Gaddafi's rocket car

Deposed Libyan dictator once fancied himself as a car designer.
There has been quite a kerfuffle about the expensive cars pulled out of the various Gaddafi family mansions, including a white Lamborghini and, less obviously, a Fiat 500.
But the most interesting vehicle hasn't surfaced: Gaddafi's self-designed ''Rocket''.
Not that the Fiat, a rather bizarre, open-sided electric version, was not interesting. The bright spark who commissioned it - believed to be the Colonel himself - perhaps didn't consider the implications of having no doors in a country that is, broadly speaking, an oven filled with sand.

The man himself. Photo: Reuters.

By one report, the $US130,000 ($122,000) electric Fiat had a separate petrol engine to power the airconditioning, diminishing its environmental gains.

Muammar Gaddafi's interest in cars went beyond a pointlessly modified Fiat. He fancied himself as a designer, unveiling the Saroukh el-Jamahiriya, or Libyan Rocket, in 1999. It was a five-seater, wedge-shaped sedan finished in a fetching shade of Revolutionary Green.
The Rocket was described as the safest car in the world and, lest anyone should think its designer was, say, a delusional, murderous wing nut, the spokesman added that Gaddafi spent long hours thinking of ''ways to preserve human life all over the world''.
Among the lightly explained innovations was an ''electronic defence system'' and a device to cut the fuel supply during an accident to prevent fire. High-tech or what?
The most unusual safety feature was a pointed nose to ensure that during a head-on collision, the Rocket would slide past the oncoming car. The limitation with this otherwise brilliant idea was that the other car would have to be another Rocket, and at that stage, there wasn't one.
Still, the BBC reported a new factory in Tripoli would start production by October 1999. Unsurprisingly, it didn't. The idea was largely forgotten until an African Union summit two years ago, during which the Colonel did the old Rocket trick a second time around.
He wheeled out an updated but similar vehicle and almost exactly the same gushing quotes were offered by almost exactly the same official spokesman (well, he was 10 years older).
Mr Dukhali al-Meghareff seemed to have done a search-and-replace on his old press release. He announced - again - that the Rocket was the world's safest car and ''proof that the Libyan revolution is built on the happiness of man''.
This time, the vehicle was built in Italy not Tripoli but it was not a great deal less ugly. The nose was even more pointed and the tail was now super-sharp, too, perhaps in case you backed into another Rocket.
The run-flat tyres were apparently good for hundreds of kilometres when deflated, while interior materials included uniquely Libyan leathers, fabrics and marbles. Yep, marbles.
The main focus was still safety, with warm, cuddly Muammar G apparently worried about the high number of fatalities on Libyan roads (rather than in Libyan political prisons). And plans were announced, sorry, re-announced, to put the Rocket into production.
Meanwhile, Turin-based Tesco TS SpA, a company undertaking design and engineering work for major car makers, was brave enough to stick up its corporate hands and say: ''Yep, we built it.''
According to the company's Italian-language website - as told to Google Translate - the ''authorship and style concept is due to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in person'', while the car is ''dedicated to celebrating the visionary talent of the opulence of a head of state''.
Tesco also confirmed the Rocket as a real running prototype and gave the dimensions as 5.5 metres long and 1.8 metres wide.
However, the company would not confirm the origin of the platform nor the 3.0-litre V6 engine.
So if anyone does find the Rocket, perhaps they could let us know.
Wouldn't mind hearing more about that electronic defence system, too. Maybe that's the real origin of the car's name.
Source: The Age