representative at the beginning of 1989, receiving positive feedback, and for a while, it seemed like the Ikarus Székesfehérvár factory would provide the expedition with an Ikarus 250. However, at the time, the People's Republic of Hungary was in the process of transitioning from being a communist state to being a democratic state, and this caused established deals that the team have made to fall through, making the expedition's future uncertain. Later, the team was in talks with the Ikarus Mátyásföld factory, but it turned out the company was no longer able to provide a complete vehicle for the expedition. They decided to contact individual members in the automotive supply chain to gather the required parts for a bus, and after each of the companies they asked offered parts for the endeavor, Ikarus pledged to produce the vehicle body and assemble a vehicle using these parts if the team paid for the associated labor costs. As this was still a significant sum of money for them, with the help of Ikarus, the team secured a subsidy from the Hungarian Ministry of Industry (IpM), and thus the manufacturing of the bus could have started. The vehicle, having a white factory paint job and still being unfurnished, was completed by early March 1990, receiving the 350.02 model designation (type 350, variant 02) and chassis number 004. The team took the bus on its first serious test drive when they drove it to the 1990 Ham Radio convention in Friedrichshafen, Germany, to gather more sponsors and to buy radio equipment. During this trip, the stock, 250 hp Rába D2156 MT6U engine was deemed to be underpowered for such an expedition, so after returning, they started to seek out a stronger replacement. Rába itself couldn't offer them any alternatives, as their D10 product family was still under development at the time. The team contacted multiple larger engine manufacturers in Europe, but none of them could offer an engine for the bus. In the meantime, the team members continued to work on the vehicle's interior at the Ikarus workshop, often working on weekends and holidays, sometimes even sleeping in the bus after they were locked in the workshop. The issue of engine replacement was later solved with the help of József, an older Ikarus mechanic from the company's experimental and prototyping "EAG" department (Egyedi Autóbusz Gyáregység, "Custom-made Bus Division"), who have shown the team two