trusty but battered yellow van<\/a> in the hugely popular sitcom \u201cOnly Fools and Horses.”<\/p>\nYet you couldn’t find a less suitable vehicle to take thousands of miles through tropical jungles, mountain ranges and deserts down the west side of Africa. And that’s precisely why Jenks went for the absurd plan.<\/p>\n
Sheila the three-wheeler<\/p>\n
Sheila, the silver three-wheeler \u2014 one of the last Reliant Robins to be built \u2014 was acquired specifically for the adventure. Jenks and Scott set off in October with a can of fuel and a few essential supplies strapped to Sheila’s small roof, and a large amount of blind hope that they would somehow make it to Cape Town, South Africa, near the bottom of the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo power steering, no air con, and it doesn\u2019t do well up hills or down them. It is the most unsuitable car for probably any journey,” Jenks said in an unkind assessment of Sheila’s abilities. \u201cWe made friends with the designer of this car, and he\u2019s scared to take it any more than 20 miles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jenks and Scott ignored all the advice and took Sheila on the epic journey over four-and-a-half months that cost in the region of $40,000 to $50,000, Jenks said. They had help from sponsors and crowd funding, and documented the journey on an Instagram page that pulled in nearly 100,000 followers under the title: \u201c14,000 miles, 3 wheels, 0 common sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Attempted coups and airstrikes<\/p>\n
They arrived in Benin during an attempted coup. They skirted through northern Nigeria as the U.S. launched airstrikes on Islamic State targets. They were given a military escort for about 300 miles (480 kilometers) through a region of separatist violence in Cameroon.<\/p>\n
\u201cImagine this car in a military convoy,\u201d Jenks said.<\/p>\n
And there were many brushes with traffic-related danger, including when an overtaking bus almost flattened Sheila against a cliff face in Congo.<\/p>\n
True to form that Reliants are sometimes not so reliable, there were also countless breakdowns on the punishing roads.<\/p>\n
Sheila needed her wheel springs replaced in the first two weeks. The gearbox broke in Ghana, leaving them with only fourth gear. In Cameroon, there were clutch and distributor problems and then the big one: the engine blew up.<\/p>\n
Through all the technical problems, the kindness of strangers and the intrepidness of Jenks and Scott kept them going. One man got a new gearbox shipped to Ghana. Reliant enthusiasts in the U.K. helped find a new engine to send to Cameroon.<\/p>\n
After one breakdown, people helped load Sheila onto a cattle truck so she could be taken to a garage. Mechanics across the continent screwed, hammered and welded Sheila to keep her together, sometimes shaking their heads at the madness of it all.<\/p>\n
Where no Reliant Robin has gone before<\/p>\n
But there were also majestic moments, the kind that Jenks and Scott had envisioned to make it all worth it. <\/p>\n
Sheila cruised through stunning mountain ranges and vast deserts \u2014 where surely no Reliant Robin has gone before. She went on safari, driving alongside galloping giraffes, spotting endangered rhinos, and posing for a picture next to a giant elephant.<\/p>\n
More than 120 days after setting off, she rattled into Cape Town last month on an engine that began badly overheating in the Namibian desert and had been touch and go for about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers).<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a great underdog story,\u201d said Graeme Hurst, a South African car lover who followed them on Instagram and came to see Sheila. \u201cI see the farcical kind of comical nature of it … but also the sheer admiration. I mean, they have utter tenacity.\u201d<\/p>\n
In South Africa, Sheila was put on temporary display in a showroom for high-end cars and was the center of attention ahead of the glittering Porsches and Mercedes, showing off her broken side window, her petrol-stained windshield, her bent tire rims, and her countless dents and scratches.<\/p>\n
She will rest now and be given the thorough service she deserves, Jenks said. Eventually, she’ll be driven to Kenya, put on a ship to Turkey, then make one last trip back to the U.K. to find a home at the London Transport Museum.<\/p>\n
Jenks said he felt triumphant after reaching Cape Town, but relieved to have survived and finally be out of the tiny two-seater.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like driving a motorized coffin,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP Africa news: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/africa<\/a><\/p>\nCopyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAPE TOWN \u2013 Englishman Ollie Jenks remembers when his friend first pitched the idea to him. \u201cIt was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,260796,451,3,2031,260797,260795,452,453,965],"class_list":["post-598841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-graeme-hurst","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-oddities","tag-ollie-jenks","tag-seth-scott","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}