4x4 Magazine - August 2023

4x4

NEWS • VIEWS • KIT • EXPEDITIONS • MODIFIED VEHICLES • GREEN LANING PLUS Navara AT32: the best Arctic Trucks edition we’re yet to see

THE UK’S ONLY 4X4 AND PICK-UP MAGAZINE

PICK-UP SPECIAL ISSUE

Starring Toyota’s in-your-face Hilux GR Sport – plus a whole host of unique, modded, accessorised and even classic trucks from around the world

Defender 130 crew-cab rebuilt as a true 4x4 heavyweight

£5.99

Andean mountain climbing aboard a holiday hire car

AUG 2023

Land Cruiser 200 becomes a beaut of a ute 4x4 Cover July 23 WITH SARAH.indd 1

02/07/2023 20:46

SUBARU OUTBACK. AWARDED 4X4 MAGAZINE’S ‘BEST

CROSSOVER ESTATE OF THE YEAR 2023’.

“It’s often said that once you’ve owned a Subaru, you never want to be without one.

And there’s a reason for that. The Outback is all the family car you’re ever likely to need—and, in the real world, it’s all the off-roader you’re ever likely to need too.”

Alan Kidd, Editor of 4x4 Magazine

3 YEARS SERVICING FOR £299* WHEN YOU BUY A NEW SUBARU Award-winning features.

Fitted as standard.

SUV CAPABILITY. READY FOR ANYTHING.

• 2.5i Boxer Engine Lineartronic • Permanent Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive • EyeSight Safety Package • 2,000kg Towing Capacity (braked)

To find out more visit subaru.co.uk or contact your local Subaru dealer.

• 213mm Ground Clearance • 11.6" Tablet-like Infotainment System • Reversing Camera

*3 services for £299.00 (incl. VAT) offer applicable when you purchase a brand-new Subaru Forester e-BOXER, XV e-BOXER or Outback. All services should be taken at the relevant service intervals - either 12,000 miles or 12 months, whichever comes sooner. All services must be completed by an authorised Subaru Retailer. The customer’s failure to redeem the services within the designated mileage or time will void the manufacturer’s warranty. Available to retail customer only. Does not cover any non-service related parts or repairs or general wear and tear.

Servicing is transferable with the vehicle. Offers may be varied or withdrawn at any time. Offer ends 30.09.23

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28/06/2023 10:47

THE WORLDS BEST ACCESSORIES FOR LAND ROVER

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11/04/2023 12:32

N O I T I D E P EX

Whether your idea of an expedition is an afternoon driving some local trails, a weekend off road and wild camping or a full-on trip across Africa, Terrafirma has all the accessories you will need.

From roof racks and ladders to spare wheel carriers and snorkels, from jerry cans and sand tracks to fridges we have it covered with this extensive range of expedition accessories.

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11/04/2023 12:40

ROOF TENTS AND AWNINGS ROOF RACKS AND LADDERS SPARE WHEEL CARRIERS RAISED AIR INTAKES EXPEDITION ACCESSORIES For more information visit www.terrafirma4x4.com email sales@terrafirma4x4.com

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11/04/2023 12:36

August 2023

CONTENTS

20

'The Hilux is always a good truck, but this one is thoroughly biddable – and also refined, smooth

34

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AWAITING SUBS INFO Contents Aug.indd 2

48

16

4x4 04/07/2023 14:04

78 EIGHT MAGAZINES FOR EIGHT QUID! Get 8 issues of 4x4 for just £8 – yes, you read that right, a quid each! That’s 68% off – and you get them delivered to your door. Madness not to!

4x4 Scene: News, Products and More…

6 7 8 10 12 12 14 15

Munro MK_1 Double-cab option joins all-electric off-roader range Ford Ranger Blue oval gets ready for first ever works tilt at the Dakar Rally Hennessey VelociRaptor 27' long 6x6 double-cab is all-round vast Iveco Daily 4x4 coming to Britain as an ultra-cool retro-style chassis-cab Osram New range of professional-spec work lights now on sale Britpart Summit roof bars for Freelander 2 Isuzu ARB accessory range now available as official kit for latest D-Max Safety Devices 8-point cage for 110 Soft-Top joins Britpart range

Every Month 4 78 80

Alan Kidd Have pick-ups changed the way we see off-roading?

Subscribe Life is expensive, but getting 4x4 delivered is better value than ever Next Month Our September issue goes on sale on 11 Aug

Driven 20

Toyota Hilux GR Sport New range-topper has substance as well as style

Features 16 24 30 34 44 48 54 60 64

Jeep Gladiator Sideburn Concept pick-up with adventure in its heart Land Cruiser Ute 200-Series luxury wagon turned into a unique doublec-cab Ultimate 130 Land Rover's original crew-cab transformed by Toyota power Adventure Hilux Home from home, and a Sahara-proof off-roader to boot Series IIA Double-Cab Another Land Rover, another twist of creativity Navara AT32 The best dealer model Arctic Trucks, now second-hand gold Moving on Up A man who built not one but two street'n'trail double-cabs VW Amarok Why the cheapest model is now a world-class used purchase Classic Chevy A patinated '55 makes a very different kind of pick-up

Our 4x4s 68

Project D-Max Installing a drawer stowage unit from Gearmax

Travel 72

brisk, positive and and fuss-free'

Up the Andes Aiming for the heights about a rented Navara in remotest Chile

72

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JANUARY 2023 | 3

04/07/2023 14:05

4x4 Tel: 01283 742969

Alan Kidd Editor

W

hen pick-ups started coming on to the 4x4 scene, we all loved them. But conventional wisdom was that they weren’t actually all that great for off-roading.

This was, don’t forget, a time when the highest selling 4x4 in the country was still the first-generation Land Rover Discovery.

The second was the original Suzuki Vitara.

Other big players in the market included the Vauxhall Frontera, Mitsubishi Shogun, Isuzu Trooper, Daihatsu Fourtrak and Jeep Cherokee (again, the original one), as well as the Range Rover Classic and, lest we forget, the Land Rover Defender. It was a halcyon era full of traditional vehicles with off-road ability oozing from every pore.

Into this world came the Vauxhall Brava double-cab, followed by five-door versions of the Mitsubishi L200 and Toyota Hilux.

They all had the right stuff for off-roading, but compared to what we were used to they seemed unbelievably big and awkward to manoeuvre. Their huge wheelbases meant they were easy to ground out, their gigantic rear overhangs felt endlessly vulnerable and while ground clearance did tend to be very good, they only came over as a handful compared to even the biggest station wagons of the time.

Now here we are all these years later and with a few very honourable exceptions, the station wagons are as almost as vast as the pick-ups we have on the market. But unlike the pick-ups, they no longer have much if anything of what makes an offroader an off-roader. Of the vehicles listed above, where a direct modern equivalent exists you’ll find two with low range as standard, none with a ladder chassis and not one beam axle anywhere.

You can see why the Jeep Wrangler has become almost the default choice for people who want to buy a new or nearlynew off-roader. You can see why there’s so much interest in the Ineos Grenadier, too.

But mainly, you can see why pick-ups have come to define the market.

The Grenadier is new on the scene. The Wrangler has always been in short supply (as has the Toyota Land Cruiser, though in recent years at least it has been priced a little more realistically) and if the Suzuki

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Edline July 23.indd 4

Have pick-ups changed the way we see off-roading?

Jimny is big enough for you, it’s already almost five years since the new model came out and not much less since you stopped being able to get one. Leaving you with what in the way of choice? Not much, and all of it pick-ups.

I’m not sure if it’s something about the vehicles and the way they’ve developed, or the way the rest of the 4x4 market has been going for years. But no longer do pick-ups feel unwieldy, awkward or unusually big.

These days, they feel like some of the most agile and surest-footed vehicles around.

Yet they still have those same long wheelbases and vast rear overhangs.

We lift them, of course, we fit underbody guards and rock sliders and we bolt on steel bumpers to take the pain, but these drawbacks still remain. Yet they just don’t seem to be an issue anymore the way they did when the alternative was to go to a Land Rover dealer and buy a Defender, Discovery or Range Rover Classic.

It makes me wonder whether pick-ups’ burgeoning popularity has actually changed the off-roading we set out to do. Back then, you were most likely to see new Discoverys or Cherokees turning up to playdays at places like Tong or Bala, where a confident and able owner could get them into some eye-popping positions. Nowadays, though, those events tend to attract almost wall to wall older, modified vehicles (and/or MOT failures on a final hurrah before being weighed in, if it’s that kind of gig), whereas people who buy new pick-ups with offroading in mind are more likely to have their eyes on green lane adventures and convoy tours to southern Europe or Morocco.

It’s obvious that the new 4x4 market has changed. But perhaps that in turn has changed what off-roading is. Less people are as interested in extreme, technical terrain; instead, off-road ability is more of a means to an end.

If I’m right, well, I’d miss the technical stuff. But I love the adventure side of it too.

And whether it’s a pick-up or not, no other kind of vehicle is better than a sorted 4x4 at being a means to a very worthwhile end.

Email: enquiries@assignment-media.co.uk Web: www.totaloffroad.co.uk www.4x4i.com Online Shop: www.toronline.co.uk Facebook: www.facebook.com/totaloffroad www.facebook.com/4x4Mag Editor Alan Kidd Design WW Magazines Tel: 01283 742970 Contributors Graham Scott, Mike Trott, James Webber, Gavin Coppins, Olly Sack, Gary Noskill, Dan Fenn, Paul Looe, Tom Alderney Photographers Steve Taylor, Richard Hair, Harry Hamm, Vic Peel Advertising Sales Tandem Media Tel: 01233 555735 Colin Ashworth Tel: 01283 742969 Advertising Production Sarah Moss Tel: 01283 553242 Subscriptions Agency WW Magazines, 151 Station Street, Burton on Trent, DE14 1BG Tel: 01283 742970 Publisher and Head of Marketing Sarah Moss Email: sarah.moss@assignment-media.co.uk To subscribe to 4x4, or renew a subscription, call 01283 742970. Prices for 12 issues: UK £42 (24 issues £76); Europe Airmail/ROW Surface £54; ROW Airmail £78 Distributed by Marketforce; www.marketforce.co.uk Every effort is made to ensure the contents of 4x4 are accurate, but Assignment Media accepts no responsibility for errors or omissions nor the consequences of actions made as a result of these.

When responding to any advert in 4x4, you should make appropriate enquiries before sending money or entering into a contract. The publishers take reasonable care to ensure advertisers’ probity, but will not be liable for loss or damage incurred from responding to adverts Where a photo credit includes the note ‘CC BY 2.0’ or similar, the image is made available under that Creative Commons licence: details at www.creativecommons.org 4x4 is published by Assignment Media Ltd, PO Box 8632, Burton on Trent DE14 9PR

© Assignment Media Ltd, 2023

4x4 02/07/2023 23:48

Strap In Tight...

Product shown in situ and NOT bolted into position

DA3554 Seat Belt Anchorage Frame Series 2 / Series 2A / Series 3 / Defender This seat belt anchorage frame is designed to provide a robust belt mounting in Soft Top models. Manufactured from 38.1mm x 2.64mm seamless tube, the frame provides both upper inertia seat belt reel mounting points and also provides upper harness mounting points when wrapped around the tube. The frame fits directly over the existing canopy support brackets and has rearwards supports which also mount to the capping.

Note - Will NOT fit a Lightweight or Series 1.

www.britpart.com Find your nearest stockist - www.britpart.com/stockist

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03/07/2023 09:51

NEWS

Munro reveals pick-up version of all-electric MK_1

T

he phrase ‘What you see is what you get’ may be a popular meme but if WYSIWYG were to be made metal then this is it. The Munro MK_1. We’ve already debuted the Truck version in all its no-nonsense glory, but the Scottish company has just announced a sister vehicle is coming, the MK_1 Pick-Up. No question, looked at from sideview, both the Truck and Pick-Up models look as if they were drawn by someone, possibly quite young, with a pencil and a ruler but no way to do anything other than straight

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lines. But the Munro vehicles display a great deal of straight-line thinking and that’s a marvellous and rare thing in vehicle design these days.

Much as we admire the Ineos Grenadier, for example, there’s no doubt the simple original idea behind that vehicle has been overwritten by a number of more complex and expensive ideas. What we are seeing here, in contrast, is Scotland’s only volume vehicle maker sticking firmly to first principles.

We’ve lost count of the number of conversations we’ve had over the decades envisioning what a simpler

Defender or Toyota Land Cruiser would be like and how popular such things would be. What we get is the new £100k Defender and the Land Cruiser coming with every technological marvel known to mankind.

And when we got a simpler Land Cruiser it only lasted a year or two before they axed it again.

Anyway, what we get with the Munro is a vehicle designed not for middle class professionals for their weekends, but for real people doing real jobs, like utility workers, or those working in mining, construction, farming and more. And for

them the Pick-Up model may be just the thing.

And, like the Truck, the Pick-Up is all electric. The thinking for this came not from someone who likes to deface buildings with orange paint, but from real experience in the Highlands. Founders Russell Peterson and Ross Anderson noted how much better the instant torque of electric motors was in extreme off-roading compared to petrol or diesel engines. Munro was born.

Which means the Pick-Up gets the equivalent of 375bhp and 516lbf.ft of torque, the latter from

4x4 04/07/2023 17:11

NEWS

Ford readies first ever assault on Dakar Rally FORD IS DOING SOMETHING IT HASN’T DONE BEFORE. Yes, there is.

It is taking on the mighty Dakar Rally. However cocky some of the company’s executives might be, there’s no doubt that, to paraphrase Boromir in Lord of the Rings, one does not simply walk into the Dakar.

Which is why, when you get below the hype, they’re trying to manage expectations just as much as they’re trying to manage what will be a very difficult engineering and logistical challenge. And they’re not throwing everything at this first effort either.

The first attempt will be the Dakar 2024, which is being held next January in Saudi Arabia. But the corporate eye is already on the Dakar 2025, when the company will field a custom-built Ranger Raptor in the T1+ class. Ford is taking the long view, which seems eminently sensible given the rigours of the event. Which is why for Dakar ’24 the company will be wheeling out an old-gen machine based on the outgoing Ford Ranger.

However, Ford is not going this alone. The programme is headed by Ford Performance Motorsports (FPM), but partners include M-Sport (rallying legend Malcolm Wilson’s company, which already competes with Ford in WRC) and Neil Woolridge Motorsports, the rally raid specialists.

Together they are putting together a purpose-built ‘bad-ass’ Ranger to compete in the Rally Raid T1+ category.

This is what Ford calls ‘the previous generation global Ranger, with a 3.5-litre EcoBoost engine’. In other words, tried and tested tech that will act as a test bench for new ideas and tech that can then be incorporated into the ’25 Raptor. As part of this development programme, Ford is entering at least two rallies before the Dakar to gain experience and insights. These will include baja style events in Spain and Morocco, giving them a three-month window after that to do final prep for the Dakar.

Mark Rushbrook, Global Director of FPM, is under no illusion about what they are setting out to achieve: ‘We cannot underestimate the enormity of the challenge ahead of us. We need to finish and learn first.’

Notice that finishing first is not on the agenda.

So why is Ford taking on this monumental challenge at this point?

After all, the Paris-Dakar has run for over 40 years already.

‘We’re not just racing to win,’ continues Rushbrook. ‘We’re racing to help build better products for our customers.’ And we know that Ford is aiming to move its Focus (sorry) away from road cars and more towards trucks and SUVs. And what better way to show how rugged, tough and enduring your products are than by competing in the what many still consider to be the ultimate off-road challenge?

effectively zero revs per minute. The 220kW electric motor means, in the Performance model, that braked towing capacity is 3500kg, and there’s ample space to fit a 1050kg Euro pallet in the load bed.

