Ive always been a fan of the Dodge 50 and have sent a few pics of a prototype horsebox I built back in 1989.
The chassis was a hand picked 1982 s56 with 44,000 on the clock belonging to eastern electricity.The horse box took 10 months and £18,000 to develop with production vehicles set to retail at £12,000,far cheaper than anything on the market at that time
.After this vehicle was built the funds were pulled out despite great reviews.
In 1993 I manadged to source new funding and the project was restarted but with Mercedes sponsership so the Dodge chassis was sadly dropped.With help from a freind in the mounted metrapolitan police,
I tracked down the Dodge and borrowed it to use as a demo until the new model was built.The first show I took it to was on a test basis,so I took a freind with his horse to a one day event just to make sure every thing still worked.
While the Dodge was in the lorry park I accidently picked up 57 orders.Sadly as the workshops had not been set up yet,all I could do was take phone numbers.Throughout the rest of the event season I got many endorsements from international riders including olympic gold medalists but the 1994 resession once again stopped the finance and the Equarius project was put back on the shelf.
After all these years the Mercedes sponsership is still in place but Ive never been able to raise the cash for the production line.So the little Dodge was the only true Equarius ever built.
Another company stole the logo for a while,trying to cash in on the hype in the horse world,but as they didnt build in any of the special safety features,people soon caught on they were fakes.While working on the original Dodge I spent a lot of time at the Reynolds Boughton workshop in Amersham planning a 4x4 model and somewhere still have the brochures and body builders chassis drawings.
Back to slideshow index