Carol’s Column

Burning rubber in the bushes

LIONS roared, tyres howled, hyenas laughed demoniacally while fish eagles screeched above.

You might think you have read the above paragraph wrongly. Forget it. What you read is the true story.

There, in the African bush, as buffalo grunted and warthogs snuffled, along with a herd of motoring journalists, I learnt the ins and outs of synthetic rubbers. Not to mention the ozone factor.

With a flash of inspiration, General Tyres decided to take a bunch of motoring journalists into deepest Africa, where, in the raw, they’d be able to test the Continental, the newest tyre baby spewed forth from the rubber nursery.

Pros do it in style, I learnt, as we tootled merrily along in a luxury bus sipping iced champagne and discussing the spleen and kidneys of the high performance ContiTyre system.

High-speed radials, ground contact area, integral design, braking response. Talk was fast and furious.

It would not have been right to point out that to me a tyre was the thing fitted to a wheel that caused no problems other than when it punctured. In which case a garage was summonsed to fix it.

Harry Magnus, dynamic GT marketing man, had been specific.

“We needed some female interest in our product,” he said which explained the presence of myself and two women colleagues.

Africa came in the form of Mabula Safari Lodge, west of Warmbaths, nudging Treurnicht’s Waterberg country.

Our first meeting was at the pool to discuss the merits of tyres while sipping iced drinks. From there, we retreated to the bliss of a jacuzzi strategically situated beneath a masked weaver’s nest. The antics of two crowned plovers took my attention off the differences between cross-ply and radial, textile and steelbelt tyres.

Later, we met for cocktails and a chat by Mr Big, Tony Versfeld, GT’s tyre division chief executive. From here the pace hotted up. Our visual senses were treated to a video, while our palates tingled to the taste of roast blesbok and other such delicacies followed by tribal dancing under the stars and a game drive by moonlight.

Then came the day of reckoning. Tyre testing time.

Dressed for the occasion in shocking pink and purple, I posed for a group photo with a lion, stuffed and long-suffering. The lion, that is.

Then, girding my elbows and flexing my lungs, I teamed up with fellow journalist Anna Cox to test tyres as they’d never been tested before.

Lined up in front of us were eight formidable cars. Continental tyres twinkling in the sunlight.

“Go for the Audi,” whispered someone, “it’s got airconditioning.”

In case you didn’t know, tyre testing is an art. One that neither Anna nor I knew anything of.

Nodding solemnly, along with the best of them, we gunned away from the group, burning rubber and causing dirt to fly.

“Take the handbrake off,” muttered Anna, “we’ll go faster.”

On sand roads and tarmac we travelled, chatting about things that tyres testers do. “So what do you think of the latest puff-ball fashions?” and “I must get my legs waxed this week.”

“How are the tyres,” Anna asked once. “Fine, fine,” I replied, “still turning.”

After 10 minutes of driving around aimlessly, we re-entered the game reserve and disappeared down a little-used inviting track.

The road deteriorated and suddenly we stopped.

“How’re the tyres?” I yelled, concerned as good motoring journalists are.

“Great,” said Anna, “they’re spinning.”

And so they were. Remarkably, the road had vanished from beneath the tyres and the car was perched endearingly upon the middelmannetjie, wheels spinning in the breeze.

They looked superb. General Tyres would have been thrilled.

It took us not a little while to get the road back under the tyres, upon which we hastily shot off to collect our next demonstration model.

“These tyres are wider and lower, more, for sporty cars,” long lean Alan Singer, technical field services manager told us.

“Look at those rims,” I murmured.

“The tyres?” said Anna.

“No, Alan Singer,” I retorted. “Did you catch the black rims around his blue eyes?”

Anna nodded. We weren’t tyre testers for nothing.

Many sets of tyres later, we staggered on to the patio.

“So,” said Harry Magnus, “how were the tyres?”

“Magnificent,” we chorused in unison. We’d seen elephant, buffalo, impala and warthog not to mention rhino and kudu. We’d driven through scrub and thornbush, hill and donga, ditch and dirt-track. And throughout, the tyres had kept us going.

These are rubbers to recommend.

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