MOTORING PORTRAITS
Toni Rakkaen & his 2001 Mercedes-Benz G-Class 290 GD
Globetrotting photographers and journalists Desmond Louw and Antonia Heil combine their love of cars, travel and people
“The people we are including in this book are among the many we have met on our travels in South Africa, the USA, Portugal, Germany and Thailand.” While working on this project, they also discovered that most of these characters are not only passionate about their modes of transport but are also entrepreneurs, creatives, people who love their jobs, and as Desmond says, “are altogether pretty happy people!” Titled ‘wor{king}’, we persuaded them to share these portraits with us, which we will run as weekly posts.
Meet Toni Rakkaen who lives and works in Bangkok, Thailand. Toni is an actor (quite a famous one) and co-owner of barber shop and hair salon Smile Club, based in Siam Square One in Bangkok.
When Toni is not in front of a camera or cutting hair, he works on his motorbikes or goes for a drive in his G-Glass.
“I bought the car five years ago. When I was in high school, I used to read this cartoon about a band and one of the guys who had long hair and cool glasses drove exactly this car. I only knew the typical Mercedes-Benz cars, I’d never seen this model before so I thought maybe it’s not real because it’s in a cartoon. It looks like a box but with the Mercedes-Benz logo at the front. Then I came across the G-Class online and thought ‘Shit, it’s real. The car from the cartoon exists!’ Then I found out that it’s bloody expensive. Just right before I had to work overseas, my friend sent me a message that he found one for me. I immediately wanted to get off the plane to go and get it. It was a lot cheaper than it was supposed to be. It was in a perfect condition.
Once I returned, I bought the car straight away.”