I had an early morning this morning … Oakley invited me down to St. Kilda at 6.30am to check out their ‘Rolling O-Lab’ which they’ve shipped from the States for a tour of Australia. The O-Lab is basically a massive customized trailer (and equally massive customized truck to tow it) which is kitted out with everything from touch screens, couches, a kitchen, laser beams and shooting ranges. It is to really provide crew with more knowledge about what makes Oakley different from other eyewear manufacturers through demonstrations such as firing a ball bearing into the lens, etc. All very impressive, especially when you see some of the standard lens’ getting demolished. However my morning was made by talking to the designer and builder for the O-Lab and it’s truck. The setup you see above is one of four that has been built by Ryan Evert and his team. The truck is a turbo diesel 4X4 that is actually so big that it’s 4cm too wide for Australian roads and required some ridiculous paperwork to get permission to roll here. Ryan was telling me that the truck was built by the customizing shop, SportChassis. It looks to me like a tweaked version of the MTUV which, according to their site, is “a multifunction vehicle designed for versatility and ease of use. The MTUV is designed to give you maximum flexibility and  increased response capability in a secure mobile platform.” It is built on a Frieghtliner chassis, you can peep more on it here (apparently they’ve been talking orders for these from the likes of Shaq recently!) There’s a few dings in this one after incidents with large rocks at the snow in the U.S – so they’re putting it through it’s paces. Check above for more shots of the lab and keep an eye out over the next few months for it around Australia.

PS. Oakley in Europe just took delivery of a new one of these too – it’s actually bigger than this one. Peep it here.