Perhaps one of my fave part of the story was when on recce day morning, I started and drove the Concordia UZi quietly out to the edge of the dragstrip and took my time revving the V8 to over 5000 rpms to warm it up. On getting back to the camp, a rough looking man with a bandage on his forhead man walked up to the car and examined it closely. He addressed me and pointed out that in his view the rear leafs/kamanis had a bit too much tarr/arch on them and it would have been better had they been slightly flatter. I looked at the man's face and being slightly unsure asked him his name...
He replied that he was Ghulam Hussain and he had raced a Toyota FJ40 against Ronnie Patel in some rally in 1995 (or something) and had been racing jeeps against all the odds since then. I pointed out that he drove a stockish Wrangler to a 4th place finish in Cholistan 2011. He claimed that at Cholistan 2010 midpoint, he had actually driven the Wrangler past Ronnie Patel's time and within one minute of Nadir Magsi. Apparently after the mid point, after overtaking the 4.7 Cherokee (incidently driven by Rana Sumair) in-front of them he landed the Wrangler in a ditch and ended up with a blown tire which cost him a few minutes! Ghulam Hussain's son and his navigator Sachaina Khan Sharr repeated the same tale to us later on with more detail.....
In short, it was truly an honor for me to spend some time with and get some pointers and guidance from Mr. Ghulam Hussain in the fine art of racing a jeep out there on the rally field! Needless to say that while we could not alter the arch of the kamanis/leafs, we promptly decided to replace the rear shackles with with smaller ones to bring the back down a bit.
[Above pic of the Gulam Hussain Wrangler by NN from DesertDevil's Cholistan 2010 Experience Thread]
