Yes, you heard it right. This French man named Emile Leray built a working motorcycle from a broken down car to escape the African desert. Though this incident took place 20 years ago and it was featured in brief on French television in the 1990s but the news was brought back into light after appearing in a motoring website.
In 1993 the Frenchman was driving through the desert in northwest Africa when he hit a military roadblock preventing him from continuing due to some conflicts in the area. But instead of heeding the advice of the armed guards, Emile decided to loop around the roadblock through the desert, where his Citroen hit a rock—breaking a swing arm and a frame beam which left him stranded in the middle of nowhere. He realised that he can’t make it out on foot, so he decided to build a makeshift motorbike using parts of his wrecked car to escape from the Moroccan desert.
He had enough supplies of food and water for 10 days with him. He converted the car’s rear bumper into a rudimentary seat, shortened the chassis, and placed the engine and gearbox in the middle to create a vehicle which somehow kept going long enough to transport him to safety.
He succeeded after twelve days of hard work, he started to ride his motorbike out of the desert. After a day of riding Emile was picked up by the Moroccan police force who took him to the nearest village. They also handed him a big fine because the registration documents for his car no longer corresponded to what he was driving – his car, bike thing.
