Tour de Sol 1993 / New partnership

The production of my senior vehicles was progressing. But I still didn't know how to sell them. I considered myself a moderately talented technician, yet I was not in a position to sell anything.
Cheetah was doing very well in the meantime. I used the vehicle for my daily commute from Seuzach to Andelfingen. So I signed up for the Tour de Sol. This year's race, which was to be the last Tour de Sol, led from Lucerne to Adelboden.
Cheetah held on and I finished 4th in the prototypes, which was a good performance for me. There were 3 Horlacher cars in front of me: Axel Krause with the Horlacher Carbon, Ernst with the silver Horlacher and Paul Schweizer with his red speedster.
At this race I got to know André Frey. André and his team used to be participants in this race - but now he had built an ice cream parlour that was powered by solar energy.

We became friends and André said he couldn't really design anything. All he could do was create the concept and then sell the finished product. I, on the other hand, told him I couldn't sell anything, but I could design and build. So we got together. I promised André that I would design his solar ice vehicles for him. He promised to sell me the 16 senior vehicles I had built. He had a nice workshop in an old farmhouse in Niederhasli. I already had the sole proprietorship Ing. Büro M. Kyburz for it. So we agreed to first re-equip his workshop accordingly - among other things, there was no possibility of heating - and then to build and sell solar ice-cream and senior citizens' vehicles together. I started with the construction while Uli Dörr was still assembling the last vehicles of the CLASSIC series in Andelfingen before he took a job in the automobile industry.
We set up in Niederhasli. From wood, roof battens and cardboard we built a 1:1 model of Solar-Eis. We wanted to check the arrangement of the technical components and also test the appearance and user-friendliness of the Solar-Eis. André contacted an ice cream company in Zurich: Heinz and Thomas Enzeroth of the newly founded company Sorbetto were to be the first customers. They wanted to lease the vehicles, which we christened "Solar-Eis", and we were responsible for their maintenance and upkeep.

After a long day at work, I drove back to Seuzach. When I arrived home, the phone rang: André was on the line: He just wanted to say that the workshop was on fire. The hand-held fire extinguisher was already empty, but it was still burning. He was trying to prevent worse with a bucket of water. He had to hang up again and carry on.

I learnt:
- You have to be careful when firing up a wood heater.
- Heat and ice go together