Anyone heard of the Nairn bus?
 

I'm reading 'First Overland: London to Singapore by Land Rover'. The authors take the Nairn bus from Damascus to Baghdad. Apparently two New Zealand brothers pioneered an overland route from Damascus to Baghdad in the 1920's with buses of their own design. Sounds like a very interesting story. Here's one of their buses:


Here's another one too big to attach here:

http://www.transportcafe.co.uk/image22/damascus_to_bagdad_silver_bullet_nairn_transport.jpg

Here's a brief account of the enterprise:

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198104/the.nairn.way.htm

That must be one of the 1936 Marmon-Harringtons the SABIC article talks about. It had to be better than a camel ride. They call the beasts the "Ship of the Desert" because riding one will make you sea-sick.

Some more info I ferreted out:

"The next informant was John Bartlett from Dalkey in Co. Dublin, Editor of Palestine Exploration Quarterly. He remembered reading about the Nairn Transport Service as a boy in an article by H.E. Symons FRGS in a book called Power and Speed edited by F.A. Dean, Temple Press, London, 1938. "I loved that book and have kept it" and he enclosed copies of the relevant pages. Not you will note just "a longer and heavier version" of a country bus, but "the largest bus in the world - 68 ft. long, nearly 9 ft. wide and 11 ft. wide, carrying 12 first class passengers, 20 second class passengers and 6,100 pounds of luggage.""