Chris Saul's Blog

Sunday March 02, 2008

Mr Blobby's new Pickup

Driving home yesterday I saw several new Toyota Land Cruiser 70 pickups go by. What have Toyota's designers done to what was such a cool looking vehicle?

Gone are the angular, tough looking lines that made it look like the tough, rugged thing it's supposed to be. In comes the blobby, squidgy look that makes it look like a character-less Toyota wannabe from less renowned manufacturers. It seems to be suffering the same deformities as the new Land Cruiser. Yuck.

These pics give you an idea of how the front styling has been 'softened'.

Old, craggy, character -

New, soft, squishy -

They should get Mr Blobby to front the advertising campaign.

Rubbish strewn dunes and a Jeep Wrangler fountain

Last week we went to Pink Rock, this week we went to Area 53 (no photos to hand as I'm sitting in an airport lounge with my work laptop).

At the beginning of the 'season', starting around October, both of these fun driving spots were pretty pristine but now they are, quite frankly, disgusting rubbish tips.

I can't complain about the fact that other drivers have been there, which makes for churned up sand and a less enjoyable, far more bumpy than usual ride - after all, there's no reason I should be the only person to enjoy driving there. What's really awful is the rubbish that people are leaving. There are literally hundreds of plastic water bottles, cans and plastic bags strewn everywhere.

Area 53 has a nice steep dune - past posts have had pictures of us storming around it. Sometime between our last visit and yesterday a large group has clearly been there and left rubbish everywhere. It's such a shame and totally unnecessary. The people that leave all their junk almost certainly all have domestic helpers at home. If you're going to be lazy and don't want to clean your rubbish up, at least throw it in the back of your car and let your servants do the work. Why ruin the place and leave all your junk behind for camels to eat? I just can't understand it.

Unfortunately, after tearing up and down said big dune, the top of the radiator on my Wrangler blew off. I had been up and down a few more times than I usually would - getting far higher up than usual too - before stopping the Jeep and getting out to have lunch. Normally I would have monitored the engine temperature closely and left the engine running to let the fans cool it down, opening the bonnet too if needed. Of course, the one time I don't pay attention, disaster strikes. It was quite spectacular - about ten minutes after I parked up, a loud bang made us all jump and turn to watch steam and brown water fizz out from under the bonnet.

I opened the bonnet gingerly after things had calmed down, grateful for the sturdy workman's gloves I got for Christmas. The whole top of the radiator had blown right off. Ouch. We poured lots of water on it, tied things together as best we could with string from someone's hat and headed slowly back to the road to wait for a breakdown truck to pick the car up. Fortunately 'land' was only about 15 minutes away, with two stops en route to top up.

It'll cost about 1,500Dhs/$400 to fix, providing there's no engine damage as well. Not too bad, particularly when you consider that in all its years of offroading the Wrangler's never needed anything other than standard servicing (excluding some underside damage after I drove over a rock years ago, but that wasn't serious and wasn't a breakage in the normal sense).

In future I will be far more rigorous in keeping an eye on engine temperature. I will also be terrified every time I open the bonnet!