The Munro vehicles are defiantly utilitarian, and hurrah for that.

They’re tough and rugged and let’s not forget this is the first light vehicle to enter production in Scotland for more than 40 years. Happily, the company already has orders for the next two years, which means it’s urgently hunting for bigger premises.

Which is terrific news.

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This a rugged off-roader, with the full panoply of 4x4 kit – ladder chassis, beam axles, lockable diffs, transfer case, the lot. The idea is that a Munro is built to last for 50 years. That’s quite an idea.

And that idea includes futureproofing. Emissions are becoming more of an issue everywhere, and a big factor for corporations as they address their duty to cut carbon.

The MK_1 looks like an answer to that, both now and in the years ahead, for businesses that run fleets of 4x4s. Prices for the MK_1 Pick-Up start at £49,995 plus the VAT.

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NEW 4X4S

Half a million dollar price tag for 700bhp 6x6 supertruck from Hennessey

YOU WOULD THINK – IF YOU WERE A MILD BRIT – that having a pick-up with a 5’6” load bed, four-wheel drive and 700bhp on tap would be more than enough.

Possibly overkill, even. You’d have to downplay it, apologise frequently and endlessly explain why you needed it for moving ‘stuff’. But then, what if you’re from Texas?

Hennessey Performance is from Texas. The company looks at that vehicle then scoffs and goes ‘That’s not a pick-up. This is a pick-up.’ And then we see what thinking big can do. And then we Brits whimper a bit, look embarrassed but, at the same time, slightly envious that people can be so, well, bold.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the engine has not been upgraded. But, then, maybe a 5.2-litre V8, complete with supercharger, 700bhp and 640lbf.ft of torque, is considered enough even for Texans. That’s

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what you get if you buy a standard Ford F-150 Raptor R. But this is the VelociRaptoR 6x6 from Hennessey so obviously we need more. We need another axle at the back. And that necessitates an extended box-section frame. And that of course has the happy result of offering a loadbed that is now 8’ long, upping cargo capacity by nearly 50%. Whatever it is you need transporting that fast across any terrain, you can now carry more of it.

Naturally you have to add a lift kit, in this case a fairly modest 3”, which in turn gives room for the 20” alloys shod with 37” off-road tyres.

With six-wheel drive, a locking rear axle and ‘live valve’ Fox dampers, matched by enormous Brembo brakes all round, you can now go, stop and do anything you want, wherever you want.

This is an imposing rig, standing 7’ tall and 7’ wide. Not to mention

the small matter of its 27’ length.

Hennessey calls it a ‘go-anywhere supertruck’ and really that doesn’t seem like any sort of overclaim. The only downside is you couldn’t go there without making your presence known, but maybe for Texans that’s all part of the attraction.

Big truck, big price. But you knew that. You’ll need half a million dollars for this self-effacing little rig, but at least that does include the base vehicle. Should you need such a thing in your otherwise modest, suburban life, get ready to talk big at HennesseyPerformance.com.

4x4 04/07/2023 17:11

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04/07/2023 15:02

NEWS

Iveco confirms right-hand drive Tigrotto chassis-cab for UK

O

h come on, this is ridiculous. A new van from Iveco, okay, let’s take a look.

And your first thought is ‘I want one. I really want one’. The Daily 4x4 Tigrotto has provoked some seriously positive reactions since it was first seen in public last year. Here are two.

One: Car magazine, yes, that bastion of serious investigation, said

this about the Tigrotto: ‘”Awesome” and “Iveco Daily” aren’t usually words CAR would be putting together.’ But they just did.

Two: It was only ever going to be available in left-hand drive but now it’s going to be offered in right-hand drive too, thanks to the overwhelming interest from us right-hookers.

And it just gets better. Because Iveco, for whatever reason, has not

just made this van look retro-tastic, the company has also invested to make it a pretty serious go-anywhere van. But before we dive into that, you’re doubtless wondering about the name.

It means ‘tiger cub’ in Italian, and it harks back to a vehicle of that name from 1957. It’s a bit tenuous it seems to me since the original was a bluff-fronted bigger truck. And this new one looks so much better and so, so much more stylish. Possibly even stylisher.

That style leads from the front, with that nose that combines mod-

ern aerodynamics with some terrific nods at the heritage, not least the badging, round lights and the touches of red. The theme continues inside with some retro touches to what Iveco calls a ‘vintage inspired’ fascia. But there is also all the modern kit you’d want or need. There are three separate seats, all looking a bit retro, with bespoke floor mats as well. It looks great in there.

But, you’re thinking, what about the other stuff, the hardware, the nitty-gritty? Patience, my little cub, we have come to that. Because there is only one engine we can talk about.

Three seats, and very cool they are too. As is the dashboard. Which in turn reflects how cool it is from the outside. Bacially, you can outcool most anyone in one of these – and out-drive them off-road, too

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04/07/2023 17:11

NEWS

At a time when most vans have a 2.0-litre turbodiesel, the Tigrotto has Iveco’s 178bhp 3.0-litre turbodiesel.

Working through the proven eightspeed HI-MATIC auto gearbox, that’s a powerful statement in itself.

As with the already existing Daily 4x4 range, there will be two versions called All-Road and Off-Road. The first is already more of an off-roader than almost anything else you can buy; the second is road-legal but designed for users who hardly have to suffer the tedium of tarmac at all, like a John Deere Gator or Kawasaki Mule but on a vast scale.

Ground clearance is massive either way, and so is the strength of the engineering beneath you. The Off-Road model sits higher than ever on even taller tyres, but both have a two-speed transfer case and three, yes three, locking diffs.

There’s underbody protection in cheery red, and it may be stylish but there’s been thought put into those approach and departure angles too.

While we’re down there, can we just say we love those retro black and red wheels too?

However, you notice we didn’t mention anything about ramp breakover angle when talking about approach and departure angles.

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That’s because this isn’t being sold as a fully finished vehicle but as a chassis-cab – at one level that’s a great reminder that it does indeed have a separate chassis, like a proper 4x4, but at another level it means some choices will need to be made.

What are you going to add to the back and what length are you going for? A dropside pick-up (like in the photos), motorhome-from-home, panel van, go-anywhere glamping rig?

Whatever you decide, it looks highly likely that this Iveco will get you there and back in some style.

Prices? They’re not going to be as pretty as the vehicle itself. The everyday Daily 4x4 starts at around £70k, but for that you’re getting a really serious and yet enormously fun truck that will be your stylish companion on every off-road adventure. More to the point, you can look down your nose at people who’ve spent a bit more on a Defender so they can look down their noses at people.

Obviously, there’ll also be the cost of whatever you’re going to put on the back. But as blank canvases go, this has got to be one of the biggest and best you’ll ever see. The order book is open now, with right-hand drive deliveries expected to kick off in time for Christmas. Hint.

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| 11 16:02 AUGUST 2023 09/02/2023

04/07/2023 17:11

PRODUCTS

Osram introduces new range of work lights designed for professional use

LIGHTING SPECIALIST OSRAM HAS ANNOUNCED the launch of its most recent product range, the LEDriving Professional Series.

A new range of work lights, the Professional Series (PX) offers a wide range of different combination options for individual lighting needs, based on a unique matrix system.

The range is designed to meet the highest standards, with the aim of ensure workers’ safety through the best possible illumination.

As you’d expect from Osram, the LED fixtures are robust and compact, promising extremely high optical efficiency combined with

even light distribution and a glare-reducing reflector design.

The range includes a total of 16 working lights, covering a variety of performances, shapes and beam patterns. All of these offer maximum optical efficiency and homogeneous light distribution.

And in addition to the lights themselves in the new PX series, Osram has developed a range of tailor-made accessories including two mounting kits and a cable with a DT connector, allowing users to simply assemble, adapt, combine and, if required, easily interchange the lights they need.

These new lights from Osram are suitable for 12V and 24V applications and each offers a total of four beam patterns (Flood, Spot, Wide and Ultra-Wide) as well as four power levels – 1500lm, 2500lm, 3500lm and 4500lm. They can be mounted in three different ways – directly to your vehicle or with a choice of flexible and heavy-duty mounting kits.

Osram’s Flexible Mounting Kit is compatible with all work lights in the PX series and is designed for easy, uncomplicated and flexible assembly, with the mounting requiring just one central screw. As its name suggests, the Heavy Duty Mounting Kit is intended specifically for heavy-duty applications and is particularly robust. Naturally, this kit too is compatible with all working lights in the PX range.

The final accessory in the range is the Connection Cable 300 DT AX for 12V and 24V applications.

This is three metres in length and provides easy installation in any kind of vehicle.

Osram is a group of companies whose history goes way back to before the days of LED lighting. It’s been around for a combined 110 years and become a global leader in its field. ‘Our core is defined by imagination, deep engineering expertise and the ability to provide global industrial capacity in sensor and light technologies,’ it says. ‘Our around 22,000 employees worldwide focus on innovation across sensing, illumination and visualisation to make journeys safer.’

The new PX-Series work lights have been tested in an environmental simulation laboratory and certified according to DIN EN ISO/ IEC 17025 for extreme external influences such as water, dust, hot and cold temperatures, permanent vibrations and shocks. They are validated according to the highest IP and IK protection classes, IP6K8 and IP6K9K, meaning you can rely on them to be as tough and long-lasting as the vehicle you mount them on. As well as their powerful performance, they promise an exceptionally long service life – backed up by Osram’s outstanding five-year guarantee.

GOT A FREELANDER? There was a time when asking that in off-road circles would have been like saying ‘want a fight,’ but times have changed and people are starting to look at Solihull’s baby as a serious prospect for adventure travel.

If that’s you, these Summit roof bars from Britpart are likely to be up your street.

Rated to carry 75kg, they come fully assembled and ready to fit to any Freelander 2.

They’re made from steel, have a 20 x 30mm profile and come with a non-slip coating.

The bars are manufactured to TUV standards and carry a reassuring three-year guarantee.

Expect to pay around £110 plus the VAT.

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4x4 04/07/2023 17:26

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PRODUCTS

Isuzu partners with ARB to lauch kit range for new D-Max ISUZU DEALERS ARE NOW OFFERING A RANGE OF ARB ACCESSORIES AS OFFICIAL EQUIPMENT, after the two companies’ UK importers reached a deal to partner up on enhancing the recently facelifted double-cab. Rather than buying a standard vehicle then sending it off to be modified, dealers participating in the scheme will be able to offer customers the opportunity to buy a brand new truck already fitted with the accessories of their choice.

These accessories cover a wide spectrum of off-road needs, whether they be professional or recreational. ‘Isuzu UK and ARB’s collaboration showcases an impressive assortment of enhancements,’ the manufacturer says, ‘including innovative drawer systems equipped with convenient slide-out kitchens, premium rooftop tents, versatile awnings and top-of-the-line camping gear.

‘Additionally, the collection boasts durable roof racks, reliable recovery gear and practical canopies.’ Isuzu adds that the accessories it’s approved ‘have been rigorously tested in real-life conditions to ensure they meet the high standards for quality, safety, and performance set by both Isuzu and ARB.’ ARB’s reputation goes before it in the off-road world, having become known for the ruggedness and quality of its products since its establishment in 1975. ‘With its origins rooted in the Australian Outback,’ says Isuzu, ‘ARB offers a comprehensive range of products including bull bars, winches, suspension systems, roof racks, recovery gear and camping equipment. Trusted by adventurers and off-road enthusiasts, ARB is synonymous with durability, reliability and performance, ensuring that your vehicle is equipped to conquer any terrain and endure the rigours of off-road exploration.’ We ourselves are among the off-road enthusiasts with the company’s kit on one of our

4X4

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14 | AUGUST 2023

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PRODUCTS vehicles – a D-Max, no less, which boasts ARB’s cheerfully indestructible front and rear bumpers.’

‘This exciting partnership between Isuzu and ARB will allow Isuzu D-Max owners to fully customise their vehicle to suit their needs, whether off-roading or outdoor adventurers,’ said ARB UK’s Matthew McConaghy.

Isuzu UK’s accessories guy Steve Page added: ‘We are excited to partner with ARB UK and provide our customers with a comprehensive range of accessories that will enable them to customise their Isuzu D-Max according to their specific requirements. This partnership allows us to offer a vehicle that can suit any need, whether it’s for work, adventure or lifestyle.

‘Isuzu is committed to providing its customers with the best possible products and services, and this partnership with ARB is just one example of that commitment. With a range of approved accessories now available, Isuzu D-Max owners can look forward to even greater versatility and functionality from their vehicles.’

Want to know more about the ARB range on offer for the D-Max? Your local Isuzu dealership will be your first port of call.

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| 15 AUGUST 2023 11/01/2023 17:23

04/07/2023 17:26

GENERAL JEEP We’re not sure why Jeep decided to name this concept double-cab after the hair on the Words: Graham Scott Pictures: Jeep

J

eep takes its heritage seriously, which you can see in the titles of the concept vehicles it creates. But Sideburn? This one seems to be named after the luxurious side-whiskers which chaps can grow from above their ears down to their cheeks. Think Elvis Presley. Which is – odd.

Of course, some people grow those sideburns right down and into their moustaches. If you’re going to do that you need to be able to do so with heroic vigour or you run the risk of having feeble facial hair straggling above your mouth. What The Chap magazine would dismiss as a ‘lip weasel’.

One person who clearly put some effort into his facial fungus was an American Civil War general named Ambrose Burnside. He was famous for his hirsute appearance, especially when he aged and became governor of Rhode Island. And at some point his name got flipped, and that facial topiary became known as sideburns.

Which, we assume, is how this Jeep concept gained its name. We thought you’d like to know, because otherwise it makes as much sense as calling it ‘The Mullet’.

So what is the (deep breath) Jeep Gladiator Rubicon Sideburn Concept? Apart from a concept that has had numerous names thrown at it, like the marketing team couldn’t decide between General Ambrose Burnside and General Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the True Emperor.

Either general would have found a use for this Jeep, that’s for sure. The whole idea seems to be that it’s useful. That it can do stuff, that it’s tough enough to live outdoors while not consuming too much. So far it sounds like a sheepdog.

Continuing the military theme though, let’s start at the rear and advance steadily forward. And at the rear we find a system you’ll find on a lot of military kit: the Molle concept. This stands for Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment. In essence it’s a series of loops in webbing, packs, vests and other equipment to which you can

16 | AUGUST 2023

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attach all manner of gear. The Sideburn takes this idea and turns it into the loadbed.

The side panels in the bed are made of a Molle lightweight material so you can fix various loads in a modular manner instead of trying not to ping yourself in the eye as you attach a bungee cord to something the hook won’t quite grip properly.

There are also things called RotoPaX containers, which are ‘specially designed for liquid storage’.

So, containers then. Good to keep the beer handy, if nothing else.

As you can see, there’s another bar system between the cab and the load bed which is a JPP Gladiator Sport Bar (do you think they had

4x4 03/07/2023 18:23

side of your face. In the absence of an understandable name, we’re just glad they made it

one of those in the Colosseum in Rome?). On the concept vehicle it’s made of carbon fibre and steel, and has a mid shelf where you can use the eight tie-down loops to tether totes and whatever else you need, while it’s also a great place to set up stowage systems for kayaks, bikes or whatever.

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Ahead of that is a neat lightbar with two pairs of 11” TYRI LED lights, which can be quickly detached for when you lose your contact lens by the fire or there’s a horrible growling coming from the treeline.

