The latest news of the widely advertised tourist route to Timbuktu is that M. Citroën was forced to abandon it because of the attitude of the Saharan tribesmen.
-Ancient Trade Routes from Carthage into the Sahara, Count Byron Khun de Prorok, Geographical Review, 1925
I can imagine crossing the Sahara with a Citroën “suspension oléopneumatique”. A camel hump is spongy with fat and its foot pads are gelatinous, but if Monsieur had succeeded, we could have travelled in “self-leveling, driver-variable ride height”, and camel thief Billa Ali would not have needed the comfortable saddle whose name I wrote down as Bāsūr, but now I find that the only word spelled anything close to that in Wehr means Hemorrhoid.