Lang remembers his vehicles.

You are quite the entrepreneur! Enjoying the stories.

Jarrod.

Just thought about the financial side of the Hertz Valiant trading. None of us could possibly have come up with the money to buy even these cheap but near new cars.

We all used to float a cheque at the factory on pick-up on Saturday morning. After racing back to Brisbane we arranged for the dealer to have cash on Monday lunchtime and we would return to work via the bank to cover the arriving cheque from Melbourne. If we ever broke down on the way home there would have been some tap-dancing!

Lang

I am looking for more photos other than repetitious flocks of the many military vehicles. I have a whole world of aviation stuff but probably not relevant to the forum.

If people are interested in stories this is a very long one I wrote 20 years ago about some adventures as a kid in the Army Reserve driving GMC 6x6 trucks and Austin Champs in an Artillery Regiment. it may interest some with time on their hands.

next-horizon.org/more-tin-can-bay/

lang

Great stuff Lang, I am amazed at getting all these vehicles shipped over seas
I have told the Princess that is how I want to see the world , as in ship the vehicle to were the next country and drive across it and so on

Every one tells me I'm mad but I have known this for years already

Thanks for sharing

Paul

Paul

It is not hard to ship a vehicle but it is getting expensive. These days it is probably better to buy a vehicle at your start point, use it for two months or two years then sell it. The loss will almost certainly be less than the shipping cost.

One downside of shipping Australian vehicles is right hand drive. It becomes a pain in the a.. sometimes. If you drive vehicles like I do much of the time and are the slowest on the road there is no problem but if you have a modern vehicle you put yourself in your passenger's hands checking if it is clear to pass.

Another way if you want to do Europe is to buy a car in UK with good remaining registration and a current MOT (Roadworthy). Transfer to your name at your hotel address is simple. You can get a reasonable running "banger" as the poms call them for $1,000 or less. There are hundreds of left hand drive cars with British registration - makes no difference in UK - for sale in trade and mart type magazines and web sites. When you have finished just leave it at the airport.

I have a Morris Marina and Corolla still sitting in the car park at Heathrow and a Peugeot sitting in Paris Charles De Gaul. I am sure they have been recycled by now.

If you really do want to ship contact me and I will put you on the right track. It is not hard, here is my Chev being unboxed on the dock in Istanbul.


Lang

Ps Just remembered. During the recce for tor the Peking to Paris expedition I bought a Nissan Ute in Ulaan Baatar , the capital of Mongolia. When we got to Paris it became all too hard because of time to try to sell the vehicle so I left it parked in the main square of a small town near the Channel coast.

When we entered Europe at the Russian/Latvian border customs made us cover the Cyrillic script (Russian type writing) number plates with the equivalent western letters which we did with a felt pen and cardboard. I removed the cardboard before I left it parked. It still makes me giggle when thinking about Gendarme Dupont trying to clear the square of parked cars for the Monday market finding this strange light truck with Mongolian number plates blocking access. I feel sure the unsolved investigation is still ongoing and has consumed the poor bastard's life.

Lang, Please tell Bev your little mates say thanks for the pictures and stories.

Regarding Gendarme Dupont in Gay Paree. he says he has the only Mongolian registered Nissan in France and everybody at collector vehicle shows wants to buy it!

The Peking to Paris story is somewhere else on the forum if I recall. When we got to Paris I finally got rid of all the other needy buggers and specially the bloody ABC film crew - we were free!

Bev and I set off to drive another 2,000km to Rome (after doing 14,000 from Peking) in the 1907 ITALA all by ourselves. The summer weather was perfect and the car just purred up over the Swiss Alps and down in to Italy. The boss of Star Hotels approached me in Paris when he heard we were going to Rome and said "If you park out the front of our 5 star $1,000 a night hotels along the way everything including drinks is on the house. When you get to Rome you can stay as long as you like in our place beside the Vatican". I really wanted to sleep on the ground in a sleeping bag at campgrounds but reluctantly accepted his offer.

When we got to Rome the Pope was dying so all the Cardinals and Bishops from around the world were gathered. Of course the top blokes were staying in the Star with us. Nothing has changed since the middle ages. All these fat bastards came into the dining room and gorged themselves on caviar and champagne at every meal. In the bar they all ordered whiskey from $250 bottles of the best 30 year old Scotch.

When the Pope threw in the towel I overheard a couple of them complaining that "I have come all the way from America and only got three days in the hotel before the he died, the inconsiderate prick."

Here are a few more.

First is the 1915 Willys Overland that we drove 3,000km around Queensland to promote Prostate Cancer awareness. This was a big fast car and very nice to drive. Sat comfortably on about 75kmh. Some people are funny, I sold it to a bloke who put it in a small shed and has not started it for 12 years.

Here are some photos of our FIAT 500 trip from Vladivostok to Anchorage

Some of the Russian roads left something to be desired.



We got to Turin in Italy on the day the NEW 500 was released. We went to the fabulous Lingotto factory which started production on the bottom floor and slowly worked the production line upwards until the finished cars popped out on the roof. There was situated a "race" track with steep banks at each end and every car did 10 laps before descending the spiral driveway to the ground. During the war the allies bombed this FIAT factory 23 times and despite the surrounding area being turned into a desert not ONE bomb hit this building!

People think the new 500 is small but our two-cylinder baby was half the size.


After we left New York we went to Sturgis which has the biggest motorcycle gathering in the world. 800,000 bikes spread out in all the surrounding towns near the Black Hills in Dakota (carved Presidents heads monument). The town is completely closed to cars for a week and only bikes, 90% Harleys and Honda Gold Wings no sports bikes. We drove up and some giant Hells Angels manning the road barrier came trotting over to have a look at the FIAT. "Hell man, all the way from Australia. Two cylinder, air-cooled go park in the middle of main street" So we did, the only car in town.



Went to San Francisco then turned north for another 5,000km to Anchorage


Finally made it. 33,000km in 99 Days.

Here is the little Maruti/Suzuki Bev and I bought in Calcutta and spent 6 weeks driving in the mountains along the Tibet and Burma borders.


And the 1928 Austin 7 we drove to Cape York.