 Kol/Genl Maximov

3. If the Buffel was regarded as a high centre of gravity, unstable vehicle, it is worth looking at Armscor's Kiewiet 1 and the CSIR's Wildebees 1 Samil 20 based Buffel replacement candidates in the article and their high centres of gravity to see if they addressed this challenge any better.

4. The same applies to the Samil 20 based Rhino designed by Armscor - see attached photo

5. Whilst the stability of the Buffel was certainly not ideal, in overall terms as a package it is nevertheless is still quite a reasonably balanced design all round when compared with the Kiewiet 1 and Wildebees 1 for example - see attached photos

6. For a vehicle that by rights should not even have been created at all when the Unimog 416.162 on which it is based was due for phasing out "soon" in 1976, it went on to provide great service for many years afterwards whilst no Samil 20 based Buffel copies made it past small quantity, post prototype production in spite of many hundreds of thousands of Rands that had gone into these developments.

So, what are the takeaways from all of the above? 1. Given everything that was going on at the time there was next to no chance of improving anything significantly on the original Buffel concept.

2. The New Generation Unimogs would have allowed me to design a significantly improved Buffel had we been able to use these Unimogs for conversion to "Super Buffels"

3. The Buffel was innovative and unique in so many respects that an exact replacement for it was never found in spite of many attempts to design a suitable replacement over many years.

4. Whilst even today, many still find it hard to stomach that the Buffel was actually the privately funded product of a group of stubborn and determined civilians (who were not prepared to take no for an answer and decided to proceed with a development in which they believed in the face of open hostility from Armscor personnel and lack of support from the SADF) it remains a fact that it was not a product designed by Armscor or the CSIR in response to a formal, planned Army requirement at all.

5. The fact that the Buffel came into existence at all was only due to luck and certainly not good planning by the SADF - if I had just accepted that no more Unimogs would be purchased in 1976 it is more than likely there would not have been a Buffel and who knows how this would have impacted operations in the Border War and how many more lives would have been lost without such a vehicle. To answer the 9 rhetorical questions at the beginning of this post, yes, a better, more powerful, more spacious, more stable Buffel with greater payload could theoretically have been designed because the various necessary building blocks for such a development were available, but as I have tried to illustrate above, given everything that was going on at the time that was simply not possible at all.

So, in conclusion, yes, the Buffel had a number of annoying shortcomings, but weigh that up against not having had this non perfect capability when it was desperately needed and the many lives it did save and then pass judgment.

And who suggested a vehicle must also look "pretty"?