Our weekend at Van Days 2020 was one of the highlights of the year for Project ECARUS. We loved sharing our project with the community gathered at the event and came home inspired, motivated and grateful for the opportunity to connect with a bunch of like-minded individuals.

Dr Egon Rudolf, also known as ‘Mister Pinzgauer’, was one of the driving forces at Steyr-Puch, a man who spent his entire working life in the service of the Austrian carmaker. He started out as a graduate at the company’s manufacturing plant in Graz, in 1955, and retired as its director, in 1987. Thanks to an uncanny coincidence of the kind that happens in small towns, I was lucky enough to meet him in person and talk to him about the history of the Pinzgauer and the auto industry itself.

Project ECARUS™ is based on a 1983 Pinzgauer 712M, a beautiful mechanical wondermachine made in Graz, Austria, by Steyr-Puch. A very popular off-roader in the civil defense industry across the world, it spent its life in Oman – doing what Pinzgauers do best: ride off-road across the least forgiving terrain imaginable.