It is confirmed that Dulquer owns a defender 110 but there are rumours that Prithvi acquired a defender 90 too. Any one got a clue
Now that a good chunk of the country has wished Dulquer on his birthday, thought I'll share a lil' story about how his now Instagram famous birthday cake came to be :D
The Hunt.
Rewind back to a random late night 'car guy' conversation few months from now, for some reason we were on the topic of Defenders and DQ was telling me how he'd fancied having one for the longest time but somehow a good one's always eluded him. We were sharing back and forth some tasteful Defender builds from around the world and geeking out on this seemingly agricultural looking truck through much of the night.
Went to bed that day thinking it would make the guy really happy if I somehow manage to help him find one. Come next day and I casually asked around a few people if they know of any good examples that they've come across and mostly the replies were either no or they'd lead me to some heap of metal that's half sunken into the ground.
Then I thought, what the heck, I'll just go ahead and ask the guy who has the best Defender that I know of and see if he knows of any that's come up, that's totally went under my radar.
*enter BHPian anish9000*
Got on the phone with Anish the next day and the news from his side also wasn't very promising. He informed me that he also hasn't come across any good examples in a while, but he agreed to get back to me if he does come across one.
Another day or two go by and Anish and I were casually chatting on WhatsApp when I quite candidly said how badly I want to help this friend get a nice Defender and in that very moment he says, if you want it that badly you can have mine.
I was like :eek: cos I never thought he had any intention of letting go of his Defender that I didn't even bother to ask him for it in the first place. But here seeing my enthusiasm, he'd given in and just offered me his actual one.
The Truck.
Little run down on the truck itself,
It's a mid-noughties Land Rover Defender 110 with a TD5 engine, a manual gearbox and a 9 seater specification. The car was a Red Cross release and hence was a legitimate import with a well documented history and I kid you not, a list of modifications that very nearly ran into 3 digits. Best of all, the car was TN regd which would make life a lot easier for all of us since DQ has a base in Chennai.
I immediately got back to DQ with the news and he was also quite elated that we finally found a Defender worthy of the collection. Things progressed fast after that and just as we were about to seal the deal and all excited to get the truck home when *BOOM* the pandemic struck, the country went into lockdown and all of the state borders were shut.
As impatient as we were to have it down in KL, we decided to wait it out until the situation relaxes and not to put anyone involved at risk. So as soon as the nationwide lockdown lifted and the state borders gradually started opening back up, we immediately arranged for it to be trucked home, albeit with at most safety and caution.
Here is the night anish9000 and cityvic personally loaded the car onto the truck, locked and handed over just the key to the driver for it to be as 'contact less' as possible. Big thanks, Boys!
Fast forward a few days and this hunk of English metal finally touched down on KL soil and right away was parked up at the now 'old' garage and was left untouched for the next 48 hours before it was finally brought home.
Sigh! The new normal.
At this point DQ has now had the car now for a few days, he's driven it around and absolutely loves it to bits but one thing that he had decided the moment we finalized the buy was that the visual mods were just tad too extreme for his liking and would want to 'depimp' it immediately as we got it down.
The Depimping.
First order of business was to get rid of all those stickers and the chequered metal plates off of the car and that was no light task as those were riveted on and were leaving back scars on the aluminium skin on removal which meant a fair bit of metal work and a respray also became necessary. The stock wheels were also now painted in silver, thus ending the 'Yesudas' phase as I jokingly called it.
Finally after an accelerated schedule, the truck got back home looking as fresh as the day it rolled off the production line. Also note the new UK style plates which I feel is a nice nod to it's English roots.
The DQfication.
This would come as a surprise to absolutely no one. While all this was happening our man was equally busy on the interwebs browsing through many a part catalogues to now go and make it his own, no car of his' would be signed off without a sprinkle of the fairy dust from him and couple weeks later few gift boxes gets flown in from 'Twisted Automotive' out in the UK.
He had decided to give the truck a modern fascia and the parts from Twisted included a brand new radiator grille, a new shorter and more aggressive bumper with integrated LED DRLs and a new set of rather retro fashion wheels, also new LED lamps all around, a new set of Cooper AT tyres and a few other bits and bobs. Some of which you'd be amused to learn he installed it himself at his home garage. Yes, the man works on his cars too!
So without further ado, for the first time, I present to you this new addition to the 369 Garage in all its glory as it sits today!
..and this coincided perfectly with his birthday when his fam decided to surprise him with a cake that has since inadvertently announced the arrival of the truck to the social media.
Sure enough this won't be it's final avatar and I shall try to keep y'all filled in as more things happen to it.
I'll leave you guys with a lil' trinket Anish threw in, a nice HUE166 keyring that finishes off the truck perfectly!
Here's me wishing him great memories and adventures with his new truck and being glad I could be a tiny part of 'The Carguy's Carguy' achieving one of his car goals.
The End.
