PHOENIX RISEN Buying an old Grand Cherokee you’ve seen abandoned in a field is a brave thing to do. But as the saying goes, fortune favours the brave – and just when Stephan van Niekerk’s Jeep was looking like a goner, he was blessed by a turn of events that saw it truck rise like a phoenix from the flames Words and pictures: Alan Kidd
R
escuing and restoring an old 4x4 that someone else has neglected can be a great way of getting your hands on an otherwise unattainable vehicle. If you’ve got the skills, the inclination, the time, the money and the equipment, the potential certainly is there to turn someone else’s trash into treasure. Normally, it’ll be something with a Land Rover badge. Normally, but by means always. If you were to find an old Willys MB mouldering away in the corner of a farmyard, for example, you could certainly make something very special out of that. But an old, unloved Grand Cherokee? That’s pushing it. An old, unloved Grand Cherokee whose previous owner used it for towing dead tractors around the place? Crikey. You’d need to be brave to take a punt on such a thing. But Stephan van Niekerk is definitely brave – to a degree few of us can imagine, actually, having put it all on the line in Afghanistan – and
26 | MAY 2023
6pp Stephan Jeep.indd 26
4x4 11/04/2023 16:11
