Here is a local families City motor, photographed an hour ago.
1) make?
2) location?
3) valeting products used?
(It`s the same size as a typical double cab pickup,but looks larger due to the wide angle lens and skinny wheels)
www.oilrag.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/4x4.jpg
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It looks like some kind of eastern army tank sprayed with poundland paints am I correct or have I just taken some LSD and this thread is just my imagination, it might just be tiredness.
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Whatever it is, I don't think I want one. Put it away.
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It looks like the sort of thing which would easily come to grief if you cornered it at enthusiastically.
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I don't know, but it would have the lowest EuroNCAP score for pedestrian safety of any model tested.
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1) make? - Land Rover based?
2) location? - Outside Everwells in the High Street
3) valeting products used? - The same products as me i.e. rainwater
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1) Fiat
2)Malta
3) plain water. Is it a fire engine of sorts?
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what a heap
tell him unless its taxed as agricultural to get some thread on that front tyre
looks like an mdv gone nuts
cleaning products? tell him to use zif and some elbow grease once a century
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An elegant vehicle oilrag. Looks Oriental to me, perhaps Indian or Chinese. Also looks as if it may have been cobbled together out of two or more makes.
I particularly like the adjustable front spring shackles. Clearly the car in the pic is set up for motorway cruising and hard cornering, crouched down on the road like a sprinting cheetah. For urban speed bumps or off-road conditions, a mere seven hours' work with spanners, blowtorch, jacks, angle grinder and welding kit would increase the ground clearance by a couple more inches and Hey Presto! Desert Racer!
Looks as if someone has given it a coat of Dubbin and got bored half way through.
I like the driver's door too. Seems to be in upper and lower halves like a stable door. Young pilots only need to open the top half and leap in or out. Older ones would need to open the lower half too for more dignified entry and egress.
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1) Don't have a clue... Toyota?
2) PHILIPPINES (Everwell Drughouse was the give away).
4) None - Ever!
John R
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4X4 Panda based?
Mehico?
A Brillo pad?
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Revised guess...
1) Daihatsu.
2) Philippines.
4) None - Ever!
John R
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Make - something I've never heard of. So many straight lines it may be homemade.
Location - Downtown,somewhere a long way east. ( Photo taken midnight BST )
Valeting products - Any tin of red paint.
location also somewhere with rather lax MOTs. The driver's wiper looks as if it hasn't worked for a while.
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Yes, a long way East. I won`t say where, so I can write more freely.
There are several of these vehicles in town, but also top of the range brand new double cab pickups, usually with stainless or white anti rollover bars behind the cab areas.
I did have a peak under a couple of these Toyota (and other Japanese) pickups and the frames show no sign of rust, unlike the badly rusted UK based example I posted pics of a while back.
This despite 32c heat, great humidity, tropical storms and being surrounded by sea. It must surely be road salt that`s damaging these vehicles in the UK.
I`m writing from the 7th floor of a hotel and looking out over the city, to the deep water harbour and mountains beyond. The harbour was once a docking point for large US warships before they were requested to leave.
Some locals say that there has been a steady slide into obscurity ever since, with the exception of becoming the English speaking worlds `call centre`
There is `activity` not for out of the City limits and government forces are patrolling the streets here with firepower sufficient to respond.
It`s a tough life here for people without money and two expats I knew (of) are now dead. One from tropical diseases and the other from a hospital blunder.
There is a projected `warmth` that if a favour is given it will be remembered for a lifetime. The general reality is that morality and conscience are too frequently `off the page` of the western social norms `book` and any action, lying, cheating (even within the family) is fair game, including when having `married to` the West,`leap- frogging` off the back of one person (and from a few more) upwards grasping and taking.
(If you don`t grow up within a moral code of honesty and fair play, how do you know when enough is enough?)
Enough of social observations
Motoring
Now there are red lines in the intersections now and it`s a 500 peso (about £8) fine for `jaywalking`
I`m about the only white guy in town and the traffic enforcement officers eyes are all on me. So far, so good.. but near misses due to UK relaxed attitudes to crossing the street.
Time to go back out, this has been my lunchtime `cool off`
Bye for now ;-)
More later, including pic....
Edited by oilrag on 10/09/2009 at 07:29
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Nice stuff oilrag.
Being the only obvious foreigner in town won't help when it comes to translating that 500 peso jaywalking fine into a 100-peso bung. Envious eyes will be fixed on the officious copper so he will have to play it by the book. Or are there subtle variations I haven't thought of? There nearly always turn out to be a lot of those.
Enjoyed the social observations too. They rang various bells. Even when you are used to that sort of thing it can smart a bit sometimes and take you by surprise. But the ruthless opportunism you sketch can be accompanied by more positive qualities. Certainly Western-style moral indignation is often completely misunderstood. What is the fellow ranting about? All we did was hustle him a bit... Of course you know all that better than I do.
