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Feb. 1, 2013
Israel’s 4x4 desert maven
Ido Cohen has built an off-road empire with his unique field cars.
ABIGAIL KLEIN LEICHMAN ISRAEL21C
If you’ve never seen a Zibar, expect to see one rumbling into sight soon enough. This unique Israeli 4x4 field car, already driving through jungles and rough terrain on four continents, recently got its North American unveiling in Las Vegas at SEMA, the premier automotive specialty products trade event in the world.
“It was always my dream to take my vehicles to the SEMA show,” said Ido Cohen, 53, designer of the Zibar and proprietor of Ido Off-Road Centre in Pardes Hana, near Haifa. Cohen rented a large booth in the centre hall to introduce Zibar. Several days after the show was over in early November, he was still there talking business.
In sharp contrast to other successful Israeli business leaders coming out of world-class universities, such as the Technion-Israel
Institute of Technology, Cohen dropped out of school in the sixth grade. Ever since his father gifted him with a British pedal-operated metal jeep when he was six, his heart belonged to the road – or rather, off the road – and being stuck behind a desk indoors was nothing short of torture.
However, his lack of formal education has not held him back a bit. In fact, Cohen believes it has contributed to his success in automotive design, a career virtually unknown in Israel.
“I am not an engineer,” Cohen said. “They learn in university, and I think the way they learn is wrong. I learned from my own experience. After I left school at age 11, I started to work in all kinds of mechanical stuff, like welding. In the army, I was in a special-forces unit and that’s what gave me an understanding of the needs in the field.”
Right after his army service, in 1982, he established his business with his wife, Noa. Ido Off-Road Centre, the only Israeli vehicle manufacturer, specializes in the design and development of a full line of 4x4s for extreme and rough terrain, military and security needs, and rally racing.
Cohen, himself a champion desert race driver for the past 20 years, personally supervises each vehicle’s design. His permanent staff of six includes two engineers, he conceded, “but they don’t develop; they only make the drawings and do the computer work.”
Cohen has infrastructure in place to begin making and selling the Zibar MK2 for the U.S. market, through his new subsidiary, Zibar USA in Phoenix, Ariz. He has already sold 40 made-in-Israel Zibars, five of them to the Israeli military and the others to customers in Africa, Russia, South America and Middle Eastern countries such as Abu Dhabi.
Cohen drives one to work, no doubt causing some head turning in the northern Israeli town of 32,000 where he was born and bred. “Since I was a child, my passion was to drive and to ride to the limits,” he said. The young Cohen even welded a motorcycle suspension system to the front of his bicycle.
Some of the special vehicles he designs, builds and upgrades have served him well in desert races including the Paris Dakar Rally, the Pharos Rally in Egypt and the Top Track Challenge in California. He won at Dakar in 2004 and continues to best competitors in off-road races in the Negev Desert, driving a vehicle he put together with a Chevrolet engine.
The company makes the Axe and the Storm LRV in addition to the Zibar. Among its loyal clients are Elbit Systems, Israel Salt Industries and the Israel Defence Forces, as well as Mercedes Benz and Mitsubishi. Cohen’s latest commission is a rugged door-less jeep for border patrol that can reach speeds of 140 kilometres (87 miles) per hour.
The Zibar took a decade to develop and was designed to withstand extremely harsh environmental conditions. The vehicles accelerate from zero to 62 miles per hour (100 kilometres/hour) in seven seconds, and last more than 435 miles (700 kilometres) on a single tank of gas.
“It’s the only vehicle you can drive in jungles – you can’t compare it with a Land Rover,” said Cohen. “If you want to drive anywhere off road, no other car can compete with Zibar right now in the world, and a lot of people want to copy me. The performance is better because I am a racing driver so I know how vehicles should move in the off-road.”
If you want one for yourself, be prepared to pay between $110,000 and $150,000 US, depending on the customization of the model selected.
Israel21C is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission to focus media and public attention on the 21st-century Israel that exists beyond the conflict. For more, or to donate, visit israel21c.org.
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