A mystery was solved recently - and I think not on pupose. Sarah Greaves Gabbadon, also known as Jet Set Sarah visited the isle of Petit St Vincent for a story there, only to bump into the cool cars that zoom around the island to deliver keys, crab meals and cocktails to guests. I wrote about these earlier (see here), having no idea what they really were. Well, Sarah found out!
She wrote: "Tooling around a resort in a golf cart is fun but hardly unusual; every other luxury hotel bigger than your back garden uses them to ferry guests around the property. But at Petit St. Vincent, a sophisticated but un-stuffy 115-acre private-island resort in the Grenadines, they go one better, transporting guests from the beach to their hillside cottages and back again in a fleet of spiffy Mini Mokes (...) General Manager Matthew Semark told me that they make the bodies from their own fiberglass mold and source the vintage 1,000cc and 1,300cc engines directly from the UK. It takes about six months for the resort’s workshop to produce one of the open-top four seaters, which have manual transmissions and five-gallon tanks, and are serviced by PSV’s two ace Moke mechanics, Robert and Julian. Apparently one guest was so besotted with the rugged off-roaders that she ordered one as a birthday present for her husband. Try as I might I couldn’t get Matthew to divulge the total cost for importing parts from England, manufacturing the car from scratch in a remote corner of the Caribbean, and then shipping it back to the UK. But suffice it to say that that was one generous wife – with one very happy husband" Thanks for that, Sarah!
'The Caribbean's coolest car' says Sarah. And who am I to doubt that?
Picture courtesy Sarah Greaves Gabbadon
The men who build these groovy cars appear to enjoy doing so
Picture courtesy Sarah Greaves Gabbadon
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