VW MAN 8.136 ~ A small truck for the Sahara
Next .................Desert
driving impressions...............
. Latest (August
'07)
Even
though for regular desert touring I'm not very positive
about them in the book, the opportunity has come up to get some
first-hand experience with a truck in the Sahara. Up to a point
I've been here before; a very noisy and costly experiment with
a diesel Land Rover 101 in 1988 (an experience detailed excruciatingly
in my Desert Travels book).
Now for about the same price I have me a MAN 8.136 (i.e.:
8 ton GVW with 136 hp). I spotted these a few months ago
while going through a truck phase and was immediately drawn
to the manageable size (driveable on a UK car license) if
not the price: Jackson's quoted me £12,000;
a place in Belgium and Denmark about 
£9000.
I forgot about them until a
couple of days before leaving for SEQ when Matt and I got
Skyping and tracked down a much less expensive example down
the road from him. We checked it out and after thinking it
over I figured it was worth a gamble and told him to buy it
as I set off for Morocco.
The new
MAN in my life
As far as I can tell an 8.136 is comparable with a Unimog 1300L
but is about 60% cheaper and more conventional: 5-speed/2
box/3 diff locks, long leaf springs and with a similar 5.7
litre non-turbo six but with full time 4WD and as
forward control as they get without falling out and running
yourself over. I hear that the 8.136 was a 1980s collaboration
with VW for the Danish army (you may recognise the VW LT Transporter-ish
cab). Luckily since the Norsemen pillaged the Isle of Wight
in 999AD peace has reigned supreme there and so these MANs
have not been used much. Mine is about 1990 with a winterised
radio suite in the back (above right; since removed) and with
only 10,000km on the clock. And I thought the VW
Taro had
low kms!
It's
all a bit extravagant of course but my excuse is I needed a
support vehicle for my 8-bike tour instead of making do with
a station wagon with little or no capacity for broken bikes
and riders. This time to save the long and boring road haul
I am delivering the bikes to Djanet while the riders fly in
and out. My pickup was to sort of fill that role but of course
is
no more (there it is below on the back of another MAN; a
19/240) so I must have had some sort of subconscious pre-departure
premonition on buying the MAN.
I like
trucking...
... and of course I like to truck but for the moment
I
still stand by what I say in the book. The only thing a truck
can do is carry more or presumably offer lots more comfort
but at a cost to road speed and fuel economy (a reputed
3 kpl and 90kph with the MAN...), let alone all the other
drawbacks listed on p.101. We proved on my
previous trip that a regular 4x4 car can manage a two week/2000km off piste
payload in the desert. Were it not for the bike tour offering
the convenience of a vehicle to transport the bikes to the
desert and support
them while they are there, I would not have bought the MAN.
But now I have it Matt and I may develop it as an overland
camper project to feature in my forthcoming Overlanders
Handbook.
So far Matt has managed to
MoT it so all it needs now is registering (various options
exist), repainting and other domestification as well as a
check over.
Next installment
December 2006
