Umhlali business rallies to revive elderly Uber-style driver’s unroadworthy car

When Esenembe resident Billy Govender was pulled over at an Umhlali roadblock on May 13, his only means of earning an income seemingly came to an end.

Traffic officers took one look at his car, removed his license disc and informed him his car was completely unroadworthy and belonged in the scrapyard.

For the 73-year-old pensioner, who earns his living shuttling people around Uber-style, losing his car meant becoming jobless.

“He had tears in his eyes when he told me what happened,” co-owner of North Coast Tyres at Umhlali, Logan Vengatasami, told the Courier.

The car, a 1987 Toyota Corolla GLS certainly looked as though it had been retrieved from a scrapheap.

Rust was eating away at what little was left of the car, with the windshield held in place on the frame by tape – tell-tale signs of how desperate Billy was to keep the car going to earn an income ever since he bought it from his brother several years ago for R30 000.

With more than 1.3-million kilometres on the odometer, there obviously wasn’t a road on the North Coast the car had not travelled on.

“I thought it was the end of the road for me,” Billy said, but that is when Logan and his team stepped in.

His Toyota spent two weeks at Logan’s workshop where the team worked on the car every day to restore it back to working condition and giving it a makeover.

“From the engine to the suspension, gearbox, paint and interior, we took it apart and replaced what was needed,” said Logan.

Logan said doing the job served as a means of making up for never being able to get his dad, Freddy, a car after he lost his job in 2010.

That year the family also lost everything they had in a house fire, which necessitated the sale of his dad’s car. Two years later his father passed away.

“We often take for granted what our parents mean to us, failing to understand just how much they sacrifice for us,” Logan said, so fixing Billy’s car was in some sense a way of giving back.

The repair and restoration work, with roadworthy certification thrown in, totalled about R27 000.

“I never expected anyone to be so kind, it is as though this miracle intervention was sent by God,” Billy said when receiving his “new” ride..

It is now back to the business of shuttling people every day, which he says earns him about R500 a day – some of which he will now set aside for the car’s future maintenance.

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