Scary Mountain
, is reputedly the biggest sand dune in the United Arab Emirates. In essence it's a mile-long beach that's been rotated up through 50 degrees. To give you an idea of what that means, a 1 in 3 (about the nastiest you'll get on British roads) is 18.5 degrees. 50 degrees is more than 1 in 1, ie for every horizontal metre you travel, you're going up more than one meter vertically. That's steep.
Now add in the fact that sand is not exactly the most stable road surface in the world and you will understand that the requirements for conquering the Moreeb hillclimb are (a) traction and (b) power - lots of it.
Not the most subtle of engine mods...
The Abu Dhabi Motors Club doesn't allow paddle tyres on the Moreeb, but that doesn't stop yer man getting something that sounds like tyre chirp at the beginning. It's more likely to be the anguished shriek of diffs meshing like they've never been meshed before.
Power. Hmmm. Many Moreebers go for the easy option of nitro-burning V8s, detuned Top Fuel drag motors if you will, but that's boring. We like this guy because he's heaving on the sweaty manual stick of an overbored Nissan Patrol (4.5 litres?) that's been puffed to madness level by some sort of deviant TB48 turbo.
Boost pressure? Who knows. Put it this way: we wouldn't want to be within a few hundred yards of it when it pops, as it surely will at some excitingly unknown point in the future. That would be fun to see, but only from behind a sofa, or some sort of blast shelter.
Anyway, he does the course in 8.219 secs to win the six-pot class (the V8 auto boys do it in a second less). It loses a couple of cylinders at the end, plus by the looks of it the rad cap, but who wouldn't after that?
If you enjoy environments where real men eat nails and mechanical sympathy is the name of a wimpy college band, the Moreeb Desert Challenge is for you. Register here.
See here