VW MAN 8.136 ~ A small truck for the Sahara
Next .................Desert
driving impressions...............
. Last
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 pre-1997 UK car license) if
not the price: Jackson's quoted me £12,000;
a place in Belgium and Denmark both asked about £9000 and in 2009 I saw one advertised in the UK as a gunbus for nearly £18,000 plus tax! Luckily sense prevails in 2010 where Germany still sells them for €8000 or so.
Back in 2006 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 Mali.
The new
MAN in my life
As far as I can tell an 8.136 is comparable with a Unimog 1300L
but was about 40% cheaper at the time and more conventional all round: a 5-speed/2
box/3 diff lock trans with long leaf springs and with a similar 5.7
litre aspirated 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 AD 999, peace has reigned supreme and so these MANs
have not been used much; many have been given away to Iraq. 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 was I needed a
proper support vehicle for my upcoming 8-bike Algerian 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, and about to get even more wrecked.
I like
trucking...
... and I like to truck, but for the moment 
I
still stand by what I say in the book. In the Sahara the only thing a truck
can do is carry more, or offer a higher level of overnight 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 SEQ 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 needed the MAN.
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
