CAMEL TROPHY - GWILL BERRY - LRM ARTICLE

This is a LRM article, I don´t have the permission to reproduce it. If there is a problem, I will take it out at the moment. I introduce a link to LRM doing a free publicity for this reprodutión.

When Gwil Berry ’s involvement with the camel Trophy started, it was only supposed to last a year. Instead, it lasted ten years and his job grew from looking after the service side alone of a six-car event to being Land Rover’s co-ordinator on a 60-car event.

Now a tour guide at the factory’s Home of the Legend visitor complex, Gwil, 60, recalls the Trophy with immense pride in what he and so may colleagues achieved.

“Camel Trophy was a lot of things to a lot of people,” he says, “To Land Rover it was a marketing took, to me it was a challenging job, but to the competitors it was a great adventure.

“The tremendous thing here [at the factory] was the enthusiasm. I had to go to service, paint, production and planning and say this is what I want, but I don’t remember anyone ever saying they wouldn’t do it.”.

Yet the young Coventry-born Gwil only drifted into Land Rover. He was an apprentice with Morris Engines from 1959 to 1964, working on engines for the first Mini Cooper S, racing Healeys and Formula Three cars. Then the firm went through what he remembers as almost weekly management changes, eventually ending up with Land Rover as part of Jaguar Rover Triumph. Gwil ‘migrated’ to Land Rover in 1976 when he went into service training to train the technicians in most of Africa , Asia , Australia , New Zealand an Japan .

He often lectured through interpreters, who did not always know the technical words. He explained: “It’s al about people watching. If your face makes me think the interpreter hasn’t said what I’ve said, I ask the obvious question and if I don’t get the right answer, I start again.”

Gwil then became an export service manager and, in1984, became involved with the introduction of the Range Rover To North America. Land Rover had been planning that since 1982, yet Gwil still faced two hectic years of Atlantic commuting before exports started. He co-ordinated the whole technical set up which included making sure customer handbooks, workshop manuals, equipment and a service training programme were all in place.

This being before e-mails, their department was the first in the factory to get its own fax machine, yet Gwil, on average, flew the Atlantic ever six weeks, sometimes spending a month out there. Much of his work involved finding out what Range Rover North America needed then returning to Solihull to sort it with those responsible.

Litigation was a major fear, so handbooks and workshop manuals were not only checked by American technicians to ensure local words were used(wrench not spanner), but by lawyers, too.

Gwill adds: “What was interesting was the number of stickers we had to have in the cars – ‘don’t put your hand in the fan’ and stuff like that. Now you see it on everything, but we hadn’t got many stickers until we went into the USA .”

Once the car went on sale there, Gwill became the service co-ordinator in the UK , linking the American service department with the factory equivalent until 1989.

 Camel baptism

Since 1981, Land Rover had been supplying vehicles for the Camel Trophy and it’s service department had been responsible for technical support to the trophy organisation controlled by Richard Fox. Land Rover decided that each of its export service managers would be Trophy service co-ordinator for a year and, as Gwill had never been to Brazil , he accepted the task for 1988.

But he had a humiliating introduction to Camel Trophy. He explained: “All my travelling up to then was Samsonite suitcase and Samsonite briefcase, and off you went. So I travelled to Brazil and was met by a guy called Chris Drew, who looked at my suitcase and briefcase and said: “So what sort of tent have you got?” Oh, you’ve hot a hammock instead”. Now, my idea of Camel Trophy had been that you drove for a bit, stayed in a hotel and drove to the next hotel.”

They bought him an ex-army hammock with an integral tent over it. When they stopped for the night, the hammocks were strung between the vehicles and Gwill’s next shock was how cold the jungle became at night.

“So I laid there freezing and listening to all the jungle noises,” he said. “Every so often I could hear this little ‘crick’ and thought it was the hammock ropes contracting as the air cooled – then ‘crash!’ and I was on the floor.”

His laughing colleagues showed him the correct hammock knots, but Gwill was now frozen so he went to his Samsonite for a large towel as a blanket. Back in the hammock, he did not want to disturb the others again and knew that every time someone turned over it shook the cars, so he tried to turn very carefully without losing his towel. That flipped he hammock, trapping him in the integral tent until the others unzipped it.

“At the point I gave up and never slept in the hammock again,” he said. “I always slept in the car.”

I took them eight day to recce the route between Alta Floresti and Manaus for the 1989 event in 110s, but that was in the dry season and for the event, the rain turned the red clay Trans Amazon Highway into a quagmire. Gwill says: “We had to keep on the move 24 hours a day and I remember it taking 18 hours to cover three kilometres. “now he thinks this was the hardest of Camel Trophies and “an interesting baptism.”

But timing meant Gwill would stay with the Trophy. Land Rover was unveiling the Discovery at the end of 1989 and wanted this new vehicle to prove itself in the next even. That meant starting to prepare trophy vehicles before the Discovery was launched, so the company felt they needed someone to pull it all together with experience of both the event and Land Rover engineering.

