Comments by "Helmuth Schultes" (@helmuthschultes9243) on "American Reacts to UNIMOG in the Fire Brigade (Retro Film)" video.
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The UNIMOG has often been well represented in Dakar Rallies. Both competing and even more so as support team and spares transport..
Concerning arid looking Southern France it is in many section much like Spain. An area that has become well known for "Spagetti Western" movies to film the many "westerns" emulating Mexico and southern USA.
You have become captivated by Unimog as I was on my first work visit in Stuttgart area in 1979. Seeing many on farms, city and highway maintence, even one on tram rails, and a fire brigade at my work company site, shared as local village fire brigade, a service offered free by my employer to the community.
I had been so close to buying one second hand, that work was disposing of, that could have been mine for mere DM10,000, which at that time was under 6 months of my wages.
At that time sadly it would have been an expensive mistake. Then there was NO RIGHT HAND VERSION, never designed or manufactured until much later , late 1980s from memory, when Australian Army bought some. At the time any Left Hand Drive vehicles could only get short term permit to be used in Australia, before either needing to be converted to Right Hand, or exported out or scrapped. This applied to many test cars I drove for my job that were left hand drive. Yes I have spent thousands of kilomters in various countries driving various vehicles with steering arranged opposite to normal traffic, a situation that you can get used to, but causes many drivers BIG problems.
As no parts existed at all for right hand conversion it would have been a VERY expensive custom conversion with many costly engineering verification and certification of conversion costs to be able to register for legal street use. A little less for only private property use, say on a large farm or outback cattle/sheep station which might even have been possible without conversion though thatvwas a requirement even to import a vehicle into Australia.
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