1959 African Caravan Tow Vehicles
This will be a fast comment.
The IH was the vehicle with the highest population. We had Chevrolets, Fords, Dodges, and one couple purchased a Land Rover in Cape Town.
The International Harvester was what Wally purchased before the Caravan, and used his persona, the Gold Trailer and his matching IH in a publicity picture.
Possibly as many as 2/3rds of the Caravanners purchased and shipped International Harvesters for the trek.
The International Harvester proved to be a very, very, very bad choice.
IH's engineering had fatal flaws in the gear ratio's, tensile strengths of spider gears, and axles. Just a very costly problem for Wally and the other IH rigs.
We broke axles, we broke spider gears, just a total collapse of a product.
At first we bought up all IH repair items in South Africa, then Africa, then Europe and then International Harvester had to air parts to us from the United States.
The other vehicles had no memorable problems. There may have been, but not to the extent of the IH's.
There is a French word with four letters that starts with "S" than pretty well sums up the International Harvester tow vehicles in Africa.
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