Mercedes, n approved vehicle modifier, that the rules of ‘no modifications to chassis’ could not possibly be applied to MY vehicle. Thank You Henrique Pimental of Daimler Middle East for the letter confirming Mercedes’ relationship with Oberaigner.

Plates, plates! I got plates!!

Then there were the inevitable “But it has to be registered as a commercial vehicle”, “But it’s a heavy vehicle not a light truck”, “We don’t have that engine option for a Sprinter on our computer” and other such tiresome arguments to overcome, but I got there, having displayed the patience and understanding of a saint. Anyone who knows me will understand that for me to display such behaviour is nothing short of miraculous, but NOTHING was going to get between me and those number plates this time. So it was that at 8.20pm, more than five hours after I’d first arrived, I walked out of the office with the personalised plates in my hand. Having fitted them, I then had to walk back into the office, and spend another 40 minutes getting the registration card changed to show the correct gross vehicle weight. You see, I’d noticed that problem when the card was printed, but decided that ‘owning’ the card, and thus being able to have my plates printed, was more important than having correct details on the card. So when I raised the issue AFTER fitting my plates, well, they really had no choice but to correct it, right? I wasn’t born yesterday……

The video below is rather long, but it covers the whole gamut of my emotions, from receiving the truck the first time, realising it was damaged, getting it fixed, returning to Warsan and ultimately, my first drive of the truck on a public road. Bear with me for the plate fitting sequence – it gets better at the end 🙂
I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed driving those first few kilometres.