Apr 2001
In this issue:
Features
Hot Attitude
NOX takes a ride with speed-obsessed Urs Eiselin, the former snowboarder who created the Sand-X sand quad bike in his garage in Dubai
Issue: Sep, 2009
Dubai City, Jumeirah Beach. A few hundred metres away in a small garage is Urs Eiselin, a 32-year-old from Lucerne in Switzerland with tangled blonde hair. Together with his Filipino mechanic, Melchon “Bong” Bugago, he is in the process of installing an engine into a Sand-X. With a hand gesture, he urges us to be patient. On first appearances the vehicle looks more like a snowmobile that’s been mounted on wheels. And it is. But after being converted in this garage, it is transformed into the fastest sand quad in the world. It can go from 0 to 100 in under three seconds, and is capable of a maximum speed of 185kph.
The engine now seems to be in the right place. Urs Eiselin stands up and looks at us. “Tea, anyone?”
In the shade outside his garage, he tells us how a man from Switzerland came to end up living in the neighbourhood of the famous Burj al-Arab. Not that it was a long-winded story, really. Urs Eiselin tells us very simply that everything he has ever done in his life has been about one thing: speed.
He was born the son of a mountaineer and sportswear dealer Max Eiselin and spent most of his childhood on skis in the mountains. It was in the late 1980s when he and his older brother Andreas first ventured out on a snowboard. In 1992 he entered his first snowboarding competition, and then spent the next ten years competing in the Snowboard World Cup. The result: 80 medals and second place in the World Championships in 2005.
Since the early days, Eiselin had had problems with the Swiss skiing association, which has always been suspicious of snowboarders. They found these new sportsmen too garish, too wild, too unpredictable. “Even today, most snowboarders have trouble finding sponsors,” says Eiselin. He was lucky. “I was at a sports award party when I met Hanspeter Kiser of SAP, and we just hit it off. A few weeks later I signed a sponsor’s contract with the software company. Back then, this deal was a small revolution.”
From that point on, the man from Lucerne had an important role to play. With financial backing from SAP, Eiselin built up a network of contacts. His brother was one of them, as well as some other drivers.
Then, in 2004, came the evening that would bring him to our neck of the woods. “After spending years driving snowmobiles, I was having a beer with Andreas one day, when he said that what we were doing on the snow could be done just as easily on sand.” Urs was blown away by the idea. As he says: “He who dares, wins.”
Eiselin asks us if we’d like to see the Sand-X in action. Trying not to show too much unmanly enthusiasm, I graciously accept. The vehicle has just been finished and is loaded onto a trailer, and then we all head off to the edge of the desert surrounding Dubai on three sides.
“The first time we were in Dubai,” says Urs, chatting as he’s steering the truck, “we just drove the sand mobile through the dunes. The difference between beach sand and desert sand was enormous. The filters got bunged up straight away. Desert sand is much finer than the stuff you find on the beaches.”
To round off the day, Urs invites us to dinner. We sit on a large rug outside his house. The first stars can be seen twinkling in the sky and lights are shining in the houses around us. “This is something we’ll remember for the rest of our lives! We enjoy every moment that we have together,” says Urs Eiselin, putting an arm round his girlfriend.
So far this year he’s already sold 70 Sand-Xs. The Jumeirah Beachclub could soon become very empty...
For the full version of this article, see NOX38.