For Gwill this also meant a major job change because the marketing department had run Land Rover’s Trophy involvement while service had looked after the technical side, but now marketing would mastermind the whole thing with him as their engineer.

“So, I joined marketing and became a flower arranger like the rest of them,” he jokes. He became operations manager, sponsorship and promotions, so he looked after all sponsorship world-wide, ranging form a falconry display team to Camel Trophy.

“I’d been involved in the nuts and bolts of the Camel Trophy but in marketing I was in direct liaison with the Camel Trophy organisers, ‘he said. “Shortly after that, we became cosponsor where until then, we just supplied vehicles.”

Project management

Gwill now had to project manage the ‘Camelisation’ of the Discovery working with engineer Simon Brockwell. They had a prototype Discovery to work on (now in the Dunsfold Collection) and Gwill recalls the enthusiasm and ingenuity of suppliers and factory staff, who were giving time while trying to put the new car into production.

The recce for the event between Bratsk and Irkusk, Siberia , had discovered local mud was full of stones and three debris, so they had to design fuel tank protection. The engineers foresaw that if anything got between the skid plate and the tank it could puncture the tank if the plate then hit something. Simon Brockwell’s solution was to fill the gap with foam to stop debris getting in.

They wanted the roof rack to be strong enough to be used as a recovery point, so it was bolted to the roll cage and proved so strong you could attach a cable to almost any port of it.

Sometimes solutions were found by accident, in the past, competitors tied ropes from the rack to the bull bar to stop branches hitting the windscreen and the organisers wanted brush guard cables instead, but the team could not find a way of doing it that did not stop the bonnet opening. Then Gwill went to a boat show with a sailing girlfriend and saw an over-centre lever for quick-releasing boat rigging.

Having designed everything so it would not hide the Discovery’s lines, including the bull bar and winch mounting, they then wanted to avoid competitors draping the cars with all sorts of bags and equipment. To make this a practical expedition vehicle they chose a system of Peli heavy duty plastic, water tight cases – competitors were told anything that did not go in two Peli-cases and a soft bag would not be taken, not least because the cars were being flown to Siberia.

The vehicles also had map lights and purpose-built places for everything for safety and so that everyone would know where all equipment was on all vehicles. The concept was extended to support vehicles, so Gwill and his team discussed requirements with service, ambulance and camera crews.

Land Rover had also had to convince the Camel Trophy organisers, who wre happy with 110s, that the Discovery could do it but, after its first success, they stayed with it for seven years. Factory and supplier ingenuity continued to be challenged as the event evolved, like working out a roller rack so one man could load a kayak.

But Camel Trophy was growing, so logistics had to be beefed up too, and they designed a proper dealership-style racked parts store in a shipping container, instead of having parts in packing cases.

Gwill has a lot of respect for the support crews. “I needed people who could not just fix it on a ramp, but laying on their backs in the mud., “he says. “Those guys worked harder than the competitors because they did the same drive and then if anything needed repairing, they worked through the nights to do it.”

Yet in spite of such hardships, there was no shortage of volunteers from the factory, Gwill recalled. “There were people who joined the company in the hope of going on a Camel Trophy.”

Rolling programme

The Camel Trophy became a rolling 15 month programme so while they were on an event, they were planning the next. Meanwhile, Gwill was responsible for other promotions, like Land Rover Adventure holidays for customers and Camel-style off-road and orienteering events at Eastnor, plus a P38A Range Rover launch event with live televisions feeds from Patagonia to dealer premises.

Gwill’s last event was familiar territory because for 1998, Land Rover wanted to use the new Freelander in Chile and Argentina . Freelander’s engineering boss, Steve Hayward, made six engineers available in spite of working to put the car in production, and Gwill was again stunned by the factory’s enthusiasm and the help from suppliers.

The integral roof light pod was penned by a design graduate and the supplier modelled it in clay with craftsmen fine tuning the design by shaving bits off to Gwill’s request. The tonneau supplier worked out how to make the roof rack’s cover pop up like a top hat if extra space was needed. Warn developed a demountable winch that slotted into standard detachable towbar points.

But the following year, Camel Trophy organisers wanted to appeal to markets with a waterborne event.

Land Rover felt it was not their scene and there was an amicable parting.

Gwill still had his other sponsorship duties but needed his “fix of something big happening”. He adds: “I’d travelled the world for 25 years and to lots of exotic places. I met all sorts of people from the very ordinary to royalty. I’d met enthusiast and explorers – everyone. But nothing lasts forever.”

So, when early retirement was offered, he took it and had three months off. But Roger Crathorne, who then ran Home of the Legend’s predecessor, Land Rover Experience, asked if he would like to join them, so back he went.

Going back wasn’t a difficult decision, he explains: “It’s exciting to be involved in the business but I also have the privilege of sharing 40 years of experience with other people. I want to see a smile on people’s faces, that’s the buzz for me.”

If you think Gwill has been lucky to have had such an exciting working life, he would agree with you. Summing up his good fortune, he said: “When I was at school I always wanted to visit Japan and the first overseas trip I did was to Japan . I got to realise a dream and there aren’t many people who realise their dreams.

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