I don’t remember how I first found out about the Ahmadi Desert Motoring Club (ADMC), or how I came about a picture of their car badge, but when I first saw it I knew I needed to have one. It’s such a great looking badge with the cute desert mouse and beautiful colors, I ended up spending over a year looking for one to purchase and wasn’t able to find a single one for sale, anywhere and for any price! I got in touch with random people whose parents might have been part of the club, I checked small private sllers, large auction sites, I checked with car badge collectors, and nobody either had one or wanted to sell one. Finally, back in September, one went on sale on eBay, and not just any, but one that was in pristine, 10/10 condition. It looked like it had never been installed on a car before and all the enamel was still intact and vibrant. I put a ridiculous maximum bid number since I knew I’d most likely not come across another one ever that was so clean, eventually, I ended up winning the bid for a lot less than I expected, around KD75.
Now that I had the badge I found it very frustrating that I couldn’t dig up any info on the club, there wasn’t anything online except for a single photo from an ADMC Alitalia Darts event dating back to 1964 and that was it. So I got in touch with a friend at KOC and asked him if he could check their archives for any photos or articles on the club and he struck gold.
Turns out KOC had some photos related to the motoring club but they were still negatives which hadn’t been scanned. So they dug them out of their archive and scanned them so I could share them on the blog. These images haven’t been seen by anyone for over 65 years! They also shared some articles relating to the club from the old KOC newsletter called “The Kuwaiti”. The Kuwaiti was a weekly newsletter and he flipped through the 1954 and 1955 archive of the newsletter and sent me some photos of ones relating to the club and motoring in general. Some really interesting stuff.
I’ve decided to share everything in two ways. Firstly I uploaded all the photos and articles to a Flickr album. If you prefer viewing things that way click here.
I’ve also created a PDF file of all the articles and if you prefer viewing the articles that way then click here to download the PDF
For the scanned images I have all of them embedded in high resolution below. The blog will resize them automatically to fit the width of my page, but if you save the images, you can view them in higher resolution on your phone or computer. Check those out by clicking more below.
Finally, I’d like to thank Kuwait Oil Company for digging these photos out and scanning them for me. Now people looking for info on the club will be able to find some kind of information online.
27 replies on “The Ahmadi Desert Motoring Club (ADMC)”
Great job by all involved! Thanks
Which of your cars do you intent to stick it on and how are you planning to make it secure enough for no one to flick it?
So definitely not going to mount this on my car. I’m going to frame it instead and I think i have a cool way of doing it. I’m now going to try and source another one to use on my car, so the hunt is ongoing.
Hi Mark
Your story of obtaining a ADMC badge is very interresting and you seem to have aquired a really great example. I have two of them but they are slghtly differrent from each other, yours is one type with Kuwait at the bottom, the other has Persian Gulf at the bottom. I have one fitted to the front of my car and the other is on the wall in my home office with other car badges.
The little mouse is a Kangaroo Rat a member of the gerbil family and was the sign of the Desert Rats in WW2
Yes! I’ve found two versions so far, the Kuwait and Persian Gulf. Would you be able to share a photo of both yours, I’m curious to see how you’ve displayed one and how you’ve fitted the other to your car.
Also do you know what the black dots around the badge represent?
To me the black dots! Together with the double chrome lines between then represent an Arab head band
Black dots may represent the old style 3gaal?
That’s what I was thinking as well!
Very cool, thank you for all your work and reminding everyone how expats are part of Kuwait’s history and helped build and develop life and the economy here.
thanks, but it really also helps when an organization cares and wants stuff shared as well. a lot of people don’t like sharing stuff and I’m glad KOC wants people to see this stuff.
2 things:
1. that is a fantastic looking badge!
2. this is cultural/historical gold! KOC ought to have fulltime historians for this kind of stuff.
I know they have a department responsible for their archive. they are digitizing all their negatives. if you search for “koc archive” on the blog you’ll find a bunch of old posts with more photos from their archive
Thank you for this valuable information And historical beautiful pictures.
Sadeq Ashkanani, Rally Co driver from the 1970s. Researcher in the history of motorsport in Kuwait
Hey do you have any pictures? Did you see the rally videos I previously posted from the 70s?
Here’s a little something for you,
No Parking At The Club!
https://youtu.be/0M3pUifwJxk
This is for the curious people of who wanted to know how the notes on the first page of the PDF sounds like.
Enjoy 😉
Mark, What’s going on with Kuwestions? There are hella lotta ads (something like Oxycontin) land hyperlinks
spam, been away from computer all day or else would have deleted them. they’re gone now. thanks
Those were the beautiful days of Ahmadi beside other sports and social activities which made Ahmadi a unique city. I worked and lived in Ahmadi toward the end of those days and I wished they continued but there is always an end of everything.
My best wishes to those who lived through that era.
I grew up in Kuwait and my parents were active members of ADMC taking part in many motoring events both in Kuwait and on occasion visiting car clubs in Cyprus, Iraq and the Lebanon (if I recall correctly).
Ive had a local sign company scan an ADMC badge and produce a more modern stick on version for the back panels of my cars which serves as a little reminder of my time in Kuwait.
Hi Chris, my dad was one of the original members, RJ McCracken, apart from the rally’s and motoring events, it was also a social club, special memories of Xmas time and santa on his horse drawn sleigh, lol,
S.B.O.A, Hubara club, yacht club, and the Gazelle club, memories lol
Thank you for this post – I’m sat with the silver tankard ADMC trophies that my Dad won in 1959 & 1960 and wondering what to do with them. I grew up with them & the photos bring it to life for me. My Mum was secretary to the head of KOC and my Dad an engineer. They married in 1961 & I was born soon after – my Mum had to give up her job as married couples were not allowed to work there together. We left Kuwait when I was 3. It’s really hard to know what to do with these mementoes!
Hey Glenys, join the group Kuwait Kids on Facebook
Thanks Mark, I’ve applied 👍😀
My Father was a member of this club. I remember seeing the badge at home. He told me about the old Humber’s that the club used to have. Thanks for tracking down the photos and publishing them.
when was its the Ahmadi Desert Motoring Club established? any idea?
1952
Hello
I’m Graham and a friend asked me to sell some items on his behalf.
Amongst them is an ADMC Badge and a silk scarf from the club and I wondered if you would be interested