4x4 Magazine - November 2018 by Assignment Media Ltd

4x4

NEWS • PRODUCTS • TRAIL GUIDES • WORKSHOP • CALENDAR • OFF-ROAD SCENE DRIVEN: New-look Jeep Cherokee

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

YOU WANT IT.

The new Suzuki Jimny is every bit as good as it looks. And it looks absolutely brilliant. Say hello to your next off-road crush…

PLUS: Nostalgia trip back to the days of the earliest super-Jimnys

£4.75

Amarok 163 Trendline manual: NEW! Roadbookstyle green lane why Volkswagen’s cheapest guides. This month: pick-up is also the best

NOV 2018

North-East Powys

Top 20 – the best off-road vehicles of all time 4x4 Cover Nov SK.indd 1

29/09/2018 22:05

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From service essentials... JeepSpares.com is proud to be able to offer a range of products to suit a variety of budgets and brand preferences. Here are some examples of some of our essential brands…

Unibrakes – Reliability with Affordability Unibrakes manufacture over 1500 varieties of Brake Pads, 800 varieties of Brake Shoes, and 2800 varieties of Brake Discs & Drums for saloon cars, light cars, 4x4’s and commercial vehicles. Using advanced equipment & technology, Unibrakes are able to offer highquality products at prices more proportionate to the maintenance of vehicles no longer inside the Manufacturers warranty. Tried and tested across a number of 4x4 applications, Unibrakes offer a great value alternative for vehicles undergoing more frequent service intervals.

Allmakes 4x4 – 4x4 is our Forte For 40 years Allmakes has been supplying quality aftermarket products into the 4x4 market. The company’s dynamic buying strategy and focus on fast-moving products, allows them to smart-source from the worlds leading aftermarket manufacturers and continuously improve the quality of the products that are most in demand. With ranges to suit a variety of budgets and attention on quality, Allmakes 4x4 underpin a number of areas in the JeepSpares.com product catalogue.

TJ Filters – Respecting a classic TJ Filters offer an established range of quality standard filtration products and have been in the market for over 40 years. TJ Filters is a trusted brand that has been given a new lease of life as a replacement aftermarket product that also carries the QH brand and symbol of quality. The ideal brand for JeepSpares.com to include in our range and one that offers great value and reliable filtration performance.

jeepspares.com

...to quality brands... Mann + Hummel

The premium brand from MANN+HUMMEL is called MANN-FILTER, a global brand defined by more than 75 years of experience in the filtration sector, and OE to a number of major vehicle manufacturers including Volvo, Mercedes Benz and Lamborghini.

Magnetti Marelli

Champion

Magneti Marelli supplies all the leading car makers in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. Within the scope of its mission as a world-wide automotive systems and components supplier, Magnetti Marelli aims at combining quality, technology and versatility, with the goal of making key technologies available to the final user at a competitive price. Magneti Marelli is also part of Fiat Chrysler Automotive (FCA).

Dayco

Decades of experience combined with comprehensive, innovative and globally acknowledged capabilities in every aspect of the engine are factors that have driven Pierburg in its mission of repeatedly developing and manufacturing forwardlooking components, modules, and systems.

For over 100 years, the iconic Champion® brand has been a world leader in the manufacture of spark plugs for every kind of combustion engine. From innovation aviation technology to a tradition of motorsports dominance, the Champion brand has been a part of product development in every type of engine.

Nissens

Utilizing the latest and most advanced technologies, Dayco’s flexible design and manufacturing strategy matches materials to specific application needs. Dayco’s material database is constantly evolving, enabling coverage across all market segments no matter the application, environment or performance requirements. Dayco belts are available now from JeepSpares.com.

Pierburg

Quinton Hazell (QH) is a guarantor for highquality spare parts and accessories. The extensive product range and the very high quality make the brand a recognized partner in the independent market for spare parts. JeepSpares.com currently offers QH products on our water pump and gasket options.

Since 1921, Nissens has developed, manufactured, and supplied a wide range of automotive radiators, climate control products, and thermal solutions for a variety of businesses all over the world. Nissens is recognized as an OES/OEM supplier to SAAB, Mazda, VW, Toyota, Honda, FCA, Lamborghini and Aston Martin.

Delphi Lockheed Delphi are an established UK-based supplier of original parts to vehicle manufacturers around the globe. While Delphi specialises in numerous areas of the vehicle, it’s the Delphi friction products, including those under the Delphi Lockheed brand, that JeepSpares.com felt would best suit the braking section of the JeepSpares.com product catalogue.

Bosch Bosch is a name that needs little introduction. Its product portfolio includes products made as Bosch original equipment, as well as aftermarket products developed and manufactured inhouse. Bosch is currently the exclusive choice for OE quality wiper blades on JeepSpares.com.