In such a situation it would probably be wise to hop into the cabin. Unlike with another of Jeep’s

concepts, the reimagined Cherokee SJ we gloried in last month, the company hasn’t gone so crazy with the interior. It’s more modestly styled with Vienesse Relicate Nappa leather – something that looks like a series of spelling mistakes, but is actually rather smart. Offset with Soul-Stopper thread, which runs through the instrument panel

AUGUST 2023 | 17

03/07/2023 18:23

and steering wheel, it’s eye-catching without being eye-watering. There’s also a fine array of instrument panel bezels and even a 3D map of Moab with silver trails picked out of the background black to adorn the dash.

Anyone trying to access this cabin with a grizzly behind them would appreciate the halfdoors, sidesteps and grab handles. Funny how the things you’d want if you were old and infirm are exactly the things you’d want if you were being pursued by an irate bear.

Although diving in and sighing with relief might not be the perfect moment to realise that there is no glass in the windows. Some time later, some pale and shaken people might be glad of the heavy-duty vinyl floor system with integrated floor drains. You can hose this one out, which might be handy.

But at least there is a windscreen – some of these concepts take the idea of being at one with nature just that bit far. On that point, and not shown in the photos we’ve seen, there are things called limb-riser. No, I didn’t know what that meant either.

Limb risers are what you probably know as brush wires – effectively a pair of cables that go from the front of the bonnet up either side to the top of the windscreen. The idea is that if you’re going through heavy brush or whatever, the cables will sweep branches and stuff up and over the top of the vehicle, thereby saving the windscreen.

Whether it would work with a 500lb grizzly that’s having a bad day is another matter.

So, we’re working our way forward, and all we have left on this first fly-by is the front. And there we find a Rubicon bumper with a Warn winch,

18 | AUGUST 2023

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further enhancing the practical qualities of this rig. Above the winch is a tubular guard which has the unusual ability to swing down so that it offers a sort of bench seat, what Jeep call ‘a perfect relaxation perch’. Presumably not at speed.

Speaking of speed, what propels this thing?

You think you know the answer: an electric motor

3.6-litre engine to a set of 37” tyres and throwing it at the rocks is only ever going to ask questions of your suspension, after all.

Jeep sees this as ‘a new tool designed for the burgeoning interest in off-road adventures’.

Obviously at this stage they can throw everything at it, in expensive materials, because it’s not a

‘Funny how all the things you’d want if you were old and infirm are the same things you’d want if you were being pursued by a bear’ or two, so that the bears don’t choke on the fumes. Well, bad news for the bears, and good news for petrolheads. This one has a 3.6-litre V6 under the bonnet. No, no hybrid stuff to appease white guilt, this one’s a full-fat petrol engine.

Naturally all the wheels are powered when necessary, all four of them, with a fifth 17” HRE six-spoke alloy and accompanying 37” BFG tyre secured down in the load bed. And there’s a certain amount of space between the bodywork and the tyres thanks to the JPP 2” lift kit.

Tracking around Moab, it can be a very open, barren area with no shade, so it’s not a bad thing that the ride is controlled by Bilstein performance shocks with remote reservoirs to keep things relatively cool when it all gets gnarly. Attaching a

production vehicle, but it certainly does show the direction of travel.

And it’s good to see that the direction of travel seems to be towards real-life, real-world applications. Sure, it’s mildly extreme, but it’s not incredibly so. It really does seem to put practicality and rugged usefulness high on the agenda.

And, sure, you couldn’t fit many Union soldiers in it, nor Roman legionnaires come to that (mind your pilum, Centurion). But in the 21st Century it makes some sense in places like Moab. And it’s nice to see that the soft-roader, crossover, ‘I’ll be whatever you want me to be’ whiny electric kind of thinking hasn’t worn down Jeep’s determination to get out there and be out there.

The generals would agree on that.

4x4 03/07/2023 18:23

ALL TERRAIN ADVENTURE

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27/06/2023 28/06/2023 11:25 10:43

DRIVEN

TOYOTA HILUX GR SPORT Inspired by Toyota’s recent dominance at the Dakar, new range-topper for the Hilux line-up adds sporting image and enhanced suspension to the already comprehensive Invincible spec list

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WINNING THE DAKAR RALLY TAKES SOME DOING, even when you’re one of the world’s biggest car manufacturers. So Toyota was rightly chuffed when Nasser Al-Attiyah took the crown in 2022, and immediately set about celebrating the way car manufacturers do.

The winning vehicle was a Hilux, so it stands to reason that that’s what the celebratory model would be. It’s called the Hilux GR Sport (after Toyota Gazoo Racing, the works team that put the vehicle on the top step of the Dakar podium) and it went on sale last year at a price of £37,551 plus VAT on the road.

That’s £44,995 with the dreaded, if you’re wondering, and it punts the GR Sport straight to the top of the Hilux range. Fans of the iconic pick-up have been getting pretty excited about it – and having finally had our first experience of one, we’d say they’re right to be.

The GR Sport is based on the Invincible, which is a good start. You get the 2.8-litre diesel engine from the top of the range, meaning 201bhp and 369lbf.ft of torque; driving through a six-speed automatic box, it’ll pull all day long; the numbers that matter are 1000kg and 3500kg, so fear not, it’s still a commercial, and a masterful one it is too.

Masterful and lavishly equipped. The list includes a premium JBL sound system, sat-nav, heated front and rear seats, LED headlamps, dual-zone climate, automatic limited-slip diff and an extremely good Panoramic View Monitor, which displays a bird’s eye view of the vehicle’s position on the media screen in front of you. This is first and foremost a parking aid, but it will also step up when you’re picking your way through tight terrain off-road.

The first thing to say about the GR Sport, though, is that it looks good.

That’s because it’s the first thing you notice, and also because it’s the main reason you’ll be thinking about buying one. However it’s not the main reason you should be thinking about buying one.

We’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s consider the styling package. Toyota describes the grille thus: ‘A dedicated G-pattern mesh and a prominent central horizontal bar with the ‘Toyota’ name classically rendered, in place of the brand emblem. This heritage-inspired touch references the badging on the fourth generation Hilux of the early 1980s.’

We’re tempted to distil this down to ‘it looks hard,’ but that’s a little too simplistic. Mind you, with enlarged front fog light bezels to go with its bold new grill, it’s certainly no shrinking violet.

The theme continues. If you don’t like chrome, you’ll appreciate this: the door mirror bodies, side steps, wheelarch extensions and tailgate handles are all black, as are the standard-fit sports styling bar and 17” alloys. The latter are pleasingly sensible in their size, and better still they’re shod with all-terrain tyres.

4x4 3pp Hilux GR Sport.indd 21

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DRIVEN If you get stuck in a traffic jam, you can always entertain yourself by trying to count all the GR badges. This is basically the Invincible interior, but the red styling element and contrast stitching sets it off a treat Inside, you get new sports front seats trimmed in black leather and synthetic suede with red perforations and contrast stitching.

That’s the first thing you notice when you open the door; after that, you start counting the GR Sport logos on the seat facings, carpet mats, starter button, media screen and so on. They definitely want you to remember what you’re driving. There are carbon-effect trim inserts and a red styling line across the dash, plus blue mood lighting in the doors.

There’s something else red about the GR Sport, too. Get underneath and you’ll see that the springs and shocks stand out a mile. And here’s the reason why we think you should be considering one.

The Hilux is already an agile, alert pick-up that’s easy to drive around town and a docile companion on the motorway. But we’ve previously commented that we’d like to see more steering feel and response on the way into corners, particularly at speed.

Well, our prayers have been answered. The GR Sport features new, stiffer front coils and monotube shocks all round, promising faster responses as well as better heat dissipation for more a consistent performance under prolonged hard use. Toyota promises ’significant improvements in handling characteristics, including steering effort and steering angle response, straight-line performance, a flat ride and reassuring roll and rear grip feel.’

These things often sound like hot air, but we found the GR Sport better to drive than other Hiluxes we’ve experienced. It’s always a good truck, but this one is noticeably easier around town and on the open road. It’s brisk, positive and thoroughly biddable – but also refined, smooth and fuss-free. Corrugations don’t shake it, nor do pot-holes – in fact, we found that not even a rough green lane, run through with tree roots, could faze it at all.

22 | AUGUST 2023

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Make no mistake, the Hilux was already good in all sorts of ways. But the GR Sport is usefully better, providing you with fluent, predictable handling that allows you to take fast corners (or rather, to take corners fast) with confidence and authority. In this way, it’s the first to truly make the most of the 2.8-litre engine’s 201bhp output.

Vehicles with ‘sport’ badging are all too often about as sporty as Jabba the Hut. But while it’s not any faster than similarly engine Hiluxes, at least in terms of the figures, you can certainly hustle it more quickly from A to B. And by avoiding the lure of huge alloys, Toyota has kept it honest off-road, too – where the limited-slip rear diff adds an extra layer of traction that makes it quite hard to find the limits of what you can tackle.

Would it be our choice as the basis for an off-road build? The base-speccer probably still just gets the nod there, but make no mistake – the GR Sport makes a very strong case for itself. Ask the same question about a do-it-all lifestyle truck that’ll keep coming back for more, and the case starts to look not so much strong as watertight.

4x4 03/07/2023 18:31

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AUGUST 2023 | 23

O

ne-off customised vehicles tend to be used for play, not work. The moment you take a truck away from its manufacturer’s standard specification, the theory goes, you make it less reliable – especially, perhaps, if the manufacturer in question happens to be Toyota.

The Land Cruiser is, after all, a byword for dependability. It’ll do what you want, without doing what you don’t, and with the right servicing it’ll keep on doing it forever. Just look at the number of old ones you can find in the small ads with a quarter of a million miles or more on the

24 | AUGUST 2023

Browne LC200 Ute.indd 24

clock, and compare that with how frequently you ever see anything else getting there.

You certainly do see people modifying Land Cruisers, however – even if in the main, they do it by adding accessories. Expedition gear is a favourite, though it’s not uncommon to see them being turned into extreme off-road toys too.

But it’s very uncommon indeed to see a 200-Series being turned in to a double-cab. Unless you’re in Australia, of course, where converting big Cruisers into utes has long been a popular job.

We’re not in Australia, though. We’re in Oxfordshire, where Rob Browne is a farmer. It’s

the family business and has been for, he says, at least four generations – which is also pretty much as long as Land Cruisers have been in the family.

‘They’re just good, reliable trucks,’ he says, ‘and second-hand values are so good that once you’ve made the initial outlay, they don’t actually cost very much to own.’

That explains why pretty much all his close relatives drive them. He’s had Nissan Patrols, too, as well as Hiluxes and, more recently, a Volkswagen Amarok, but the unique 200-Series you see here is the latest (and possibly last) in a long line stretching back through the 100-Series

4x4 03/07/2023 18:25

make mine a double Once you’ve had a Toyota Land Cruiser in your life, you tend never to want to be without one. But if you also need a double-cab, that gives you a problem. Yes, there are utility versions of the mighty J70, but they don’t come to Britain – and if you’re already used to going about in a 200-Series, you may find that the only answer is to get the pros on the case…

Words: Paul Looe Pictures: Harry Hamm

Amazon to perhaps the best vehicle of all time, the magnificent old 80.

He’s owned the vehicle from when it was about a year old and had something like 10,000 miles on the clock. Fast forward to about five years ago and that mileage had another zero on the end of it – but, while the Cruiser was doing a sterling job as Rob’s daily driver and tow barge, regularly hauling heavy loads between his farms in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire, something wasn’t quite clicking for him. ‘I always found there was something I couldn’t fit in the back,’ he says – and that’s what got him thinking about a double-cab.

4x4 Browne LC200 Ute.indd 25

03/07/2023 18:25

The double-cab in question was actually an HZJ79 which he’d spotted for sale. But as is the norm when these fantastically popular (and just plain fantastic) trucks come up, it had already been spoken for. So having missed out on that, he started thinking about building a double-cab out of what he already had.

26 | AUGUST 2023

Browne LC200 Ute.indd 26

This is not exactly an everyday job, but the same 4x4 specialist that had been selling the 79 also turned out to be up for doing the job. And so he dropped it off and they got to work.

And how. ‘I think I took it there on a Thursday,’ Rob says, ‘and by Saturday they had cut the back off!’ No messing about, then.

What the workshop team did was create a new back to the cab, with a flat bed mounted to the chassis behind it. The chassis itself didn’t need any work, thankfully, though the filler neck had to be remade and the cap relocated. On top, removable corner posts frame the tailgate and a pair of drop-down sides, allowing the bed to be loaded from more or less anywhere.

On the back, the original light clusters have been replaced with turret-style lamps from the back of a Land Rover Defender.

‘If I smash one,’ muses Rob, ‘it’s pence to replace. Rather than thirty quid.’

The work that’s gone into the body looks very tidy indeed, with no external sign of where the sides and roof were cut. To use a well worn phrase, it looks like it was meant to be that way. It’s beautifully finished inside, too, with carpeted panels trimming the entire rear of the cab; as a finishing touch, there’s even a tailored recess for the original jack in there.

In true pick-up style, the bed gets used for absolutely anything and everything.

Building materials are a common favourite, and during harvest time it was regularly carrying tools and spare parts for combines. The bed structure also carries a couple of lockers behind the rear wheels, which provide further stowage for the sort of stuff you don’t want to leave lying around.

4x4 03/07/2023 18:25

Left: The pick-up bed features lockers behind each of the rear wheels, with plenty of space for tools and so on Above: The 200-Series came with very fancy 20” alloys. These 17” steels are much better suited to life on the farm, as are the higher-profile tyres wrapped around them Finishing off the new image is a set of the sort of wheels you want on a truck. That is, 17” steels, which look a lot more in keeping than the original 20” alloys would. The 245/75R17 tyres wrapped around them have far more sidewall height than standard, too, and Rob is a big fan of the effect this has – in particular to the way it handles, which may surprise you if you don’t recognise the joy of chucking around a vehicle with the lavish body roll of a true off-roader.

Interestingly, Rob doesn’t bother with all-terrain or mud-terrain tyres. The road-biased Dunlops currently on board seem to do the job just fine – even though they’re visibly worn in places, they’ll still haul the Cruiser around perfectly competently on stubble fields or rough farm tracks. Their high-profile size makes them pretty much pothole-proof, too, which Rob says is a big improvement over the old 20-inchers. Helping

Browne LC200 Ute.indd 27

the tyres here is a +50mm Ironman suspension kit which was fitted some time before the truck conversion happened.

Driving the Cruiser as it is now, it rides and handles impeccably – even when it’s being spanked over the uneven fields where it earns its living. Without wanting to make ridiculous comparisons, the feeling of bracing yourself for an impact that never happens is somewhat reminiscent of being in a good comp safari vehicle – its huge body is very well controlled, and damping from the Ironman shocks is masterful.

Not surprisingly, the 4.5-litre V8 diesel engine remains an absolute powerhouse of a thing, and the auto box behind it is as sure as ever in operation. There are two good reasons for that: one, it’s Toyota, and two, Rob looks after it, changing the oil in engine and gearbox alike way more frequently than the service book asks for.

Does he have any criticisms of the work that’s been done on the vehicle? Not greatly. He’d like it if the pick-up body had been fabricated from thicker steel, he says, but accepts that by the time it was built, he was knocking on towards the top end of his budget. To our eyes, certainly, the conversion looks like it’s standing up well to the hard use it gets. And in terms of the truck’s front-to-rear weight balance, there’s nothing wrong with it at all.

Converting station wagons into pick-ups is not new, but in Britain it’s been pretty much exclusive to Land Rover Discoverys and Range Rovers. If we had as many Land Cruisers and Patrols here as they have in Australia, no doubt Rob’s truck wouldn’t be so very unique – but if you’ve got the need for an extra-large pick-up and you want it to go on forever, this is definitely one way to combine extreme luxury with extreme utility.