Funniest of all is the reference to US cultural imperialism. Chuck the US Navy out for political reasons thereby demolishing the local retail economy, then adopt a ludicrous jaywalking law, America's lip service to the nanny state and legal expedient for classifying pedestrians as second-class citizens. Tee hee!
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Dawn broke over the eastern mountains a few minutes ago, in that tropical rush from dark to light, that is heralded by tethered fighting cocks crowing over their domain.
Throughout the night the city is never still, there is the rumble of old diesels and the occasional tricycle taking a late fare.
In sweltering humidity, guards sit slumped in doorways with home made single shot guns and homeless people lay in rags on the sidewalks awaiting the day and the chance to beg for food money. Most have their own pitch, a specific doorway, overhang or outside the bake shop.
One man is a virtual skeleton and locals say that is maintained as his `angle` - another has one leg, sits wearing a straw hat and ripped shirt outside a Dunkin Donuts eatery. I looked closer and his torn shirt is actually neatly seamed around the `torn` areas by sewing in order to gape.
There are two factions with interest in abducting westerners locally and I
attempt to reduce the risk by not having regular habits and moving purposefully. That said (and without intending to sound melodramatic) I have decided not to be taken if the situation were to arise.
An advantage of advancing age being that there would be less to lose, contrasted with being held in confinement in this great heat and overwhelming humidity.
A cargo ship, (Gothong Southern) is pulling into the harbour as I conclude and shortly we will be out for breakfast dodging the traffic on these soon to be baking, concrete grid pattern streets.
Edited by oilrag on 11/09/2009 at 00:26
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Vesseltracker.com (wouldn't you just know it!) has no record of Gothong Southern, but a shipping company of that name is located in Manila. Can I claim a £5 prize?
JH
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Oilrag must have seen either M/V Don Carlos Sr, M/V Don Alfredo Sr, M/V Don Alfonso Sr or M/V Doña Rita Sr.
Edited by rtj70 on 28/09/2009 at 15:55
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Is oilrag back yet?
What're the answers?
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Come on Oilrag, let us out of our misery...
John R
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Sorry about the delay - and the image having gone. All other recent images in other threads are going too unless anyone wants to save them tonight. The OR webspace is chocka and needs a purge.
The vehicle was (according to BIL) locally produced in the Philippines - sorry no name, but i wouldn`t mind one here.
And rumour has it the three wheeler was imported from California and was part of the Star Wars set. Can anyone remember the film and it`s vehicles?
Still sweating with relief as we were in Manila just the weekend before the current devastating flood.
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imported from California and was part of the Star Wars set. Can anyone remember the film and it`s vehicles?
Sounds plausible I wd say oilrag. But top marks to the man who turned it into a rickshaw.
We can only hope it will spawn a new generation of Filipino small-town taxis looking like Dragon Rapides and things. Those Filipino body men could do it I know, provided of course creeping global nanny doesn't outlaw them before they are made.
I loved the sun photo. How do you do that animation thing? Chapeau!
Glad you didn't have a muddy swim to the airport. Hope all yr friends and relations are OK (I know they aren't especially in Manila, but I bet some go there a lot).
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"I loved the sun photo. How do you do that animation thing?"
I made it years ago Lud, using a photo of the harbour in Tacloban and making it animated using software i have long forgotten.
I used to have it as the boot up screen er wallpaper- desktop on my old windows machine. Don`t know if it would still give those `Nova` (or Nuclear bomb) effects on boot up on current Windows set-ups.. or if it would put all the glass in - as it were..
An extended family member has lost his business stock in Manila - it remains to be seen whether they were insured...
Most surreal wildlife incident by the way, was being in The Mall Of Asia in Manila and looking up at blue oval circular windows in the high roof. Outside, dragonflies were coupled and repeatedly dipping, (hard and with considerable impact) onto the glass, attempting to lay eggs below what was obviously being responded to as water.
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I found this motoring video on utube about Manila, where we spent our last night just a couple of streets inland from the Mall Of Asia. The ballut is shown too - part of my initiation tests 20+yrs ago....
I find it sad that the current flooding disaster of Manila barely registers on our news channels. I`m told by sources close to me that it`s their own fault for pursuing isolationist policies following the departure of the US.
I`ve noticed the retraction of west and east over twenty years and it`s notable that only one western carrier now flies into Manila. (KLM)
Just notice next time there is a travel or other program showing maps of the area. All the surrounding countries are named and there is just an unnamed land mass where the Philippines is.
I`ve seen mobile phones burst onto the streets and in the last 10yrs top spec 4x4`s and more recently Double cab pickups. Most of these are `Chelsea Tractors` and are typically better represented new on the streets in one horse town Tacloban, than here in the provincial, Northern, UK.
Anyway, a few thoughts for the poor and destitute, the dead through flooding and the rich in their drowned Double cabs. (With stainless and white upriser roll bars and near 100% all round tints)
Here is traffic in Manila in better times
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgR8qVs42No
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