...to premium performance. jeepspares.com

Whatever your preference, we’ve got a spare to suit everyone. Mopar

PR2 Many products on JeepSpares. com have been selected for inclusion in our exclusive range of Premium Quality products known as PR2. Our system for quality testing, monitoring, review and selection means we are able to either award PR2 status to those products that qualify, deny PR2 status to those products that don’t, and even strip the status from products that previously qualified but no longer perform to the required level. PR2 are in essence the products that our team feel have demonstrated their quality to exceptionally high standards and so warrant recognition as elite products. Any product carrying the PR2 mark carries a 2-year warranty period either from the manufacturer themselves, or exclusively from JeepSpares.com

Online at:

jeepspares.com

Phone us:

01235 832900

Email us:

info@jeepspares.com

For 80 years, Mopar has been the source for genuine parts and accessories for all FCA brands. “The Mopar brand holds an unparalleled place in the automotive world, possessing name recognition, scope of service and passionate enthusiasts unmatched by any other service and parts organization in the industry” Pietro Gorlier, Head of Parts and Service (Mopar),

We couldn’t claim to truly offer Jeep Spares unless we were able to offer products from the Genuine source, and of course for many, Mopar is the only source for the part or accessory that they require, and so at JeepSpares.com not only are we an approved dealer of Mopar products, but our team also have access to the official FCA parts catalogues, and carry stock on an increasing number of fast moving MOPAR products.

Parts catalogues Cherokee & Liberty, Wrangler, Patriot and Compass, Grand Cherokee and Commander.

Large discounts on parts and accessories. Regularly updated.

Vehicle specific catalogues are free to download or available in hard-copy by request. Speak to the team or visit the site if you wish to find out more about our products and services.

November 2018

THIS MONTH 42

38 68

2-3 Contents.indd 2

01/10/2018 23:11

95 12 ISSUES OF 4X4 – FOR JUST £12!

This has got to be the best value offer in the history of publishing… subscribe to 4x4 for a year and it’ll only cost a quid an issue! News 14 16

Nissan Dark Sky Concept Mega Navara – and really mega trailer Isuzu D-Max Updates for 2019 include new rear suspension

Tested 18 20 22

Jeep Charokee Will its new facelift keep it fresh? Hyundai Santa Fe Updated version of a family favourite VW Amarok At long last, the manual version has arrived…

Every Month 4 6 8 10 12 33 80 96

Alan Kidd The new Jimny is a ready-made it-car Gallery The much-loved Suzuki SJ in all its various wondrousness Destinations The Andean trail that leads to Uspallata Lost Lanes Idiocy laid bare in the tawdry tale of Brushﬁeld What Jeep Did Next… The Epic Maximum Performance Wrangler Products Tools, parts and goodies to make your world go round Roadbook A sensational laning route in North-East Powys Next Month Is your 4x4 ready for winter?

Features 32 38 42 56

Defender 90 Making sense of a sea of switches Skoda Kodiaq The ultimate test for a family SUV: the Big Road Trip

Off-Road Scene 68 70 72

Cam Steps The mysterious destruction of an iconic right of way Billing Show A new world record for the longest convoy of Landies Ragnarok Challenge Hardcore winch action for teams of ﬁve

Off-Road Calendar 69 73 76

Suzuki Jimny The moment of truth, as we drive the all-new Jimny Early Super-Jimny Mighty giant-killer on G-Wagen axles Best-Ever 4x4s Prepare to make a bee-line for the classiﬁeds… Mull of Kintyre A father-and-son bonding trip to feed the midges

Our 4x4s 60 62

UK Convoy Tours Tag-along runs on public rights of way Pay-and-Play Events Go in as hard as you want Overland Travel Long-range adventures in your 4x4

4x4 2-3 Contents.indd 3

“It looks brilliant in pictures and, now we’ve ﬁnally seen it in the metal, it looks brilliant for real. And it’s as brilliant as it looks”

NOVEMBER 2018 | 3

02/10/2018 15:26

Alan Kidd Editor

t really is all about one thing this month. Throughout the quarter of a century during which I’ve been writing about off-roading, only Suzuki has ever come close to loosening Land Rover’s grip on the hobby in the UK. And now the Japanese company – whose products have received both barrels from these quarters once or twice in the past – has introduced what I’m boldly going to say is the best vehicle it has ever made. That’s big. When I started in this trade, people were all over the SJ410 and Samurai. We’ve featured some sensational modded examples of both in the past. The original Vitara, too, was enormously popular among off-road fans, and then once the Jimny was a couple of years into its life it took over as the vehicle to mod if you wanted something light, agile and affordable. That’s one hell of a heritage. But the new Jimny doesn’t just live up to it. From the experience I’ve had so far of the vehicle, it tops it off. The off-road market has changed hugely since the old Jimny came out, of course. Back then, the Defender was still in its pomp, and little else got a look-in. Soon, though, Suzuki’s little coiler started to carve a niche for itself among people who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, spend the ridiculous money it already took to join the 90 gang, and even though it came to become horribly out of date during the two decades it was on sale, it never really looked back. Now, the Defender is gone and we still haven’t met anyone who expects it to return in any sort of credible form. In its absence, the Ford Ranger has made hay and British off-roaders have belatedly discovered the Jeep Wrangler. But the Ranger, like all pick-ups, is a big thing. Even with a lift kit and bash plates, any double-cab will be vulnerable in terrain that’s been shaped by smaller vehicles. And the new Wrangler, which will arrive in UK dealerships a couple of months or so before the Jimny, is set to cost from more than forty grand for a base-speccer. That’s a huge leap up from what the old Wrangler cost when it was new, and I fear it’s going to torpedo Jeep’s chances of

