I have been restoring classic cars as a personal hobby along with my two brothers (Suhail & Zuhair), for the last five years. We three brothers have been in love with cars from quite a long time back. The first car we modified was my father’s 1989 Nissan Altima. We installed body kits, replaced the engine with a Skyline RB20 engine and added in a loud sound system! During those days we were also members of the “Umm Al Quwain Motorplex.”
3 brothers (from left) Suhail, Samir and Zuhair Baluch with the “Best Military Style” trophy.
Later in the mid 2000’s, along with my cousins, we formed an off-road group called the“Al Baloushi Team”.
As a team, we explored almost all the deserts and wadis of the UAE. Every person owned on our team a 4×4 and we used to modify them ourselves. Every trip was an extreme adventure!
The idea to get a classic car, first came to my younger brother, when he found a 1970 Datsun on an online website. At that time we had no information on how we could import the car to the UAE and by the time we did have all the required information, the Datsun was sold!
Then we took more interest to search for a project which could be fun as well as challenging. We first purchased a 1975 Mini Cooper, at a very cheap price as it was totally dead and had a lot of parts missing. The previous owner had given up trying to make it run. We took the risk, purchased it and then started looking for the fault. It took more than a month to discover it had a vacuum leak. Luck was with us and we got the Cooper running smoothly. Then we started to import parts and this increased our passion more for classic cars. A little later we came over an auction site, and found a 1950’s model Willy’s Jeep at a very reasonable price. We registered and bought the Jeep, taking on another challenge. But what we didn’t know was the amount of work it needed! The whole deal was made upon a couple of images. Once it arrived we found out that the Jeep had a dead engine, a mud crusted transmission, lot of missing parts, the wrong paint job and was filled with dents all over!
During weekends we all would get together for a full day enjoying playing with tools and dirtying our hands! It took us two months just to overhaul the engine. All original parts were imported from the United States for the build. Most of the time gets consumed in waiting for parts to arrive from abroad. The remaining interior and exterior had a lot of missing parts too. 80% of the parts were all imported. For the paint work, I had to get it done outside at a garage, due to safety and environmental issues. This whole project took us 7 months to complete.
The whole restoration process was not only expensive but also required a lot of interest and dedication. It’s not a one man job. A lot of research was done through online forums, as we had to download maintenance manuals, refer to videos and images, take tips from people working with similar projects and we had to go through a couple of online stores, to source parts. The second expensive part is importing stuff from abroad. Getting the correct post war military tires was close to impossible!
For the paint work, I had to go through 7 paint samples just to get the matching military colour. The whole Jeep was disassembled and sand blasted. Work started off from bare metal. Every single part, including the nuts and bolts were painted to bring back the original look. A total of 9 litres of paint was consumed on the whole Jeep.
Apart from this Jeep, we have successfully restored a 1975 mini cooper, a 1960 Tuktuk (rickshaw), a 1962 Vespa scooter and we are ongoing with a 1977 Toyota Celica lift back and a 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1. Hopefully, will have both completed before November and will have them on display at the Dubai International Motor Show in November 2017.
My visit to the Custom Show 2016 in Abu Dhabi inspired me to participate in the competition. Custom Show Emirates 2017 was held from 31 March 2017 to 1st April 2017 at Abu Dhabi International Motor Show and there were more than 500 vehicles competing in different classes and people had come from different regions to participate. This show is the biggest Custom Show within the Emirates held every year. This was the first major event we had participated in and we won the “Best Military Style” trophy!
The judges were walking all around the Jeep and inspecting every single thing in great detail. Looking for any flaws, but overall they left being really impressed with the complete restoration process. Then at the award ceremony, there was intense pressure as every classic enthusiast had restored their vehicle to the best of their ability and everyone had their fingers crossed. But when we were called upon the stage to receive the trophy, it was just amazing, an exciting moment. All the hard work had really paid off.
We three brothers have an ambition to take this passion into a more professional level. Insha’Allah if all goes well, soon we will be opening our own Customs & Restoration workshop. ■
Words + Photos by: Samir Baluch