03/07/2023 18:25

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169

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EXETER 16 Trusham Rd. EX2 8QG 01392 256 744 GATESHEAD 50 Lobley Hill Rd. NE8 4YJ 0191 493 2520 GLASGOW 280 Gt Western Rd. G4 9EJ 0141 332 9231 GLOUCESTER 221A Barton St. GL1 4HY 01452 417 948 GRIMSBY ELLIS WAY, DN32 9BD 01472 354435 HULL 8-10 Holderness Rd. HU9 1EG 01482 223161 ILFORD 746-748 Eastern Ave. IG2 7HU 0208 518 4286 IPSWICH Unit 1 Ipswich Trade Centre, Commercial Road 01473 221253 LEEDS 227-229 Kirkstall Rd. LS4 2AS 0113 231 0400 LEICESTER 69 Melton Rd. LE4 6PN 0116 261 0688 LINCOLN Unit 5. The Pelham Centre. LN5 8HG 01522 543 036 LIVERPOOL 80-88 London Rd. L3 5NF 0151 709 4484 LONDON CATFORD 289/291 Southend Lane SE6 3RS 0208 695 5684 LONDON 6 Kendal Parade, Edmonton N18 020 8803 0861 LONDON 503-507 Lea Bridge Rd. Leyton, E10 020 8558 8284 LUTON Unit 1, 326 Dunstable Rd, Luton LU4 8JS 01582 728 063 MAIDSTONE 57 Upper Stone St. ME15 6HE 01622 769 572 MANCHESTER ALTRINCHAM 71 Manchester Rd. Altrincham 0161 9412 666 MANCHESTER CENTRAL 209 Bury New Road M8 8DU 0161 241 1851 MANCHESTER OPENSHAW Unit 5, Tower Mill, Ashton Old Rd 0161 223 8376 MANSFIELD 169 Chesterfield Rd. South 01623 622160 MIDDLESBROUGH Mandale Triangle, Thornaby 01642 677881

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£ .98 Portable & adjustable 219exc.VAT Maximum lift of 1000kg £263.98 inc.VAT Solid steel Folding and fixed WAS £287.98 inc.VAT frames available Robust, rugged construction Overload safety valve

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33710 (70) 4x4 (full).indd 1 4x4 Magazine_2023_August_Machine Mart_FP.indd 1

05/05/2023 30/06/2023 14:59 13:58

Expedition Prepped Land Cruiser 120 • Low miles • Fsh • 2006 reg • Internal and external prep • 30mm lift • AC • Tow bar • Underbody protection • Tyres: General Grabber ATs • 3 seats and backend modded for bed, storage • Space for ARB fridge-freezer (or cooker) Top-box, roof lights and awning no longer fitted

OFFERS OVER £15,000

For details please contact: Email: corluv@duck.com or Tel: 07831 395 345 4x4 Magazine_2023_August_Peter Weaver_HP.indd 1

30/06/2023 13:50

4x4 Magazine_2023_August_KS International_HP.indd 1

29/06/2023 11:46

4x4

AUGUST 2023 | 29

D

ouble-cabs first came to Britain in the mid-90s, when Vauxhall launched a four-door version of the Brava – a rebadged take on the Isuzu TF. There had been a few grey imports before that, but it wasn’t until the early part of the new millennium that the craze really started to take off. And it’s been on an upward trajectory ever since.

By the time the market reached full maturity with the presence of the Mitsubishi L200, Toyota Hilux, Nissan D22, Ford Ranger and Mazda

30 | AUGUST 2023

3pp Luffman 130.indd 30

B-Series (not to mention the Tata TL, though not mentioning it is probably the best thing you could do), it was clear that double-cabs were much more than just a craze – what we were witnessing was a permanent shift in the way a significant number of people chose their vehicles. Even Land Rover was prompted to create a double-cab version of the 110.

Except, in a manner of speaking, it already had.

And it had done it way back before the rest of the market even started to happen.

Make no mistake, the original double-cab was not a lifestyle vehicle. Though in the hands of those who have come to own them down the years, that’s what some of them have become.

Sounds very Defender indeed – which is exactly what the Land Rover 127 was.

Introduced in 1983, the 127 was aimed at industrial and military clients. And with the capacity to carry six people, a payload of up to 1400kg and the usual 3500kg towing limit, it proved very popular with them, becoming a

4x4 03/07/2023 18:27

innovation station

Way back in the early 1980s, before the deluge ofJapanese double-cabs that started more than a decade later, Land Rover hit on the idea of combining the cab of a station wagon with the back of a hi-cap pick-up.

The result was the 127, later the 130 – and this example is surely one of the most innovative of them all Words: Gary Noskill Pictures: Steve Taylor

familiar sight in the livery of local authorities and utility companies.

It wasn’t an overnight success, however. Land Rover’s range of engines was already pedestrian in the 90, and with all that extra weight to shift around in the 127 it was little short of tragic. The only exception was the 3.5-litre V8, but even at less than 40p a litre this was still thirsty enough to make your eyes water. It was the arrival the 2.5 TD engine that kick-started sales – which then took another leap in 1990 when the Defender name

4x4 3pp Luffman 130.indd 31

was introduced, the Tdi era dawned and the 127 became known as the 130.

Actually, the 127 didn’t become known as the 130. It was replaced by the 130. That might sound like splitting hairs but actually, they were different vehicles in a very significant way.

What way would that be? Well, it doesn’t get much more significant than a vehicle’s chassis, does it?

Early on, before the 127 name was adopted, the truck was known as the 110 Crew-Cab. It was in

effect the front of a 110 Station Wagon mashed up with the back of a 110 Hi-Cap – but of course, that extra length needed a longer wheelbase.

To achieve this, there was a special production line at Solihull dedicated to these vehicles. A special production line, but not a special chassis.

Instead, Land Rover’s approach was to take a 110 chassis, cut it in half and weld in an extra 17 inches. Slight over-simplification there, but that’s how they did it until 1990 and the arrival of the Defender 130.

AUGUST 2023 | 31

03/07/2023 18:27

Right: For massive pulling power and the reliability to match, Ian installed the 4.2-litre diesel from a Toyota Land Cruiser. Peerless Bottom: Swan-neck trailer on a fifth-wheel attachment was Ian’s own design. A 130 with a triple-axle trailer is a pretty big rig, but its manoeuvrability with this set-up would make your eyes pop These extra-big Defenders have never become quite as popular among enthusiasts as the 90 and 110. Their sheer size makes them a handful if you don’t need it – though if you do find a way to put it to good use, a 127 or 130 can be the most practical thing in the world.

Your thoughts might well be turning to expedition travel here, and sure enough you can create an epic overland machine by fetching the back body off a 127 or 130 and building your own camper body in its place. But we’re here to talk pick-ups – and if bed length is what you’re after, you’ll go a long way before you can match the Land Rover you’re looking at here.

If you think a cut-and-shut 110 chassis already marks out the 127 as being a bit of an oddity, you’re not alone. But equally, that’s absolutely nothing compared to what Ian Luffman had going on when he built his truck, a Defender 130 dating from July 1990.

What were we saying earlier on about Land Rover’s engines being short on power? Well, someone must have decided to do something about that because when Ian bought it, the 130 had a 4.2-litre Range Rover V8 under its bonnet.

And what were we saying about Rover V8s being thirsty? Someone must have decided to do something about that, too, because they’d converted it to LPG. Ian decided to do something about both.

Now, the 4.2-litre version of the V8 came from the Range Rover Vogue LSE, itself an extendedwheelbase model which, at the time, was the pinnacle of pace and luxury in the Land Rover stable. So, enough power there for your average pick-up driver, you’d think.

And maybe you’d be right. However Ian was anything but your average pick-up driver. He wanted the 130 to use both as a work motor for his fabrication business and a tow barge for a hybrid Land Rover built for winch challenges, and he wanted it to be as reliable as it was powerful (and he wanted it to be plenty powerful). So he turned to Toyota.

Thus this remained a vehicle with a 4.2-litre engine. It was a very different 4.2-litre engine, though. In place of the Rover V8, he dropped in a straight-six, 24-valve turbo-diesel from an 80-Series Land Cruiser. Surely one of the finest diesel engines ever fitted to a 4x4 (and surely one of the finest ever 4x4s to boot), this makes for a vehicle that can tow most things most places.

Ian did a load more to it besides, however. The engine went in complete with its transmission, for example; if you want reliability, after all, mixing and matching major components is not the way to do it, but keeping it Toyota from stem to stern certainly is. It was all done with surprisingly little aggro (the gearstick even lined up with the hole

32 | AUGUST 2023

3pp Luffman 130.indd 32

in the tranny tunnel, and a standard radiator has enough guts to keep it cool) and custom heavyduty propshafts were made up to mate with the output flanges on the Land Cruiser’s transfer box and the inputs on the Land Rover diffs.

Actually, they’re Salisbury diffs, because the base vehicle was an ex-MOD truck with the heavier-duty axles front and rear. These came with large disc brakes all-round; Ian wasn’t going to stop at that, though, and equipped the vehicle with air brakes connected to his triple-axle trailer.

Belt and braces is the only way to go when you’re knocking on the door of your gross train weight.

Having done all the work and got the 130 on the road, Ian reflected that the conversion was ‘a wise decision.’ A man given to understatement, possibly. ‘The car has a lot more oomph just where you need it,’ he added, which is one of those things that go without saying but you need to say it anyway.

He did a fair bit inside the vehicle, too. In went a TD5-era dashboard, which he reckoned would use less space than the earlier one, and Discovery seats – mounted further back than standard to let Ian stretch out and stay comfortable on long journeys. In the back of the cab, meanwhile, a three-seat bench was installed above a huge storage box used to carry spare parts for his hybrid or, when in work mode, all the tools of the fabricator’s trade. And there are some.

What you’re most likely to notice about the vehicle, though, is its towing attachment. Not something we say every day, so it must be a pretty special towing attachment. And indeed it is. It’s a ‘swan-neck’ design which Ian sourced in America and imported himself, citing the greater safety and manoeuvrability it offers compared to a conventional tow ball. As for the trailer, he designed that himself to fit the fifth-wheel towing attachment mounted in the rear loading bay.

The additional manoeuvrability it brings is little short of extraordinary. We watched while Ian turned round in a small farmyard – a challenge he made look embarrassingly straightforward.

The same could be said of the way the 130 towed at speed after gaining the heart of a Land Cruiser. Normally, you’d be aware that you’re hauling a load approaching the legal maximum – obviously, you don’t want to go forgetting it, but with the immensely planted stance of the Land Rover combined with the masterful power and torque of the Toyota engine, you’ve got the perfect recipe for making a tough job look easy.

Which is what we like about pick-ups, right?

They do the tough jobs, they do them well and they don’t make a song and dance about it. It doesn’t necessarily follow that the bigger they are, the better they’ll do it – though in the case of this particular Defender, it’s definitely what you do with it that counts.

4x4 03/07/2023 18:27

Future Proof Your Land Rover

Land Rover Chassis High quality chassis manufactured in the UK to fit most variants of Land Rover from 1948 to 2016.

Popular chassis held in stock for immediate collection.

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Review 17/02/2023 It's that good, we're thinking of adding one to the workshop wall to show folk the quality and attention to detail - Jedi 4x4: Richards Chassis New 200 TDi Bulkhead

4x4 Magazine_2023_May_Richards Chassis_FP.indd 1

Call Us Now on:01709 577 477 Visit our website: www.richardschassis.co.uk 11/04/2023 11:41

a hell of a hilux

If you look at the state of the world and it makes you want to pack up and leave, the problem is decided where to leave for. This Hilux puts more or less anywhere in reach for its owner – and it turns the sort of places that might sound like hell on Earth into a very acceptable sort of heaven Words: Graham Scott Pictures: Richard Hair and Gareth Richardson

34 | AUGUST 2023

Richardson Hilux.indd 34

4x4 04/07/2023 09:05

T

he world is going to hell, isn’t it?

Utility companies, civil service, banks, corporations – everyone focusing on themselves instead of their ‘customers’, the people they should be serving. The country swamped with shoddy housing, sewage and pampered liberal students with orange paint. Armed forces cut beyond the bone while the BBC send 500 staff to cover Glastonbury, to scold us while we’re trying to deal with rampant food inflation. And Harry is still a prince. What can we do?

It depends. In the USA, you’d be digging a bomb-proof shelter while stocking up on beans, bullets and gold. If you’re in the UK you probably tut a lot or, if really furious, take up knitting.

But there’s no question that the instinct to be prepared for any eventuality is a strong one, made even stronger by the ‘elite’s’ constant efforts to stop us flying (so we won’t get in the way of their private jets), eating meat (so they get the best cuts) or living by the sea (so they get clear views from their seaside mansions).

Are we heading into prepper territory? Are we thinking survivalism is a movement we could get behind? So many young people seem to have absorbed the catastrophe cult that it probably won’t be long before we start thinking about the survivability of things we own rather than how beautiful they are. Or, when choosing pets, how much meat is on them rather than the pleading look in their eyes.

In that spirit just look at this Toyota, a vehicle to make you stroke your beard thoughtfully while wondering where the hooks would go for the over-and-under Browning. It looks utterly indestructible. After all, who can forget Top Gear trying to destroy an earlier Hilux, doing everything from crashing it, drowning it in the sea and then setting it on fire. And still it ran.

Indestructible. Or invincible. Knowing the Japanese they probably reacted cautiously when someone suggested the name. What a hostage to fortune. Yet if any vehicle in the world deserves this title it is this. But that wasn’t enough for Gareth Richardson.

4x4 Richardson Hilux.indd 35

AUGUST 2023 | 35

04/07/2023 09:05

The truck itself is good, but the fully insulated Alu-Cab Camper body is where the magic happens. Gareth has equipped it with all sorts of stowage and equipment including a kitchen table, sink, gas cooker, fresh water and waste tanks, gas bottle and outside gas barbecue. It’s equipped with an Eberspacher diesel-powered night heater, too. Up top, the lid lifts to create a full living area, then out pops a fully selfsupporting 270-degree awning – beneath which the ground becomes your patio and the Sahara becomes your garden

36 | AUGUST 2023

Richardson Hilux.indd 36

4x4 04/07/2023 09:05

‘I love the truck for its comfort but when the going gets tough it just comes alive and never fails to impress’ He looked at the Invincible and thought that it had vulnerabilities. He’s fixed those. And he likes travelling long distances and the Hilux wasn’t perfect for that. Well, it is now. And, just coincidentally, it is now a moving fortress.

When ‘they’ come for your house because you have a log-burner and someone has ratted you out for putting steak on your gas barbecue while

not having had the latest drug booster, you’ll be gone. And with this rig you can go anywhere. Over the decades the Hilux has been to every desert, every corner of the world, both Poles and even Sloane Square. Nineteen million buyers can’t all be wrong.

Of course, some things in a stock Hilux simply don’t need changing. Partly because

they’ve been changing for decades. When the first Hilux came out back in the 1960s it had a 1.5-litre petrol engine. But now it has a standard 2.8-litre turbodiesel in this spec with 204bhp on tap. That’s at a lowly 3400rpm but from a mere 1400rpm there’s a gopping 368lbf.ft of torque to pull you out of any stupidity you may have got yourself into.

