About Us – Ibex Owners Club
The Ibex Owners Club is administered by Keith and Sally Barber, of off-road driving tuition company Holme Valley 4x4, based in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. As far as we’re aware, Holme Valley 4x4 is the only company in the country using two Ibex vehicles for their training courses, Chassis No. 4F001 and Chassis No. 7F057. Keith Barber is in the early planning stages of building his own Foers Ibex, using the running gear from a Land Rover Discovery. This will become the Barbers’ third Ibex and their family vehicle.
Keith believes that the Foers Ibex is the best vehicle for the job. Compared to the Land Rover Defender 90, the Ibex has far better ground clearance, and approach and departure angles, because of modifications made to the vehicle. In the animal kingdom, an ibex is a mountain goat, so you can imagine where this vehicle will go where others dare not!
Although he didn’t know it at the time, Keith Barber first encountered the Foers Ibex when he trained with Ronnie Dale, the off-road guru of his time, in Scotland almost 20 years ago. Chassis No. 1 was parked on the forecourt outside Ronnie Dale’s premises. As an off-road driving instructor and enthusiast, Keith came into contact with lots of different types of 4x4, including the Foers Ibex and many examples were seen at the many shows the company attended.
Some 15 years later, Chassis No. 1 was parked in a local supermarket carpark in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire (where the Barber family live) and Keith left a leaflet on the windscreen asking the owner to contact Keith if he ever decided to sell it. A year later, Keith received that call and subsequently bought the vehicle in April 2005.
At Billing 2006, Keith met up with John Foers and subsequently purchased John’s own demonstrator vehicle, Chassis No. 7F057, a soft-top model. Foers Engineering are currently working on their 94th Foers Ibex. Because of their great interest and enthusiasm for the Foers Ibex vehicles, Keith Barber, assisted by his wife, Sally, who runs the administration side of Keith’s Holme Valley 4x4 business, agreed to take over the running of the Ibex Owners Club, which had fallen a bit by the wayside over the years. Keith and Sally hope that interest in the Owners Club can be renewed by past and present owners, but hope that the Club will be of interest to not just for owners but any 4x4 enthusiast.
