The Nairn Transport Company was a pioneering motor transport company that operated a trans-desert route from Beirut , Haifa and Damascus to Baghdad , and back again, from Their route became known as "The Nairn Way". The firm continued, in various guises, until In , their doctor father had been one of the first in New Zealand to own a motor car, a Reo , and the brothers had a successful motorcycle dealership there prior to World War I. After the war, the brothers first traded in ex-army vehicles, then established a motor dealership in but it was not very successful and they decided to operate a taxi service between Beirut and Haifa with the cars they couldn't sell.
There followed a process of experimentation with different vehicles and the brothers often came into conflict with the owners of horse-drawn vehicles to whose business they were a threat. In , the British consul in Damascus, C. Palmer, asked them to examine the possibility of crossing the Syrian Desert by car.
Plans for a rail link to the Mediterranean coast had faltered and the air route to Cairo was infrequent and expensive. In April , the Nairns made the first of six trial runs from Damascus to Baghdad.
The first trip took them three days for a journey of kilometers miles using a Buick , an Oldsmobile and a Lancia. Having demonstrated the feasibility of the plan, Norman Nairn proposed to British officials in Baghdad that the brothers start a postal service between Damascus and Baghdad. The British agreed, as did the French in Damascus, and the French even provided gold to pay-off desert tribes to ensure safe transit.
The brothers signed a five-year contract with the Iraqi government to transport mail from Baghdad to Damascus and Haifa, and back again. With the help of the Nasser trading family, [ 3 ] the Nairn Transport Company was established and the first official trip made on 18 October In addition to carrying two or three passengers plus luggage and mail, the Cadillacs were modified to carry extra gasoline , an icebox , a tank of drinking water plus enough food and provisions for one week.