Plenty about the Hilux has been kept standard, on the basis that you can’t improve on perfection. Gareth went over it component by component and wherever he thought he could make it stronger, that’s what he did – mainly by fitting stuff from ARB, and it tends not to get much stronger than that. The Aussie company’s heavy-duty bumper is home to a 10,000lb Warn Zeon winch, and just visible below it is one of the ARB bash guards that keep it safe underneath. A +2” suspension kit from Old Man Emu (so, ARB again) makes room for 265/70R17 BFGs while also compensating the weight over the winch and bumper, and a Safari Snorkel helps minimise the amount of desert sand getting to the air filter

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Gareth’s Hilux in its natural habitat. This is what he built it for, and this is where it excels. Note how everthing you can see it a pick-up; there was a time when a UK expedition to the Sahara would have been wall-to-wall Land Rovers, but that time is well and truly in the past.

Whether you base your build on a Hilux, a D-Max, a Ranger, a Navara or an Amarok, double-cabs have completely taken over That engine certainly doesn’t need any changes. Ditto the gearbox, transfer case, propshafts, chassis, brakes – we know from long experience that they’re all good for enormous distances. This is not a soft-roader. And to underline that, Gareth had a good look at where he thought any weak points might be and toughened each and every one.

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ARB products unsurprisingly feature large.

Front winch bumper, full underbody protection guards, heavy-duty front and rear recovery points, breather kit for diffs and transmission – all ARB items and all the better for it.

A set of steel rock sliders add to all the underbody protection, but that in itself is protected by the Old Man Emu lift kit which adds

to the 310mm standard ground clearance. Under the wheelarches are standard wheels but shod with 265/70 R17 BFGoodrich All-Terrains, which Gareth notes are the largest tyres he could fit without them catching on the body.

The 2” lift works with 600kg constant loading springs and shocks at the rear, while the fronts were chosen to handle the extra weight of the bumper and winch.

That winch is the Warn Zeon 10,000lb unit with synthetic rope, and includes an isolator under the bonnet. That is powered by the pair of 85aH batteries but there is another pair of batteries, this time 100aH, along with a solar panel, in the rear.

Gareth admits that doing all the wiring himself meant a lot of long nights sorting it all out. But all that power is needed because of the home-fromhome that lives in the rear.

Although that assumes your home is as well sorted and comprehensively equipped as Gareth’s Hilux. And that is quite an assumption, says he, looking round where he lives. Slide into the cab and you have ahead of you much of the luxury that Toyota fits into this model, including heated leather seats with auto air-conditioning. Already it’s better than my tatty armchairs with a window open for the breeze.

Although it’s a Double Cab and you get four doors, the rear three seats have gone. This is a

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rig for one or two people in some comfort. The kids are going to have survive on their own, living their best feral life while you disappear into the wilderness outside the cities.

That space that would have been wasted on toys and whining kids is now given over to more useful stuff like a 60-litre fridge freezer and storage boxes for things like, oh I don’t know, beans and beer and shotgun cartridges to list stuff at random. Also back there is practical gear like tool kits, repair kits, oil and other useful things, although Gareth rather smugly makes the point that these are to help other people since he doesn’t need any help.

One of the things Gareth obviously did want was space. The great outdoors, away from neighbours, for one thing. And space within and around the Hilux for another. I’ve lived in places that were probably about the same cubic size, but they definitely weren’t so well or so cleverly equipped as this rig.

The obvious bit is the Alu-Cab Canopy Camper, which lives up to its ‘rough, tough camping solution’ tag. This fully insulated camping cleverness means a secure and spacious place to sleep high above the ground. Or, to put it another way, you’ve got an excellent observation platform and field of fire. So you’re safe from creepycrawlies. Like middle-class liberal students keen to show their virtue with orange paint.

They’d probably not approve of the Eberspacher diesel-powered night heater. But that’s just the start as Gareth has literally thrown the kitchen sink at this thing, including gas cooker, tanks for fresh water and waste, gas bottle, outside

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gas barbecue and even a full aluminium kitchen table. And all of this is covered by the 270-degree awning, which is self-supporting.

This is the sort of roughing it a good many of us could cope with. There’s a sort of Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment (MOLLE) system at the rear so you can attach any number of useful and luxury items to be used for whatever you’re doing out there. In other words, you’ve got pretty much what you’d have at home. Except the nosy neighbours.

That sense of being away from people has been a factor throughout the build of this great beast. It was yet another of those lockdown projects. Gareth is the third owner so he kitted it out himself, secure in the knowledge that he had a vehicle good for a lot more than the 70,000 miles it had on it when he bought it.

Not only that, but it had also been used around Luton and Cambridge, an area where there isn’t a lot of salt on the roads in winter, and so there was virtually no rust – not that that stopped him repainting and protecting the whole chassis.

However, having got it all done, he then found he hadn’t got it quite right. Some things you only find out in practice rather than theory. Trips abroad showed that the original twin roof tents were great for sleeping in, but if the weather was bad there wasn’t really enough room for resting and relaxing. That led to the Canopy Camper, something Gareth wishes he’d fitted from day one, but at least now it is nigh on perfect. As he says: ‘I now wouldn’t change anything. I love the truck!’

So what has worked particularly well? The change to the suspension seems to be the

biggest step forward, apart from the sleeping quarters. The Old Man Emu kit has added more comfort and control to the road ride while also adding to the capabilities when the off-roading gets rough. As Gareth puts it: ‘I love the truck for its comfort but when the going gets tough it just comes alive and never fails to impress.’

And for Gareth and his Hilux the going has got tough. Trips to the Sahara in North Africa – an area he wants to explore more, particularly West Africa – are never going to be easy. On one trip, deep into the desert, he had to use recovery techniques twice in short order. But, as he is keen to point out, that was to help others.

Gareth in his Hilux and a mate in a Nissan were crossing featureless dunes when his mate managed to run into the only tree for possibly hundreds of miles. Gareth got out the winch to recover him. Once he’d stopped laughing.

They set off but hadn’t gone far before they came across a 110 completely stuck up to its chassis in the sand. Once again Gareth deployed the Hilux, this time with a snatch strap, and the Land Rover and its grateful – and embarrassed – occupants was quickly free. Once Gareth had stopped laughing.

That what happens when you get away from it all. You meet interesting like-minded people who make you laugh. To many people an empty, hot desert would be hell on Earth. But when you know you have the rig of rigs under you, and many of the creature comforts of home, you can enjoy the wonders of the desert to the full, relaxed in the knowledge that the world may be going to hell but it’s doing so a long, long way away.

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Cosmetic Surgery

It took Land Rover until 1983 to come up with the idea of doing a double-cab.

By then, this Series IIA had already been in the world for 16 years – and now, decades later, it’s been under the knife to rekindle the youthful good looks which, in truth, it never really lost Words and Pictures: Mike Trott

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E

lsewhere in this issue, you can read about how Land Rover had created a double-cab years before the rest of the market caught up. But while the 127 was indeed a smart move, it still took them until 1983 – by which time Solihull had already been building vehicles for 35 years. So perhaps it’s more of a surprise that it took them that long.

During the leaf-sprung years, Land Rovers came in 80”, 86”, 88”, 107”, 109” and 110” wheelbases. They came as station wagons, chassis-cabs, pick-ups, hard tops, soft-tops and no tops at all. But it still took ten changes of prime minister (in the days before this happened every couple of months) and five of England manager (ditto) before you could get a Land Rover double-cab.

As you can see here, that wasn’t for the want of an opportunity. A Series IIA double-cab? Of course it’s possible. You just needed to build one of your own.

Flippant though that may sound, in the Land Rover community it won’t make anyone bat an eyelid. Among Landy owners, there’s always someone willing to question the original template, to take a literal approach to the oft-quoted saying that a Land Rover is a blank canvas.

That’s what an enterprising owner did when he created Paloma. Nice, isn’t she?

She wasn’t born exactly like this, of course.

Surgery has been necessary. Imagine a Hollywood actress from yesteryear who is

This is unlikely to be the first 2.25-litre petrol engine you’ve seen in your life. How often have you come across one that’s only done 10,000 miles in half a century, though?

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‘That’s the thing with Land Rovers. If there isn’t the exact specification of vehicle available, you just build it yourself!’ trying to get ready for one final blockbuster: a little stretch here, some inflating of the rear end and finally a bit of a makeover to get the whole package looking more youthful.

For some celebrities out there, the story has a less than fortunate tale/tail ending. But for Paloma here, it has worked well.

‘Paloma started her life just as a bog-standard 109” Pick-Up and was used by her first owner from 1967 to 2006,’ says Adam Norton, who was

enjoying her company when we met her. ‘In 2006, the nephew of the first owner became Paloma’s keeper and that was when the work was done.

He must have used a station wagon vehicle as a donor to get Paloma into this state.

‘That’s the thing with Land Rovers. If there isn’t the exact specification of vehicle available, you just build it yourself!’

A decade on, life (or, more likely, the lack of it) had started to take its toll. Nephew guy sold

Paloma to her third owner, who carried out a light mechanical overhaul including a full service, new brakes, a new exhaust, new clutch cylinders and a new propshaft.

‘I bought her from the third owner after the gentleman had brought her back up to a good, roadworthy condition,’ explains Adam, bringing the story up to date. It’s not hard to see why Paloma caught his eye. And now she has caught mine too.

The cabin looks standard up front, but for the fact that it’s in remarkably good condition. But what’s this… behind it is a second row of seats, with a bulkhead bar ahead of them to keep the body structure braced. Something else you don’t see every day in a 50-something Land Rover is a Smiths heater that’s still in good working order – though if you’re trying to find one, a Series IIA with 10,000 miles on the clock would be a pretty good place to go looking

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Paloma spent the first part of her life as an everyday 109” Pick-Up. When her first owner’s nephew took her on, he decided to get creative using the original load bed and the body from a Station Wagon of the same era. You can see where he put it together – in this way, the down-home image is a little like that of the 107” Series I Station Wagon We mentioned a lack of life. Let’s expand on that. To take it back to the beginning, Paloma’s first owner registered her as an agricultural vehicle and user her on his smallholding. So she was used to hard graft and getting her hands dirty – but if there’s one thing that can make a Land Rover particularly desirable, it’s the word ‘smallholding’. The miles may be quite hard and very infrequent, but there aren’t many of them. In Paloma’s case, here we were half a century later looking at a genuine 10,000-mile Series IIA. That wouldn’t even be run in for some Land Rover engines, and even the 2.25 petrol under Paloma’s bonnet could be expected still to be at its youthful finest after such a gentle life. So too the four-speed manual box behind it, and the chassis and bulkhead holding her up are solid as a rock. Yes, that makeover hides a very standard and completely original vehicle.

4pp Norton SIIA Paloma.indd 47

It’s all about the makeover, though, isn’t it?

Defender 110 Double-Cabs from the Td5 era and beyond have always looked a little more brutish and playful to my eye. Attractive, but in a Tank Girl kind of a way. Paloma by contrast wears her capabilities well, but beneath a persona that’s elegant and demure; think Katherine Hepburn as a resourceful missionary in the African Queen, as opposed to Sasha Banks bossing her latest victim in the ring.

Beneath her Bronze Green exterior and Limestone roof, Paloma has the capacity to carry six people upon elephant hide upholstered seats.

She even has a Smiths heater, and it even works.

You could turn up behind her wheel to a wedding or garden party and all eyes would be upon you.

The Bentley parked next to her wouldn’t get a look in. Ditto an RTV trial or Land Rover show; leave her next to a Spectre-style 110 and the only

people looking at it would be the ones who don’t know Land Rovers.

I was lucky enough to spend some quality time with Paloma. It was only brief, but it was a ride to remember. And she’s still the kind of girl you’d take home to meet your mother. Sometimes, cosmetic surgery is all it takes…

03/07/2023 15:58

30-something Arctic Trucks has gained a reputation for making 4x4s bigger. So it may be a surprise to find that of all the pick-ups the company has equipped with taller suspension and fatter tyres in recent years, the most convincing off-roader is in actual fact the one with the most modest proportions IT’S BEEN A GOOD MANY YEARS since the British pick-up industry started offering vehicles built by Arctic Trucks. Isuzu took the lead and remains by far the most prolific manufacturer in its use of the Warwick-based specialist; Toyota followed suit with the Hilux and finally Nissan joined in with the now-departed Navara.

The latter stood out among the three as it used a different conversion to the other two. Isuzu and Toyota both offer AT35 models, on 35” tyres, however Nissan kept it more modest with the Navara Off-Roader AT32.

And in doing so, it pulled off a master stroke.

We’ve driven several AT35s and we do love what they’re about, but for typical British off-roading we’ve found them to be too big. The extra width of their fat tyres and flared arches makes them more vulnerable to damage on green lanes, and there are gates and even bridges that they won’t fit through.

We’ve also found, on older Isuzu D-Max AT35s from the days before locking rear diffs, that the combination of big tyres (at standard road pressure) and an unladen rear end was prone to bouncing uncontrollably on the way up uneven, rocky climbs.

The Navara Off-Roader AT32, on the other hand, got it spot-on. There’s less lift there than on an AT35, of course, and therefore less ground clearance, but the extra agility more than makes up for it. To us, it was the best dealer-spec pick-up you could buy.

If you’re unfamiliar with how Arctic Trucks works, here’s a brief recap. The company operates as an OEM supplier, adapting vehicles pre-registration which are then offered as ‘standard’ models.

This means you don’t need to insure the Off-Roader AT32 as a modified vehicle – and that the manufacturer’s warranty remains valid. The latter will still just about be relevant on some of these Navaras, as they came with five years, however in each case you do need to remember that adding any further mods of your own will change everything. No small matter if you consider a serious off-road vehicle to be incomplete if it doesn’t have a winch bumper up front.

As it was, the Off-Roader AT32 in these pictures was equipped with a variety of options including a Safari Snorkel and ARB Air-Locker for the front diff. That’s in addition to the standard Arctic Trucks package, which adds +20mm lifted suspension and 32” tyres (275/70R17s, to be precise), as well as heavy-duty side steps, a full set of underbody guards and a variety of styling tweaks.

It’s all as relevant as ever today because, even though the Navara is no longer sold in the UK, you can take one to Arctic Trucks as a private customer and ask for and AT32 conversion. It won’t be counted as a standard vehicle that way, of course, but it will still have all the skills of one – and as we found, that’s a lot of skills.

More likely, you’ll go looking in the classifieds for a ‘genuine’ one. We found a couple for sale, both at strong money despite in one case being on a six-figure mileage. Anyway, assuming you’re doing it that way the truck you’ll

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get will have been based on the high-spec Tekna model, meaning it will have luxuries like sat-nav and heated leather seats.

It will also have limited oddment stowage up front, an adequate if hardly exceptional media system and terrible rear-seat accommodation that’s only really suitable for children. Knee room here is remarkably poor, and anyone remotely tall will have their head pressed into the roof lining. These were common disappointments across all Navaras, but they’re as relevant as ever on this one.

Nissan made major changes to the Navara’s suspension for the last year or so of its time in the UK, and these improved what was already a good vehicle – to the extent that it won that year’s Pick-Up of the Year award. This Off-Roader AT32 was before that, however it did everything as well as the other models in the range. That is to say it had a good, strong engine, a manual gearbox with a nice light action and precise changes, unruffled steering and settled ride quality.

Note here that the Navara was coil-sprung at the back, which set it apart from the rest of the market. It was still firm at the back (needing the ability to carry 1000kg does that, whatever kind of springs you use to do it) but was pleasingly settled, especially at speed.

How much does the AT32 conversion change that? Well, you immediately feel the firmness in the uprated shocks, which results in a slightly more nervous ride at lower speeds on everyday roads. But on worse surfaces, those shocks come into their own, retaining control over big, harsh bumps while taking out any crashiness or unruly rebounds. The springs’ extra height doesn’t result in any additional unwanted body movement, either, and this remains consistent at higher speeds.

