Gordon Murray spent decades designing F1 cars. Later, he turned his hand to roadgoing supercars as one of the lead designers behind the iconic McLaren F1 and Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren. More recently, he reimagined the city car. While not in production, the T27 is a tiny electric car for one rider—think G-Wiz, but slightly less embarrassing. Now, Murray is trying something rather different again in the form of the Ox, a flat-pack truck that can handle the roughest of terrain and drive through one metre of water.

And yes, you read that right, the truck comes flat-packed.

Not available in IKEA

The Ox isn't the sort of thing you pick up in Ikea, though. It's intended for developing countries, primarily those in Africa, where access to reliable, affordable transport is difficult. And while the Ox isn't meant for the likes of you or me, its design is ingenious.

Murray was commissioned to develop the Ox by Sir Torquil Norman, a man who devotes his time to charitable works following a career in business. He earned his knighthood after donating Camden's legendary Roundhouse music venue to a trust designed to keep it as a cultural centre for young people. It's not hard to imagine the place turned into luxury flats in another situation.

Norman is in his eighties, supports his slim six-foot-five-odd frame with a walking stick, and speaks with such measured dignity that he's one of the few people you could imagine giving Stephen Fry a dressing down.

"It was one of those bathtime aberrations to which I am occasionally prone," he says of coming up with the idea of the Ox. "Only 20 per cent of the global population has access to any kind of motor vehicle. This struck me as something of a crime."

Made for Africa

To understand the point of the Ox, it helps to picture the kind of roads you might see surrounding an African village: dirt tracks whose contours are transformed into miniature mountain ranges by rain and vehicle treads, contours that would see 4x4s designed for western terrain get stuck without precision driving—and perhaps even with it.

"None of the manufacturers on our planet have come up with [a suitable] vehicle," says Barry Coleman of the NGO Riders for Health, which provides healthcare to African villages using motorbikes because of this exact issue. Norman's aim was to fill this glaring hole, but his list of demands for designer Murray made it seem a fanciful impossibility.

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

"I like a challenge, but maybe this was a step too far," says Murray of the time several years ago when Norman outlined an off-road vehicle that had to offer masses of storage, cost a fraction of a standard flat-bed truck, and could not use a 4x4 drivetrain.

The unlikely result is a two-wheel drive, off-road vehicle that I'm assured does do well off-road. Murray explains that four-wheel drive would take up too much space and add too much weight. It's the construction of the Ox that really signals quite how far removed this is from a jeep or an army truck, though.

"We scoured the planet for a new material for an appropriate strut—and came up with plywood," says Murray. All the main body panels are wood, sitting on top of a steel frame that uses no custom tooling. "The motor car that you and I drive has 350 stacked metal parts. The tooling for that costs several hundred million pounds."

The total cost, according to Murray, of Ox production "is around five per cent of what a normal car would be."

Unpacking the flat-pack

In its flat-pack form, all the other parts of the Ox fit into the frame, further reducing shipping costs. The engine even ships in the pan in which it’s meant to sit to avoid the need for a workshop crane to get it into place. What you end up with is a truck design that can be built by three people in 12 hours using a set of around 40 different spanners and an Allan wrench. Norman's dream had been to require just three spanners, but it turns out that was the one step too far.

Its flat-pack form also means that six Ox kits can fit into a standard 40ft shipping container, which wouldn't even hold a single regular truck. In photos the Ox may look like a bit of a grown-up Meccano construction, but in person it's a hulking great thing. Two meters wide and with enough space in the back to function as an ambulance or bus, to transport multiple giant water barrels, or virtually anything else, it looks the part.

By simplifying the truck's inner workings and keeping the centre of gravity so low to the ground, the Ox can also carry more load than its own weight. "A normal pickup truck carries 800kg, ours carries 2,000kg," says Norman. The vehicle itself weighs a little over one tonne.

The ability to handle rough terrain comes from having entirely independent suspension for each wheel and immense ground clearance. It can drive through up to 750mm depth of water, or more than a metre if the engine is kept running.

"It has done nine months of field testing against every 4x4 available, and [the Ox] is better in most circumstances." says Murray. "The guys found a local test track, designed by Jeep or Nissan I think, and it's very extreme, with mud, 45-degree drops of eight feet down and up. I went there and had a look around. I said to the guys, 'forget it, it's never going to get through that stuff,' but we took it there and it just sailed through. And we took, I can’t mention the name, a four-by-four there and it got stuck. That's the really satisfying bit."

What you see in these photos are the first and third prototypes of the Ox. The red one was the first, which was put through all that field testing, bearing the mud marks to show for it. The blue Ox is the latest, third prototype.

















It has a 2.2-litre diesel engine and some tweaks not seen in the initial prototype. For example, the tailgate can now be removed and used as a loading ramp. The seats can be pulled out and used to help the Ox out if it gets stuck in mud. I dread to think what that would do to the leather and foam padding, though.

So far, Norman and associates have "spent three to four million to get the design settled." During the Ox's press showing, it was also shown off to car companies and other potential partners who could make full Ox production possible.

Born in "Africar"

This isn't the first time someone has designed a car "made for Africa," though. In the mid-'80s, Tony Howarth came up with the Africar, a plywood-bodied car. It got plenty of attention, peaking with a Channel 4 series in which the car was driven from Niger to Kenya, a trip of several thousand kilometres that even Google maps can't calculate a route for. However, the project never went anywhere.

Talking to the Institute of Engineering and Technology, Howarth said, "It was very simple. We didn't manage to raise any money." Howarth even ended up imprisoned for fraud. The Africar saga is worth reading up on. And yet both Murray and Norman openly cite the Africar as an inspiration, if also as a guide on what to avoid in the Ox's design.

So why does Norman expect the Ox to fare better? "They had to build a factory everywhere they wanted it. This thing you can build it in your kitchen," he says. "If we came to an agreement with a major company that satisfied our very modest humanitarian issues, I believe once there are a few of these roaming the fields of Gambia… it'll grow like Topsy."

"If I believe in something, I seem to have a terrible weakness that I can't bear to leave it and not make one," he admits. It's clear that Norman is not your average businessman. After all, this is a man who sold the Roundhouse for the sum of "one red rose." Which, he says, he never even got.

Andrew Williams is a freelance technology journalist who has been writing in the field for 10 years. He covers just about all areas of consumer tech, with a particular interest in how it all works underneath the layers of glossy finish and impressive-sounding jargon. He can be found on Twitter at @wwwdotandrew.