What drove great men?

Bobby standing next to the Chevrolet Kingswood that the Kaunda family used in the 60s.



This 1960s Cadillac LTD belonged Mainza Chona, who once served as vice-president.

This MGM was picked from Eastern Province.



Bobby has 38 cars in his collection.

Bobby has restored this hearse to running condition.

 

What drove great men?

JACK ZIMBA

“DO YOU know how many people want to buy this car? There are stacks of them. I won’t sell this,” says Bobby van der Merwe.

He is standing next to a 1960 Chevrolet Kingswood estate station wagon.
And it is not just any another Chevy, but it is the one that Dr Kenneth Kaunda used in 1964. And it is one of only 4,000 that rolled off the production line back then.
She is a heavy-looking nine-sitter old mama, with the back seat facing backwards. Dr Kaunda’s son, Kaweche, remembers sitting in that back seat on family trips to see his grandmother in Malambo, Eastern Province.
“It’s hard to believe this is where Zambia has come from,” says Bobby, as he examines the rear of the vehicle.
And here it is six decades later and the Chevrolet Kingswood still looks futuristic, like something that fell out of space.
The car has no engine, but Bobby is determined to bring it back to life.
“I will have it running,” he says with certainty.
Bobby is a real car nut who keeps a treasure trove of old cars at his home in Leopards Hill area in Lusaka. He has managed to restore a number of them to running condition.
He now has a total of 38 in his collection. There are Chevrolet cars and trucks, Jaguars and MGMs, a first-generation Range Rover, and Pontiac (remember Knight Rider?).  
There is even a 1960s Cadillac LTD (which probably holds the record as the longest production car) that belonged to Mainza Chona, who would later become Zambia’s vice-president.
There is also a 1970s Cadillac Seville that belonged to Errol Hickey, who was also a car buff.

And of course there is the old Volkswagen Beetle. No automobile collection would be complete without the people’s car.  

And then there is the Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. With a 5.7-litre engine under its hood, it’s a real stinger when it comes to speed.
“It’s about 350 horse power, that is maybe four Corollas,” says Bobby. “This thing is very fast.”

The Mazda 1300, which was once ubiquitous on the streets of Lusaka operating as taxis, also makes the catalogue.

Bobby picks the cars from all over the country, abandoned in people’s backyards.
He buys most of them, but a few of them have been given to him for free.
He got Kaunda’s car from Dandika, an Asian family.
And some of the cars have been given to him by private individuals for him to keep in trust.
“This one I found in Kabulonga, they were taking it to the scrap yard,” he says, pointing to an old battered car.
Last year he was collecting vehicles at the rate of one vehicle per month.
His wife was not utterly amused, though, and Bobby now has to think twice before he tolls in another battered car.
Bobby was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1952.
And when he was only two years old, his parents migrated to Northern Rhodesia. His father, Peter Macfarlane, worked as a mechanic for a government department in charge of roads and buildings construction.
His father later opened his own garage in Chelstone called BobKing Engineering.
Bobby’s interest in automobiles was born from there. By the age of 12, he could drive a tractor.
“My dream was to drive a car; when I was a small boy all I wanted was to drive, and obviously after you drive, you want to start building your own vehicles. I found it very interesting. School annoyed me immensely because all I wanted was to go back and work on something,” he says.
And when he was 21, Bobby built his own car.
The first real car he owned was an Austin A40. He has owned countless cars since then.
But Bobby is not a fun of showroom cars.
“My preference is to buy a smashed car and then fix it. My friends think I have a lot of money, which I don’t, that’s a good way of conning people,” he says with a wry smile.
Of course he also thinks older cars are more beautiful and have character.
Line up different latest SUVs and you cannot tell them apart from a distance, he says.
And obviously he is absolutely right.
“The old cars had a lot of character about them,” he says. “You could look at a car and say, that is a British car; that is a German car.”
Bobby’s favourite car remains the Datsun 240Z.
Back in the 1970s, it was a rally driver’s dream car, winning all the rallies in East Africa and in Europe.
“That will probably be my favourite car of all times. I really had fun with that car,” says Bobby with nostalgia.
So which one is your favourite car in your collection, I ask him, as we sit to coffee in his large beautiful house, which a few years ago was a milk barn.
“That’s a funny question,” he says, “so you are asking me in my family which child I like the best. I haven’t got a definite answer.”
But of course even in a human family there is always that ONE child.
And really for Bobby, it is the 1928 Austin, which also happens to be the oldest in his possession.
Bobby has been in the motor industry since 1980. He first worked as a mechanic for Power Equipment, which was a subsidiary of Lonrho, the empire that Tiny Rowland built across the continent.
He has his own memories of Mr Rowland, an almost enigma business magnet who had become acquainted with Kenneth Kaunda and would visit him regularly.
“When they were away from people they were just like you and I, they were humble people and you could speak to either of them for hours on end. They were very approachable,” he says.
“Very astute and very analytical” is how he describes Mr Rowland.
Bobby became general manager for Star Motors, which later became Southern Cross Motors.
Lonrho also had the franchise for Land Rover and Peugeot.
There was even an attempt to bring the Russian Lada.
“We basically looked everywhere for a gap where we could make money for Lonrho,” says Bobby.
But Lada of all things?
“Lada fits into the Third World countries even today. They are very simple to work on,” he says.
Of course the Lada is like a single-cell animal. Simple. No diagnostic machine needed when it breaks down.
“That is why I like working on the older cars,” says Bobby. “The computer buffers now prefer the new cars because they can sit on their laptop for days and have fun, I don’t. I like getting dirty and kneeling under the car.”
Lonrho brought in 40 Ladas, but the car could not compete against the Fiat 124, which was being assembled in Livingstone.
Lonrho itself collapsed years later.
In 2000 Bobby bought what was remaining of the company.
Five years later, he opened his own garage, Macfarlanes Truck and Car Limited.
Bobby’s dream is to turn this place into a transport museum that will not only display motor vehicles, but aircrafts as well.
He wants the history of the country in as far as transportation can be preserved.
“There was the Rolls Royce that President Kaunda used to use, all those vehicles must be somewhere. So rather than having them outside and have them rot, why not develop a museum?” he says.
Bobby also dreams of bringing an old plane capsule at the site to serve as a restaurant, perhaps to satisfy the fantasy he dragged with him from his boyhood.
“That is my biggest wish in life,” he says.
Bobby is currently trying to source funding for the project.
“If we could get people interested, it will be very nice,” he says.