What a shame, Brad, that you didn't have either the courtesy or kindness to recognise that without this order from ME to build this machine for my TV program, you would never have gotten it to the stage its at now - or even finished!
… Or that what you are now touting as all your own creation is actually MY vehicle with all the amendments that "I" requested and paid for you to develop as required for my shooting needs.
What YOU supplied was the original concept, running gear and usual base-buggy stuff… (Which IS good – otherwise I wouldn’t have ordered it).
However what I supplied you with were all the other design details – such as camo-paintwork, tonneau style and colour, and so many OTHER accessories concepts and finishing details - the light bar, winch requirement etc. etc. (Remember – there IS correspondence to prove this).
What YOU were offering to me originally had only a small percentage of the bling and shutzpah that I commissioned you to create for ME for the purposes of my TV program.
So – credit, please, where credit is due: without my ideas and pushing you to do it - PLUS financing you for the privilege, your “IGUANA” would be a VERY pale version of this current iteration.
What an equal shame that you don't either have the decency to acknowledge my copyright on photography where they have been used.
Finally - for those readers who are interested - and if there is an element of disgust in the following it is purposely so - it should be known that on my taking delivery of this vehicle during April 2007 (after a year + in the making!) - the lights were all wrongly wired, the brakes squealed (with no solution offered), the engine kept cutting out - and no-one knew what the problem was, the Starter Motor packed-in, the exhaust pipe fell off, the fuel gauge was a joke, the tonneau zips failed and.... WHERE WAS BRAD whenever I tried to call him to get some action...???
NOWHERE. Neither answering his 'phone nor his mails. He’d gone AWOL with no forwarding address.
It took me another THIRTEEN MONTHS after re-delivering it to his workshop in Brisbane in May 2007 before I was able to finally get it in a condition to be driven out.
OK - fairness where fair is due: 9 months of that was "supposedly" because the dossier was in with the QLD. RTA for Type Approval. And then Brad sold out his personal interests in the company - as I hear - to some other people who did what they could.
… And for the record the current asking price of AU$45,000 is only slightly less than what I paid as a commissioning fee to have the buggy built in the first place – including all the accessories, design concepts etc...
If I sound pissed-off, it’s because I am. It is, according to MY experience and judgement, such good-intentioned but rankly inefficient people as this - running so-called “professional” businesses in a thoroughly amateur manner - who have given Buggies a bad name in general by being so incredibly “lightweight” in their attitude...
If you, dear Reader disagree, then ask yourself this: if YOU had ordered a buggy, paid a hefty deposit up-front, and then - when the company was patently going belly-up - NOT insisted on a refund - then took delivery to find so much wrong on it - and following which you couldn't even get hold of the company owner, how would YOU have felt...??
Please feel free to contact me at any time on
majordom@monaco.net if you would like more information about my own dealings with this company or about the genesis of the IGUANA project and our TV programs’ involvement in its furtherance.
