Text: Leilani Basson
Photographs: Jannie Herbst
“Go big or go home”. Most motorists have to look up to read the words written in italics on the massive doors of the black brute as it casually crawls past them during peak hour traffic in Kempton Park. With about one metre between the ground and the bumper, and its grille and bullbar higher than the average man’s head, taxi’s don’t easily take a chance of pushing in, never mind the notorious arm-out-the-window Golf brigade indigenous to these parts.
Fred Hardy is a manly man. A DIY man. The big boss man. My grandmother would sigh and say they don’t make them like that anymore. Sitting behind his desk at Ultra Panel Beaters in Spartan, you can see he is not quite as handy with the mouse of his desktop as he is with the tools he uses daily to fix cars, soup them up or create something original. The wall behind him is studded with computer printouts of “Tank 1” (as it is registered)… aka “Hummer se moer”.