Out on the open road, on the other hand, we felt that this Navara was less responsive in corners than we’ve become used to with standard models, with less feel on turn-in. It didn’t feel as planted on the motorway, either, with more frequent adjustments being necessary to keep it on line. We found that the steering was better when the suspension was being worked harder, and it certainly wasn’t bad, but if there’s one area where it drives like a modified vehicle we’d say this is it.

Actually, there’s another area where the AT32 drives like it’s been modified.

Which is when you take it off-road and those mods come into their own.

First things first. The Navara was already good off-road, with plenty of flexibility and the back-up of a standard rear locker on hand. So the AT32 conversion was building on strong foundations.

At its most basic level, the suspension lift and bigger tyres mean you get more ground clearance. That’s always welcome on a vehicle with a long wheelbase and a rear overhang you can see from space, and it does make a difference. Not so much that our Navara’s steel side steps and heavy-duty underguards didn’t come to the rescue as we wrestled it over a steep jumble of ragged rocks, but this is a situation where taller tyres mean greater agility and so it proved.

Another, less welcome consequence of the taller tyres is that the Navara’s overall gearing is higher. And this is most noticeable in the way it drives offroad. You spend much more time than you’d expect in low first when tackling the sort of technical stuff we’ve just been describing, and even this isn’t enough to keep it from running away even on only moderately steep drops.

On the plus side, the Navara is fitted with hill descent control. We’re forever saying that this shouldn’t be necessary in a vehicle with low range and a manual box, but in the AT32 we found ourselves having to use it in anger.

Heavy-duty side steps were standard fit on the AT32, whose spec also included underbody protection and a 20mm suspension lift to go with the 32” tyres that gave it its name. The snorkel on our test vehicle was an optional accessory – but one we’d heartily recommend for anyone, whether they were after it for off-road use or just looking the business on the street. On the latter score, Arctic Trucks branding is everywhere you look – they build vehicles for conquering glaciers, but nobody was ever under any illusion as to why people bought them

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This isn’t a proper solution to over-gearing, though: it’s certainly effective on long slopes, but it won’t give you any added finesse at crawling speeds over very uneven ground. Trying to hold your vehicle back on its brakes while at the same time keeping it moving is never a good look.

The conclusion we can’t help but reach is that before buying one of these, we’d want to know if there was a conversion available to give it lower gearing in the diffs or transfer case. It may be that the auto version would be more forgiving over extreme terrain, too, though that doesn’t sound like a proper answer to the question.

Talking of diffs, to test the AT32’s lockers we tried taking it diagonally across a deep ditch to see how far it would get before losing traction. Not very, is the answer, at least until the rear locker went it – but then the point came when even this wasn’t enough and we ended up with three wheels spinning away.

Banging in the front locker, we felt sceptical as to whether it was going to make any difference at all. So ease it forward in first gear, wait for it to spin again and… nope, off we go. Now, the AT32 stayed with us the rest of the way, taking us to the top of the bank with no trace whatsoever of wheelspin.

And that’s on all-terrains. We do understand why Nissan stuck with these rather than fitting a more aggressive pattern, but put on a set of muds and the AT32 will be a phenomenal tool. When it was new, it could gain more traction than any other pick-up on the market; things have changed since then, of course, but this is still an extremely capable vehicle even by today’s standards.

Is it a vehicle you should look at seriously in the used pick-up market? Yes, actually. You may want it for its off-road ability, but more likely it’s because you fancy the image of a street-legal mini-monster. Either way, the good news is that whoever had it first will almost certainly have used it that way; we’ve spoken to very senior people in the pick-up industry who admit that conversions like this are purchased new by people who want a cool pose truck, not a capable off-roader, and everything we’ve read on the forums and socials backs that up too.

And to be fair, it is a very cool looker. It’s not quite as big as the AT35 conversions Isuzu and Toyota offer, but that extra trace of subtlety did it not harm and certainly didn’t stop it from getting attention.

To us, though, this is a truck you’d buy because you want to use it off-road.

That was the case when it was new and it certainly is now. But despite its excellence here, it’s not a complete package. For the sort of off-roading it’s built to do, almost any customer would want to fit heavy-duty bumpers and

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a winch. It wouldn’t be long before you were thinking about a heavy-duty clutch, too, and we’ve already spoken about the truck’s overall gearing on those taller tyres. The strength of an OEM conversion is meant to be that it doesn’t force you down the aftermarket route, but if you need to do it anyway the insurance and, for what it’s now worth, warranty benefits no longer exist.

When it was brand new, we said that the Off-Roader AT32 was extremely compelling – but that you need to weigh it up very carefully. Now it’s second-hand, that has changed somewhat, because someone else has already borne the brunt of its depreciation – though the kit Arctic Trucks fitted will still be there and still as up to the job as ever.

You could buy one of these, run it as a street cruiser and enjoy the attention. But we’d be bolting on more besides. Either way, this is a very good, very highly evolved starting point for any off-road project. It’s not as big as an AT35 – but use it wisely, and it’ll punch well above its weight.

03/07/2023 18:26

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11/04/2023 17:24

living the dream

T

his is the story of two trucks. Two trucks and one man, Dean Jones, who owned them both one after the other and turned them into the eye-catchers you see before you.

‘When I was younger,’ he says, ‘all my friends were always talking about the Ferrari F40 and

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5pp Jones L200/Ranger.indd 54

Lamborghini Diablo. But I always preferred pick-up trucks. I’ve always been leaning towards off-road vehicles.’

A little later in life, a spell in the Army demonstrated to him that sure enough, offroading was indeed the way he wanted to go.

‘As a cadet being driven around the forests at

Sennybridge in Defenders and trucks, I could see how much fun it was driving in mud. Though I prefer more technical off-roading to just ploughing through mud, to be honest.

‘After a few goes of other people’s Defenders and trucks, I decided I had to get my own. As I love camping as well, I decided to buy a pick-up

4x4 03/07/2023 15:56

When Dean Jones was young, his friends at school were into Ferraris and Lamborghinis. He was into trucks. Nowadays, his friends have given up on fantasising about supercars – but with an L200 on his CV and a Ranger getting ready to see the world, he’s living the off-road dream Words: Gary Noskill Pictures: Harry Hamm

and build a truck I could use as an off-roading, overlanding and utility vehicle. But it also needed to look good in a car park!’

Which brings us to Dean’s first off-roader.

Having decided that only a truck would do, he found himself a clean ex-demo example of a Mitsubishi L200 Black Edition.

4x4 5pp Jones L200/Ranger.indd 55

This was, as you can clearly see in the pictures, not black. When it was introduced in 2012, Mitsubishi wasn’t the first car manufacturer to hit on the idea of naming a model after a colour it wasn’t, but at least this version of its fourthgeneration double-cab was adorned with various black bits. It was also based on the already well

specced Barbarian model, so it was ready and waiting to become a daily drive that was as nice to sit in as it was to look at.

The mods started with a set of BFGoodrich All-Terrains, ARB underbody bash plates and a Safari Snorkel. ‘Then,’ he says, ‘after meeting up with others from the L200 Owners Club, I saw the

AUGUST 2023 | 55

03/07/2023 15:56

Dean fitted the L200 (left) with a 2” Old Man Emu suspension lift, and he must have been happy with it because he used the same stuff again on his Ranger. This time he was even happier because, he says, despite being a heavy-duty set-up it actually rides better difference between standard and Old Man Emu suspension. So that was next on the list.’

So up she went by a couple of inches, and now there was space for a set of bigger tyres. Bigger and a little more aggressive, too, as it turned out, because the all-terrains were replaced by a set of 285/70R17 Cooper Discoverer STT Pros.

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That’s just shy of 33” – enough to set him off on a mission to keep on trimming the front arches until they no longer rubbed.

Also increasing the vehicle’s height was a Frontrunner roof rack supplied by Dara King at Tuff-Trek, a man who Dean can’t praise highly enough. But it’s the suspension that provides the link between the L200 and the Ford Ranger that replaced it – because when he changed vehicles, he equipped his new one with exactly the same stuff.

But why change, when he had just got the Mitsubishi the way he wanted it? Well, as it turned out somebody else wanted it too.

‘My mate nagged me to sell it to her for a long time,’ Dean explains.

‘Eventually I gave in and sold it. But at the time it worked for me.’

And there’s another reason, too. ‘I wanted a Ranger when I bought the L200,’ he admits. ‘But there was a waiting list of 18 months. Selling the Mitsubishi, even though I wanted to finish it, allowed me to get my Ranger.’

As this last comment suggests, the L200 was a work in progress when he let it go. A body lift, stronger suspension, a diff drop kit, 35” tyres, AirLockers, better rear stowage, a winch bumper and winch, dual batteries… you know, little everyday things like that. ‘With plans to travel to Europe at some point in the near future, I need to make sure it’s as reliable as possible,’ he explained.

Anyway, those plans took a hike when he finally gave in to his friend’s overtures and became the owner of a post-facelift Ford Ranger Wildtrak.

Whereas the L200 was a Black Edition, this was just a black truck – and as you can see, he made the most of that to create a vehicle with a healthy dose of boy-racer menace.

4x4 03/07/2023 15:56

‘I wanted a Ranger when I bought the L200. But there was a waiting list of 18 months. Selling the Mitsubishi, even though I wanted to finish it, allowed me to get my Ranger’ ‘My Ranger is my daily, and I enjoy the looks it gets,’ he admits. ‘The plan is to have a truck that is capable of a trip across Morocco, but also one that I can use every day. It was going to be the L200, but the trip won’t happen for a few years so I’ve got time to get the Ranger ready for it instead.’

So, as it turns out this is the story of two trucks and also of two works in progress. Not that

there’s any such thing as a finished project, of course. Though for a while there also wasn’t any such thing as a started project.

After selling the L200, it was actually four more months until Dean drove home in his Ranger.

The problem was that he wanted one already equipped with Ford’s own Off-Road pack – but none were available. Eventually, he decided to

settle for installing his own version of the same thing. The plan had always been to turn his Ranger into a complete overland vehicle, after all, so now it was just a case of the project needing a little more than it already did.

Having already waited so long, Dean ripped straight into it. ‘The truck stayed standard for the drive back home,’ he says. Working right there on

The L200’s engine (left) ran an Agri-tune chip to help it produce a little more while using a little less. There’s a K&N filter box and Safari Snorkel breather to be seen in there, too. The Ranger (right) was still a pretty standard 3.2 TDCi when we took these pics, though by now Dean had definitely discovered his love of Line-X

4x4 5pp Jones L200/Ranger.indd 57

AUGUST 2023 | 57

03/07/2023 15:56

The guards for the bonnet and lights, as well as the genuine Ford Raptor grille (complete with integrated light bar), are all coated in Line-X. So too are the wing mirrors, side skirts, wheelarches and rear bed, as well as the exterior accessories, totting up enough points on Dean’s loyalty card to gain the coveted and very slick Line-X badge on the Ranger’s front wing. Safe to say, he’s a fan of this stuff his driveway, he opened the bonnet straight up and changed the air filter, and it all followed on from there.

It was a busy week. Dean wasted no time at all, fitting pretty much everything you see on the Ranger – ahead of an appointment for some serious Line-X. Safe to say he’s a fan of the stuff, which provides a tough, textured coating that can be coloured to suit your every whim. Red engine cover? Oh go on then.

On the outside, though, it’s any colour you want so long as it’s black. Well, it is a Ford.

The wheelarches, grille, door mirrors, rear bed, headlamp and bonnet guards… you get the idea.

Add in a set of Black Rhino alloys and you have a theme that’s very much black on black on black.

Underneath, let’s go back to that suspension.

Dean does all his own work wherever possible, but he didn’t fancy trying to do the front coils on axle stands so instead he left that to a proper garage with a ramp.

It’s exactly the same kit, but with heavy-duty springs – though Dean reckons there’s a big difference between the two vehicles. ‘The OME

kit is so much better on this truck than the L200. I don’t know what it is, but even though the ride is stiffer with the heavyduty springs on, it still rides better.’ Watching the two in action, even though it was at different times and in different places, we’d say it follows the ground a little better too.

First time we met up with Dean, he had plans for his L200. Second time, he had plans for his Ranger. Big ones, too. A winch to go on that tray, along once again with a dual-battery system to juice it, plus rock sliders and a snorkel. And Line-X to go on every available surface these things present, too, obviously. Then he’ll mount a roof tent and awnings to turn the Ranger into expedition HQ, and he’ll be ready for Morocco.

For Morocco, and also for scoring some very serious cool points on the street. Because those matter as much to him as anything else, and amen to that.

Off-road vehicles are what he was into while his friends were frothing over Ferraris and lathering over Lambos, let’s not forget. The difference being that now he’s living the dream. In fact, he’s lived it once already and now he’s living it some more…

58 | AUGUST 2023

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03/07/2023 15:56

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04/07/2023 11:23

The Only One

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4x4 03/07/2023 18:24

There’s a new Volkswagen Amarok in town, but for most of us it’ll be a long time before we can afford one. The previous model was a very fine thing, however – and the good news for new and second-hand buyers alike is that the cheaper they were, the better they got WITH AN ALL-NEW VOLKSWAGEN AMAROK NOW ON SALE IN BRITAIN, the German giant is once again on a mission to make the premium end of the pick-up market its own. Even in a world with Ford Ranger Wildtraks everywhere you look, the previous Amarok did a remarkable job of associating itself with the top of the one-tonne class. From the word go, it meant prestige – and when Volkswagen gave it a mid-life facelift which involved replacing its old 2.0 TDI engine with a lusty 3.0 V6, it became THE truck to be seen in.

So, with all these Amaroks now a few years old on the used market, which is the best to go for? The answer is simple: to reach the top, climb down.

Wot? The Amarok was available with a wide choice of power outputs and trim levels. It was as lavish as you could get in a truck and, if you wanted it to be, startlingly fast. But all but the entry-level models came as standard with an eight-speed automatic box – and herein lay the problem.

In auto form, the Amarok had full-time all-wheel drive. But it didn’t have a dual-range transfer box. To us, of course, that’s a total and utter deal-breaker.

The 3.0 TDI engine was af various times available in four different states of tune (with 163, 204, 224 and 258bhp). The manual box was offered only with the lower two of these, and even then it was limited just to the entry-level Trendline trim level.

Best of all, when it was first launched, the 163bhp model cost £24,510.

That’s plus VAT and OTR costs, but safe to say you won’t be getting a deal like it on the new one…

When we tested the Amarok in these pictures, it was fitted with various options. There was a multimedia system with sat-nav, alcantara seat trim, chrome styling pack, protective loadbay coating, locking rear diff and all-round parking sensors. That all took the final bill up to £35,039, which sounds like a hell of a hike until you realise that £5789 of it was accounted for by VAT.

It’s not just the manual gearlever that we like in this picture. Though we do like it. This box was the only one in the 3.0-litre Amarok range to come with low range – which means that for us, it’s the only one to have. Opposite the ‘4x4 LOW’ controls is another fine thing in the shape of a rear locker button – an optional accessory, but one that was outstanding value for money

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03/07/2023 18:24

Even in entry-level Trendline form, the Amarok was at the premium end of the pick-up market. The sat-nav and alcantara seats seen here on our test vehicle were optional extras, and without them it would ccertainly have felt more utilitarian – but a convenient layout, excellent electronics and topnotch build quality are pure Volkswagen. This model seemed better to us for rear-seat accommodation, too, compared to higher-speccers, with enough space for one six-footer to sit comfortably enough behind another

Base-spec pick-ups can be fairly utilitarian things, even in this day and age, but the Amarok still felt classy. Those alcantara seats certainly helped here, but overall it was more about the general feeling of quality in the materials and construction.

