Need to Get Away

Even thought it's Sunday, I've been working all day because I had three proposals to get out and miscellaneous small stuff (most of which didn't get done). So I'm going to pull a Motherrocker and fall back on some writings of others.

My Dad, O-I (original intimidator for the uninitiated) has always been a professed hermit and has expressed for years an alleged desire to go to Tierra del Fuego. A friend of his pulled this information out on a vehicle called a Unicat which is the ultimate in off-road, get away vehicles. This is reprinted from the Hartford Courant. So for any of you wanting to truly get away, I offer this.

Directed recently to UnicatAmerica's website and photos of the Amerigo International 7400, a spokesman for a national recreational vehicle organization was taken aback.
"Whoa," Gary LaBella of Go RVing said when pictures of the vehicle popped onto his screen. "These aren't too common. It's a little unorthodox. This is not what I would call mainstream."
No, sir. The brawny Unicat looks like a cross between a freight hauler and a Humvee. This thing would look about as out of place in the average RV park as a moon explorer in a commuter parking lot.
The fat, all-terrain tires are four-wheel-drive powered by a 300-horsepower diesel engine with a six-speed automatic transmission. Photos on the company's website - www.unicatamericas.com - show the vehicle fording streams, rolling across sand dunes and powering over rubble-strewn roads.
"The body and everything in it is designed and built to withstand the most extreme terrain," says the company's website. "They are built to withstand the rigors of safaris, be it in the desert, jungle or cold climates. Their purpose is similar to that of a yacht designed to cross oceans without failure. Other RVs would break apart if they tried to follow a UNICAT."
The Germany-based company, with a U.S. division in California, specializes in expedition and touring vehicles. Established in 1990, the company began marketing vehicles in the United States only about six months ago, UnicatAmerica spokesman Avi Meyer wrote in an e-mail.
While the International 7400 is built for rugged travel, the interior has all the necessities of home, including a queen-size bed, seating for four, two refrigerators, an oven and three-burner stove, toilet, indoor and outdoor showers and a stereo system with CD player.
The starting price for the International 7400 and another U.S. street-legal vehicle, the Unimog U500, is about $500,000. So far, the company has delivered three vehicles designed for U.S. specifications, Meyer wrote.
The company's target market, he wrote, includes "adventurer types who like safaris or expeditions at their own pace, RVers who would like to go into remote global wilderness areas, naturalists, photographers, eco-tourists, off-road aficionados who would like to have their home away from home in otherwise inaccessible areas."