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Last Saturday, El Solitario was invited to Galicia Design Week. We were there to showcase PROMETEO, our latest creation—a piece we consider our Magnum Opus. But something unexpected happened: we were asked to speak. We are not speakers. We are designers, builders, creators. Our work speaks for itself. But this was an opportunity to share something more: the philosophy behind what we do. The title of the talk was simple: “NADIE NOS MANDA” (Nobody tell us what to do).
Any great connoisseur of the G Wagen and the Mercedes-Benz brand must be frustrated with the path the german auto maker took already a long time ago. More interested in the status symbol of their cars, than what they should be designed for, their north star has long been gone and they seem lost in an uncertain future for privately owned mobility. For someone like us, who used our cars to explore the unexplored, it’s more than just a pose. It’s all about capability, freedom, and pushing boundaries. When brands focus on nouveau riche customers, they diminish the essence of what makes vehicles like the G-Class special to those who revered them for genuine purpose, not just as ostentatious luxury fashion statements. Since the begining of the end.
My name is Nicholas Coleman, I’m from what used to be the small town of Provo, Utah. Named for the French-Canadian fur trapper Etienne Provost, who wandered into what has become Utah Valley. My father Michael Coleman is an artist as well as myself. I was his little shadow wherever he went. Fishing, hunting, trapping and to a dozen or more of the world's best art museums.
Takashi URASHIMA, aka @ein883, is a fire truck driver who draws illustrations in his spare time. He started making illustrations from photos he took at motorcycle events thinking that illustrations could easily overcome language barriers and share the fun. He was not wrong. This Japanese artist has been drawing El Solitario for years through his original vision, so we decided to ask him a few questions for this article.
"There's one date of the year that I can't afford to miss, and that's in June, around the Summer Solstice, a symbol that's very dear to me, because it represents renewal, my renewal.Our Spanish friends have understood this, and without really organizing things, they know perfectly well how to unite us around San Juan. One message is all it takes, and we all arrive from the four corners of the globe, ready for a new adventure. As one of us said, the road is OK, but the track is much more exciting, and I finally understood this on our last crossing of the Iberian Peninsula. Having spent forty years exclusively on the road, I discovered the immense pleasure of enduro riding. Being inside the landscape is very different from watching it go by behind the visor, whatever the bike.
The last El Solitario OUTLAWS was a story about long lasting friendships. Paying tribute to the freedom of each individual who took part in this, we decided to give a disposable camera to each of them. The result? A scrapbook more authentic than ever. The beauty of a photograph is the personification of the eye that was looking at the precise instant of the shot.
Although with scant regard for the banality of much in popular culture, El Solitario`s approach to music isn’t rooted in intellectual superiority but leaves a door ajar into a psychedelic, esoteric, sometimes challenging world. Making us junkies for new soundscapes. Our musical inclinations are often the result of a near-mythological desire for complete independence, better-ly (does this word even exist?) defined by the roads we chose not to take than the mountains we repeatedly conquered.
Unlike the Dakar, which has evolved into a loop rally with zero geographical interest, the Morocco Desert Challenge offers a “coast to coast” adventure. In eight stages the participants cross a maximum part of Morocco, along the Algerian border, as far away as possible from the tourist zones. The participants therefore do not sleep in hotels, but in beautiful, self-built desert bivouacs.
Good motorcycle events are almost extinct these days, and if you find one, every glittering ounce of them should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond. Last weekend, England´s Grimsthorpe Castle witnessed the celebration of the Malle Mile (One of the last surviving ones!) and the revival of ESMC´s ludicrous race "La Copita”.
In the common law of England, a "Writ of Outlawry" made the pronouncement Caput lupinum - "Let his be a wolf's head” - with respect to its subject, equating that person with a wolf in the eyes of the law. The Outlaw was deprived of all legal rights, allowing others to kill him on sight, as if he was such a wild creature.