Obviously, a grand and a half’s worth of chrome accessories can hardly help but twist your perception here, too; yes, really, that’s how much the option used to cost. We’d happily have spent that much on getting it all removed, but if you’re into that sort of look then fine – though if you liked chrome that much, we’d think your sights would probably be set on a showier base model.

Getting back to the cabin, it’s trimmed in plastics which are hard to the touch but feel very dense and stout. Build quality is extremely robust – there’s not a hint of brittleness to it, and hardly any creaking from the dash or movement from the floor console. It feels, absolutely, as if it’s built to last.

Looking back at this test drive from a few years down the line, the Amarok is THE pick-up we’d expect still to be feeling most like new now.

If the vehicle’s first owner didn’t think it was worth paying £762 for alcantara, the Trendline will come with fabric seats. You can expect these to be wearing very well, because it’s good, tough stuff and either way the driver’s seat will be a very nice perch; grippy and comfortable, supporting you well and holding you in place as you rock and roll off-road.

You don’t want for comfort, but you do want for lumber adjust. This was on the options list, too – at a thankfully modest £150 to cover both front seats, which ought to mean a good proportion will have had it specced.

In the back, our instinct is that the Trendline model has better knee room than the higher-spec Amaroks we tested around the same time. The seatbacks are deeply recessed, albeit with rather a severe ledge up top than can end up pressing sharply into the tops of your knees, but with a bit of give and

take it’s possible for one six-footer to sit behind another with neither of them suffering unduly – and we certainly didn’t come away with that impression after driving Highline or Adventura models.

Headroom is excellent in the back, too, as it your view out. The same can be said in the front, which is good and spacious, and a low waistline means a particularly good view to the side which can be very handy in tight situations both on and off-road.

Oddment stowage around the cabin is adequate, though most of it comes from a deep bin at the front of the floor console and a tray on top of the dash.

The glovebox, by contrast, is fairly shallow, and the cubby box is more of a vertical slot as half the width of the console is lost to the handbrake lever.

The Discover Media system on our Amarok would have added £672 to the bill; bringing DAB and sat-nav to the party, you could certainly spend more to get less, so once again it’s to be hoped that a good number will have had it specced. Having said that, the Trendline already came with an excellent 6.33” touch-screen running app-connect and a mobile phone interface with voice control, which a buyer might reasonably have decided was enough.

Enough of this infotainment nonsense: let’s drive. As we mentioned above, the 3.0 TDI was capable of producing serious outputs. Even here, in its lowest-powered form, 163bhp from 2750rpm was hardly weedy – and it was backed up by 332lbf.ft of torque from just 1250rpm.

And that’s the key. Use the manual box to dig out all that shove, and the Amarok surges forward with an urgency and willingness that make the officially quoted 0-62 time of 9.8 seconds sound thoroughly conservative.

The box itself has to be changed with a bit of languor, as it has a mechanical nature to it that’s perfectly accurate but doesn’t encourage snappy shifts, but once you’re used to its operation you can keep the six-pot diesel in the guts of its power band – and whether you’re running unladen, carting a load or pulling a trailer, it has all the oomph you need.

The action doesn’t back off on the way through the mid-range, and there’s little to differentiate this Amarok’s motorway performance from that of the higher-powered models. It cruises comfortably, with plenty in reserve, and there’s nothing much in the way of engine noise. Wind rustle is your main companion at speed, and there’s more than a trace of road rumble, though the Trendline’s higher-profile tyres keep a lid on the commotion.

The 3.0 V6 TDI engine was capable of producing 258bhp – so tuned for just 163, it stands to reason that it was nicely unstressed. Yet with 332lbf.ft from just 1250rpm, it was no slouch at all

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4x4 03/07/2023 18:24

You could get the Amarok on flashily low-profile tyres, but the 245/65R17s on the Trendline model are our kind of rubber.

Replace these standard ones with a set of all-terrains or muds and you’ll be well away You don’t need to make constant adjustments to the steering to keep it on line on the motorway, either, and even in this low-spec form cruise control is standard equipment. Move on to A and B-roads, and it handles with all the heft and body roll you expect of a truck – but none of the fidgeting on poor surfaces. The rear is very well controlled, even when running unladen, making the Amarok one of the best-riding trucks there is, and even without full-time four-wheel drive it has all the grip and poise you could ask for, even when pushed.

Off-road, this was the Amarok to have. Literally, the one – without low range, the others might as well have stayed at home.

When the 3.0 TDI first came out, we drove an auto model on tight, slippery woodland tracks while one of VW’s instructors sat next to us going on about how it didn’t need low range at all and we wondered if he actually believed that or was just toeing the line. It’s very agile by one-tonne standards, but we were constantly holding it back on the brakes and that’s no way to control a vehicle.

Pop the manual into low, by contrast, and suddenly it has the drivetrain to match its excellent chassis and suspension. The Amarok won our Pick-Up of the Year award in 2019 on the strength of this model, which should say a lot.

The Amarok’s steering is precise on rough ground and its axles follow the terrain very smoothly. As always, a light rear end is prone to breaking traction on one side or the other, particularly when climbing over axle-twisters, but it still feels well balanced – and if the worst comes to the worst, you’ve got that rear locker to fall back on.

At least, you do if the truck’s first owner stumped up an extra £300. This is a no-brainer if you know how much it costs to buy and fit an ARB, but unlike things like lumbar adjust that first owner is much less likely to know why a locking diff is such a good idea. If she or he did, though, you’re in business – because as is always the case with pick-ups, the difference it makes is

4pp Amarok.indd 63

enormous, both in terms of what it can do and how gently it can treat the ground while doing it.

The 17” alloys on this Amarok are the smallest in the range, and looking at the vehicle’s spec they’re also the smallest you can fit around its brakes.

That of course cuts down your choice of all-terrain and mud-terrain tyres, though nothing like as much as it used to.

The standard-fit 245/65R17s are just under 30” tall, which clearly isn’t enough for off-roading – but a moderate lift and something like a 265/70R17 would transform it into an extremely potent machine. And now they’re an age where you can start thinking about doing things like that, we’d say the only thing preventing the Amarok from becoming the next big off-road craze will be the sore lack of manual models available on the second-hand market.

How will the all-new Amarok compare with this now-discontinued model?

We won’t have to wait much longer to find out, but this time Volkswagen is taking a much more universal approach to speccing them with low range.

Even then, though, it’ll be going some to match the skills, and the charm, of its most down-to-earth predecessor.

03/07/2023 18:24

Sweet and Lowdown

Martin Taylor’s ‘55 Chevy is not your typical 4x4 magazine fodders. But since this is a pick-up special issue, here’s a special pick-up…

Words and Pictures: James Webber

W

e like pick-ups in 4x4 magazine, and we like cool trucks from America. Even so, this ain’t our typical fare.

So what, though? I mean, we’re all here because we don’t do toeing the line. We’re all here because we’re not the guy in the Mondeo. And just as a lifted Ranger ain’t toeing the line, neither is Martin Taylor’s idea of a cool pick-up.

In the world of custom cars, bagged and patinated trucks have become one of the most

64 | AUGUST 2023

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common trends over here in the UK. Everything from Fords and Chevys to lesser-known brands, original or faux patina, massive 20” to standard steel wheels, it’s all been done and many T-shirts have been bought.

Bagged, though? And what’s that when it’s at home? The term refers to vehicles on air suspension, is what – not the kind we’re used to in the off-road world, but the kind that lets you dump your truck into the weeds when you park up. Very much not the off-road way, but when it

comes to this kind of truck low is still very much the way to go.

There’s a big similarity between off-roaders and hot rodders, too. Which is that while the trends are always there to spot in the vehicle building game, each of the actual vehicles is unique.

In this case, you’ll see varying shades of patina, dents and battle scars on show – but in true rat style, the running gear has either been upgraded to more modern equipment or kept original but fully refurbished to make sure it’s safe.

4x4 03/07/2023 18:30

Another similarity between these two worlds of petrol-headed pleasure is that when you get chatting to the vehicles’ owners about the story behind them, it’s not normally long before that story includes some mention of ‘the wife.’ And so it is with Martin, who fancied a change for something American after many years in the Volkswagen scene.

‘The wife and I realised early on that we both liked the idea of a truck,’ he explains. So that narrowed down the search a bit. Come August

4x4 Taylor Chevy.indd 65

03/07/2023 18:30

2020, a black ’57 Chevy pick-up came up for sale at Uncle Sam’s Auto’s in Okehampton, so I convinced the wife to come have a look and sit in.

‘When we got there, the owner Curly showed us what other stock he had, along with his own slightly rarer ’55 Chevy. After both falling in love with its originality, we had some long negotiations which duly ended with us buying his truck and driving it home.

‘I promised said wife that I would just put on a set of wheels and lower it a bit, and that would be that. But as she knows me too well, when the full tear-down commenced she wasn’t too fazed.’

That full tear-down commenced in November 2020, after Martin had, in his words, ‘roped in my good mate Ben to use his unit.’ In the intervening period, he had become owner of an untested Chevy 283 engine, TH350 auto box and a set of 18” American Racing wheels. A good start.

Next up, and this isn’t something you hear every day, came a conversation with Martin’s uncle. ‘He told me that Jag XJS front and rear set-ups fit under trucks quite nicely without too many headaches. As luck would have it, I found a Jaguar breakers in Taunton. And so, with a pocket full of cash, I went down there and with a pocket empty of cash, I came back with a full set of XJS suspension.’

‘I love everything that has been done to it and the stance when she’s fully aired out is just where I want it’ With that, it was time to get building. Seems like it wasn’t just Ben’s garage Martin was using, as Ben himself stepped up to share the job of stripping and rebuilding the Jag assemblies with new bushes and brakes. In fact, they went one step further and made their own custom rear end using the Jag unit as a base.

‘A few more conversations with various people, including a chat to a guy in Australia, resulted in a manual 4-paddle air ride system, with an Air Lift tank and Viair twin compressors,’ continues Martin. ‘Both of us custom made all the mounts and created a great rolling chassis.

‘One of the coolest and less obvious mods that Ben and I did was make some subtle arch mods to allow the wheels to tuck up, and then we built a new frame to take the oak rear load bed. As a result we only lost 120mm in bed height

and didn’t have to use huge tubs like so many others. A few patches of rust on the rear quarters of the cab were repaired and then we painted the whole chassis, underside of the cab, arches and truck bed.’

So, all good with the rolling chassis and body.

Remember what we said about that Chevy motor being untested? The good news is that this didn’t end in heartache and recriminations, but with a lovely deep roar first time it was fired up.

‘It sounded great,’ says Martin. ’So it was painted and thrown straight into the engine bay on our own custom mounts. The TH350 was placed in its cradle and everything was lining up a treat. We did have to get a custom prop made but everything else was done by our own bare hands, which is something we are both proud of.’ Quite right too.

Left: The words ‘untested engine’ tend to fill you full of dread, but that’s what this 283ci (4638cc) Chevy V8 was when Martin bought it.

Whether by luck or good judgement, he’d got a good ‘un and it fired up like a dream Right: This magazine has existed for more than 41 years, but there’s a strong chance that this is the first time we’ve ever featured a vehicle on 18” American Racing wheels. It definitely not the first time we’ve featured a vehicle with crinkle-cut bodywork like this, though…

66 | AUGUST 2023

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4x4 03/07/2023 18:30

Dolphin GPS gauges are the newest looking thing in the cabin, and there’s probably a reason for that. You’d need to be looking incredibly closely to see it here (as well as being an anorak of the highest order) but the pedal box came from a Land Rover Discovery 2 Getting into the details now, more custom mounts were made up for the power steering pump and alternator, then a set of Dolphin GPS gauges was purchased and installed in the dash.

And now, here comes the link (it’s tenuous, but it’s good) to the world we inhabit: someone told Martin that a Land Rover Discovery 2 auto pedal box would be a nice easy fit, and so it proved.

‘Come May 2021,’ says Martin, ‘the truck was fired up and out on the road for the first time. It was crazy to have it back at my house and be able to stand back and admire what we had created – bearing in mind the initial plan was to just throw a set of wheels on it! I love everything that has been done to it and the stance when she’s fully aired out is just where I want it.’

It was only a matter of time before the word ‘stance’ appeared in 4x4. But for all the differences between Martin’s pick-up and the others in this magazine, once again it’s the

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similarities that matter. ‘Obviously with most home builds,’ he reflects, ‘there are always things to tweak and redo. I’m forever tinkering with the wiring and I’ve just recently dug deep into my pockets and upgraded to an Edelbrock 500cfm AVS carb, which has solved a few fuelling issues.’

There’s no such thing as a finished project, remember?

But there’s also no such thing as a bad time to reflect on what’s brought your truck to where it is today. ‘A big thanks to Ben for helping create the truck and

helping me with my ideas,’ says Martin. ‘And to my wife for being very understanding with my car problem.’ A fitting conclusion to a story of true marital harmony.

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OUR 4X4S Vehicle: Isuzu D-Max GO2 Year: 2018 Run by: Alan Kidd Last update: May 2023 On the fleet since: January 2020

Show us your drawers…

WHEN ISUZU FIRST ASKED US IF WE’D LIKE TO SPEC UP A D-MAX FOR THEM TO BUILD, we started thinking along the usual off-road lines. Winch, snorkel, lift, tyres, you know the drill.

As it happens, the period of time between them asking that question and the vehicle actually being built turned out to be a lot longer than any of us anticipated. Which was a bit frustrating, but in silver linings news this gave the aftermarket plenty of time to develop new accessories for us to put on the wish list.

A lot of those accessories were on Isuzu’s wish list, too. Not for our truck, but for their own accessories range, which had grown to impressive proportions by the time we finally got together in the workshop to make it happen.

Quite a few of these accessories featured in the Huntsman pack, which you could order from Isuzu’s dealers as a way of converting your new vehicle into a specced-up tool for the countryside. Not so much a recreational off-roader as an off-roader for recreation. You didn’t have to use it for hunting but for any kind of country pursuits, be they work or play, it was resoundingly fit for purpose.

Among the equipment it came with was a Gearmate drawer system. To say we were impressed when we tested the vehicle would be an understatement. So when it came to speccing our GO2 project

truck and the guys from Isuzu asked us to go through their official accessory list and tick whatever we wanted, it was the first thing we went for.

Our thinking was that we carry a lot of recovery equipment and so on. Leaving it lying in a tangle on the back seat is nobody’s idea of a good look, and nor is leaving it to slide around in the pick-up bed, even when said pick-up bed is covered by a Mountain Top Roll (something else we were quick to choose from

Pictured is our project Isuzu D-Max GO2. Although we struggled to find an insurance company that would cover our Isuzu – especially when we were using it for green laning and off-roading – we finally found Adrian Flux, a specialist insurance broker that not only covers green laning and off-roading, but also unusual vehicles like modified and classic 4x4s. And they do all this at an affordable price – get a quote from them by calling 0800 085 5000

Isuzu’s accessory list). A pair of drawers for our ropes and strops, shackles, ground anchors and so on sounded like the perfect solution.

Now, we’ve added some weight to our D-Max. The ARB bumpers, the winch, the Rival bash plates, the 285/75R16 tyres – it all adds up. When it came to fitting the Gearmate unit, though, we were startled to see that it took four blokes to carry it across the workshop and lift it into place.

Reassuringly heavy-duty, then.

There’s a lot of prep to be done before you get to that stage, though.

Our D-Max is based on a Utah model, which came as standard with an over-rail bed liner. Not compatible with the drawers and roll-top cover we specced to go over them, so it needed to be unfastened and removed before an under-rail unit replaced it. Details, but the kind that make all the difference.

After that, it was a case of mounting up the various brackets that hold the drawers in place.

They’re not held down by gravity, you know. And then, as is so often the case, once the prep is done the installation itself is the quickest part of the job. The Gearmate unit simply drops into place and on to its brackets before being bolted up – it’s supplied in one piece, so there’s no assembly work to be done in situ.

The exception here is the side lockers, which sit next to the main drawer unit and create a full-width surface. These are installed into the pick-up bed once the drawers have been bolted in – more of a job, but again nothing to fear. The biggest deal here is definitely lifting the thing on to the back of the truck in the first place, and that’s just a case of having enough friends. Which hopefully won’t be a problem.

We were switched on to the potential of the Gearmate drawers when we tested a D-Max with Isuzu’s excellent Huntsman pack. It’s strong, secure and very flexible

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The D-Max Utah our GO2 is based on came with an over-rail bed liner as standard. Not compatible with a roll-top cover, so the first part of the job was to remove it. With the two liners next to each other on the workshop floor, the difference between their top edges can be seen – it’s subtle, but it’s there when you look

It’s all about the preparation, even before the bedliner is dropped in to place – which takes more wrestling than you might expect. and is definitely better done with someone else around to help you. The prep theme then continues when you’re getting the truck bed ready for the Gearmate drawer unit – before lifting it into place, you need

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OUR 4X4S With the drawers fully installed, attention in the workshop turned to the Mountain Top Roll. Again, nothing complex – it’s just a case of following the instructions and doing up the bolts. There are runners to put in place, which sit on the sides of the pick-up bed (hence the need for an under-rail bedliner), then the cartridge containing the tonneau cover itself is installed behind the cab. It’s not a particularly fiddly job, just a case of being methodical – though again, it’s easier done with

an assistant to help you get it in place, so don’t let everyone drift off once the drawers are sorted.

With the drawers fitted and the cover deployed, the clearance between them is something in the region of four inches. Not really enough to be of any real use for carrying stuff, though with the cover retracted the top of the drawer unit is low enough beneath the top of the tailgate to take stuff like bags of compost without you constantly worrying about them escaping.

More to the point, the drawers are excellent. They’ll swallow all our recovery gear and they still slide open nice and smoothly – even though the weight of the kit in them is such that if we’re parked nose down, they won’t budge at all.

We’ve spent our lives carrying recovery gear in a variety of boxes lashed into the back of a variety of vehicles. That’s when it’s not just been a tangled mess in the back.

Obviously, loose shackles and, worse, ground anchor pins can be

a lethal hazard if they’re not secure, so if nothing else it needs to be held down – and really, doing a proper job of it should be a no-brainer.

And this is the most proper job we’ve ever done with any of our project vehicles. Isuzu did a smart thing by getting Gearmate on board as a supplier – and having been so impressed by the company’s equipment in the Huntsman, we’d modestly say that we did an equally smart thing by adding it to our wish list when we specced up the GO2.

Top: The Gearmate unit is a big bit of kit, and it’s very robust indeed – which can only mean one thing. Even so, we were startled to see that it took four blokes to carry it across the workshop. Plus a fifth to lean on the truck and direct operations, of course Above, right: Lifting it into place may be hard work but once it’s on its brackets, the unit is fundamentally done. The most time-consuming part of the job now is assembling the side lockers which tuck in to the left and right of the main drawer cabinet and go together with it to create a full-width flat floor Below: Finally, the Mountain Top Roll is installed to keep the drawers out of sight and out of mind. There’s not enough clearance beneath it to let you fit anything much between them, but the top of the drawers is low enough to let you carry stuff like bags of cement safely

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HIGH TIMES The Andes have become the home of the world altitude record for motor vehicles, with various 4x4s, trucks and most recently electric cars climbing to huge heights on the flanks of its towering peaks. But even just a few days’ spent exploring the established trails here in a rented Navara can be the adventure of a lifetime

Words and Pictures: Gavin Coppins

T

he view from the plane on the flight from Santiago to Antofagasta was spectacular. A vast, rocky desert rose up to meet the alluring, snow-capped volcanoes we knew we would soon be setting out to try and conquer.

Dissecting the barren landscape was the Pan-American Highway, the world’s longest road, running 30,000 miles through most of North and South America; as we looked down on the scuttling, ant-like vehicles, we knew this would be among the last glimpses of tarmac we’d get for many days.

Having arrived in Chile during the summer period of November and December, our intention was

to head off-road to explore the Altiplano. This is a high altitude plateau dotted with salt lakes and volcanoes which lies right in the centre of the Andean range.

The port of Antofagasta is a prosperous place, due in no small part to the rich supply of nitrates and copper in the landscape surrounding it. The town’s history of mineral exploration was particularly evident from the surrounding countryside, which was filled with hundreds of miles of remote, unsurfaced tracks leading out to the Altiplano and only traversable by 4x4. Perfect.

The following morning, we arrived at the Hertz vehicle hire office with heavy rucksacks and a good deal of trepidation. Would the vehicle booking we’d made several months previously have been forgotten, ignored or lost in cyberspace?

Would our almost complete lack of Spanish be too great a hurdle to overcome in a country where English isn’t widely spoken?

Not a bit of it. The company’s staff were as friendly and hospitable as everyone else we had met in Chile, and after half an hour’s slightly tedious bureaucracy we were

finally shown to our 2.5-litre Nissan D22 Navara.

Our first port of call was going to be the local supermarket, but the Hertz staff advised us that this wasn’t a good place to leave valuables in the vehicle. Once we had seen the dingy underground car park, we were glad we decided to pay heed…

A couple of hours later, we returned with 200 litres of water and most of our provisions for the following days, and in a storm of rapid Spanish a tarpaulin was hastily arranged to cover our bags and valuables. It soon became clear that the holiday rental market in Antofagasta wasn’t exactly booming, with the vast majority of the branch’s trade coming from the mineral extraction industry. As such, we were treated as something of a novelty and received sterling service, with one of the young men from the office taking the time to escort us through the maze of dusty city streets until we came to the main route out of town.

I told you they were hospitable…

We soon ended up on the Pan-American Highway before, after travelling north for several hours, turning off east towards San Pedro de Atacama. This small village, surrounded by desert and 6000-metre high volcanic peaks, was to be our base for the trip. On the steep climb through the foothills to reach our campsite, we were amazed at the

Right: The Tropic of Capricorn marker is not the showiest of things, but it sure stands out in the barren landscape Opposite page: Sairecabur is home to an unmanned observatory – which rather conveniently means there’s a rough track leading up it, to an altitude of 5525 metres. It’s not quite the highest road in the world, but once you’ve come this far you’re not asking

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Left: The Old Road is definitely old and still just about a road, but safe to say you won’t be disturbed by the traffic when you pitch your tent next to it Below: The panorama from Sairecabur is worth way more than being able to boast about how high you’ve driven. Bolivia lies beyond the mountains in the distance here, while the foreground illustrates the sort of ground conditions you’re tackling to get there

scenery which lacked any form of vegetation – with the exception of one stunted, gnarled old bush which had a sign attached pleading for passing motorists to stop and use the spot for a call of nature!

As such it was hardly surprising to learn that San Pedro, which stands at 2500 metres, is among the driest places in the world. Even so, as we approached the village we were astonished to see a lush green oasis emerge, irrigated by a network of stone channels carrying water from a nearby mountain stream.

Given the complete remoteness of the region, San Pedro is a comparatively popular stop-off point for travellers, offering the area’s only

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form of hotels, hostels, campsites and restaurants.

Although our ultimate aim was to make the heady climb to visit the famous geysers of El Tatio, we decided to spend the first day testing the capabilities of the Navara by exploring the area around the hot springs of Puritama. We soon discovered the vehicle to be a highly capable and surprisingly comfortable travel companion, determinedly pulling its way over rocky, uneven tracks with only its departure angle occasionally being a cause for concern.

Not long after we reached our destination, we were heading home along a dusty track when we noticed something moving a couple of miles

ahead of us. Slowly but surely the moving dot began to emerge from the shimmering heat haze and revealed itself to be a man on a bike.

A few minutes later the exhausted rider dismounted, introduced himself and accompanied us back to the campsite. Hans, a German

teacher, was attempting a mammoth cycle along the Andes and had only stepped off the plane at Calama that day before heading out to cycle well over 60 miles, climbing around 1700 metres in the process.

He was very badly short of water and although he was adamant

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Left: Valle de la Luna, ‘the valley of the moon,’ was named for its other-worldly wind-blown rock formations. It resembles the actual moon so much that NASA came here to test a prototype Mars Rover Right: The famous geysers of Tatio were one of the main reasons for making the trip. Talking of trips, that’s something you don’t want to do while visiting them – signs warn of a tourist who strayed from the marked path, fell through the crust that makes up the surface of the landscape and was finally retrieved some time later, done to a turn Bottom: What’s more exhilarating than driving up one of the world’s highest roads? Driving back down again, obviously Bottom right: Heaven is a warm tyre… that his filtration system would be fine once he’d located one of the region’s scarce springs, we weren’t convinced, and loaded him up with as much bottled water as he could carry while pointing out the advantages of adventuring in a 4x4.

The following morning we attempted to set off at 4am towards the geyser field, not having taken into account the region’s incredibly cold nights. Not only had most of the water frozen solid in the truck, the vehicle was also refusing to start, though this was also partly due to the lack of oxygen at such a high altitude. Eventually we managed to get the Navara going, though the dark, inhospitable

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conditions of the early morning meant that the road we’d descended in warm sunshine the previous day was a very different prospect altogether.

Keeping in low ratio first and second gear, for the first half-hour the engine really struggled and progress was slow as there was no opportunity to gain speed between the hairpin bends and large rocks on the road.

Eventually we reached the summit of the pass and began a descent on to the plateau toward the geyser field, just as the very first hints of light silhouetted the high mountains along the Bolivian border.

As welcome a sight as this was, it didn’t mean that our difficulties were

instantly alleviated. In the dark, we managed to take the wrong track at an unsigned junction and ended up waking the dogs at a remote police border post. Not wishing to explain to a grumpy officer what we were doing at five in the morning, we beat a very hasty retreat.

When we reached El Tatio, the first rays of sunlight were hitting the steam rising gently from the geysers dotted around the valley.

We headed up a rough track sat precariously between bubbling sulphurous pools and seeps. Our guidebook mentioned the alarming fate of one visitor who wandered off the designated path, fell through the earth’s flimsy crust and was

boiled alive in the subterranean broth. Delightful…

Having reached our first destination, our target soon shifted and after recharging in San Pedro we decided to head south towards the Argentinean border. Here lay our next goal, the Pili volcano.

In order to reach this landmark, we had to take the ‘Old Road’ which proved to be a very rough, neglected track crawling through a barren landscape for some 93 miles. This region was even more remote than anything we’d previously experienced, and due to the recent construction of a new tarmac route further south, the going proved very tough indeed.

At first we had only to contend with the wide shale beds that surrounded the hot water salt lake of Salar de Aguas Calientes, though soon the track narrowed and we spent some considerable time negotiating the lakeside boulder fields and hillside crags in low ratio.

Eventually the way opened out into a wide, gently inclined valley and we could see Pili, at 6046m, towering

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‘We approached a narrow canyon with vertical rock walls and a floor littered with boulders.

Deeming it just about traversable, we painstakingly negotiated each obstacle until we eventually arrived at a gentle, sandy valley’ over the hills, even though it was still several turns of the valley away.

Most of this part of the journey was fairly easy, though we recorded waypoints along the route with a GPS to ensure that we could retrace our steps should an unexpected snowfall obliterate all trace of it.

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From our relatively coarse map, we could see that the valley should lead towards a pass adjacent to the west spur of Pili – and we decided to take the vehicle as close to this as possible. We soon approached a narrow canyon with vertical rock walls and a floor littered with stones

and football-sized boulders, though instead of throwing ourselves into unnecessary difficulties we decided to assess the terrain first by foot.

Deeming it just about traversable, we climbed back into the Navara and painstakingly negotiated our way around each of the many

obstacles until we eventually cleared the canyon to arrive at a gentle, sandy valley.

After rounding a couple of bends, we came to a further stretch of open valley culminating in a steep and very rocky headwall cut by a gully.

This was the route to the summit of

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the volcano and although we went on to ascend around two thirds of its length, once the gully narrowed, steepened and became filled with a bed of sharp, jutting rocks, we were forced to admit defeat. Although we felt we did have a chance of successfully reaching the summit, the thought of damaging our vehicle and then having to walk thirty miles just to get back to the deserted Old Road made us very cautious, not least because we had only the most basic spares and tools with us.

That night, we pitched our tent by the side of the road and the next morning, determined not to allow the volcano to defeat us, we set out to conquer it by foot. Defeat us it did, however; as we rapidly gained height, we soon began to realise that we hadn’t acclimatised to the altitude sufficiently to reach the summit. At 5850m, after seven hours of climbing, we turned and descended the loose rock as quickly as possible, arriving back at the vehicle with heads pounding while downing as much water as possible.

The next morning, we decided to head back along the Old Road, though it was with some sadness that we left this hauntingly beautiful plateau. Our competitive spirit still remained intact however, and back at San Pedro we studied the maps to see if we could beat the milestone altitude of 6000 metres.

We discovered our best option to be a mountain named Sairecabur. How to find the foot of this landmark was something the maps couldn’t tell us, but after a half-day search we eventually came to a rough track that appeared to head in the right direction. Following this as it wound its way up a series of hairpin bends, we eventually came to a hidden valley and before we knew it our GPS was showing us that we were over 4800 metres high.

This was promising…

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Selecting low box and first gear, we continued on the track as it became increasingly loose, rough and steep. By now, though, we could see the mountain coming closer. At the top of this slope, the track headed over a steep rocky hillside. It was still drivable, though we were forced to stop to fill in a dangerous gully with rocks to avoid grounding out.

The next instant we came to a plateau circled by a rocky rim of crags and we realised we were in the dormant crater of the volcano of which Sairecabur was the highest point! The reason for the track’s existence soon became clear, too, as we found an unmanned observatory belonging to the Universidad de Chile. At exactly 5525m, this road must be one of the highest on the planet, an equivalent to some of the routes found in the Indian and Tibetan Himalayas.

The following day, we returned to take the Navara to the top of the

mountain. Our GPS showed that the peak fell an excruciating 8m short of the magic 6000m mark, but we were rewarded with a fantastic view out over the endless hills, with Bolivia fading into the distance.

Gazing out on such unique and breathtaking views, you come to realise that things like being able to say you’ve made it to the 6000metre mark actually don’t matter all that much. Just being there – now that’s an achievement. Getting to share the majesty of the planet from

such a unique, deserted viewpoint makes the everyday concerns of human life seem trivial.

In any case, after several unsuccessful attempts we had finally scaled a peak in the Andes. Whatever the GPS might say, we had put our faithful Navara on top of the world; we were delighted to achieved our goal – and when, two days later, the time came to give the Navara back to our friends in Antofagasta, that was by far the most difficult part of the entire trip.

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THE NEW-LOOK ISUZU D-MAX

THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES

PICK-UP OF THE YEAR

2023

DRIVEN TO DO

SEE WHAT’S NEW AT ISUZU.CO.UK All fuel consumption and emission values are based on the new WLTP (Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure) test cycle which uses real-world driving data. Official fuel economy for the standard Isuzu D-Max range in MPG (l/100km): Low 25.1–27.6 (10.2–11.2). Mid 31.4–36.4 (7.8–9.0). High 36.0–39.4 (7.2–7.8). Extra-High 29.0–30.8 (9.2–9.7). Combined 30.7–33.6 (8.4–9.2).

CO2 emissions 220–241 g/km.

Visit Isuzu.co.uk or contact your local Isuzu dealership for more information.

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