4 | NOVEMBER 2018

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The new Jimny is going to be the it-car of 2019 taking a grasp on the off-road market here. The introduction of a work-spec Toyota Land Cruiser costing some ten grand less than the new Wrangler should see to that – but the real killer for every other brand with ambitions to see people getting its trucks muddy is going to be that the Jimny is expected to cost about half as much as those Cruisers. Like the old Jimny, the new one will be the cheapest way of going off-road by a ridiculous margin. The big difference, though, is that this one doesn’t feel cheap when you’re on board. From the chassis to the multimedia, they’ve absolutely nailed it – and of course there’s that wonderfully retro styling, which everyone has absolutely fallen for. Everyone? Well, we’ve not asked all of them, obviously. But get this. Never, ever, in my career have I been on a car launch on which so many journalists uttered the phrase ‘I want one.’ These are people who drive the best and the newest cars, week in, week out. They want the Jimny. And it’s not just car hacks, either. On launches, when you’re tooling around in brand new motors no-one has seen before, you sometimes get a bit of attention. But I stood there listening to guys who regularly test Lambos, Porsches, Bentleys and all that kind of stuff, raving excitedly about how many people were eyeing them up and coming over to ask about the Jimny while they were out on the road. That doesn’t happen normally. Mark my words, this isn’t an everyday arrival on the new car market. Social media has been going nuts for the Jimny, too. The it-car of 2019 is going to be an off-roader. And quite right too. The new Jimny is soon going to be a very common sight offroad, and you can rest assured the modding market is ramping up for it already. It’s going to be a very, very big deal.You should want one: I know I do.

Tel: 01283 553243 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 Assistant Editor George Dove Art Editor Samantha D’Souza Contributors Mike Trott, Graham Scott, Paul Looe, Dan Fenn, Pip Evans, Olly Sack Photographers Harry Hamm,Vic Peel, Steve Taylor, Richard Hair, Pawel Frackowiak Group Advertising Manager Ian Argent Tel: 01283 553242 Advertising Manager Colin Ashworth Tel: 01283 553244 Advertising Sales Manager Peter Topley Tel: 01283 553245 Advertising and Exhibition Sales Executive Abigail Cooper Tel: 01283 553246 Advertising Production Sarah Lowe Tel: 01283 553242 Subscriptions Manager Catherine Martin Subscriptions Assistants Emma Emery, Kay Tunnicliffe, Abi Dutton Publisher and Head of Marketing Sarah Lowe Email: sarah.lowe@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, Repton House G11, Bretby Business Park, Ashby Road, Bretby, Derbyshire DE15 0YZ

4x4 01/10/2018 21:59

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GALLERY

In pictures: 4x4s and off-road stories from around the world

With the Suzuki Jimny making its debut this month, what better time could there be to sift through some pictures of its predecessor, the old Samurai, in its very many shapes and forms? Not that we had ever seen one quite like the colossus pictured above, at least not with its transmission still intact – and you’ll do very well to spot a long-wheelbase in Britain nowadays. Most of all, though, we always tend to associate small Suzukis with off-road playtimes rather than serious missions into the backwoods – but whether it’s being nibbled by a parrot or dwarfed by a kayak, or indeed by the landscape, Suzuki’s long-running family of giant-killers promises to go anywhere – in every sense of the phrase

Main pictureSamurai Monster, by Vetatur Fumare @ flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0 Above left: Suzuki Samurai 1.3 Pick-Up, by RL GNZLZ @ flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0 Far left: Samurai at Crater Lake (CA), by Rick Cooper @ flickr.com, CC BY 2.0 Left: Jipe? by Eduardo Aigner @ flickr.com, CC BY 2.0 Below: Moran Tsai

6 | NOVEMBER 2018

4pp Gallery etc Nov.indd 6

4x4 21/09/2018 21:09

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WITH NEW AND UPGRADED PRODUCTS FOR THIS AUTUMN/WINTER, LAZER LAMPS CONTINUES TO SET THE STANDARD IN HIGH PERFORMANCE LED SPOTLIGHTS FOR THE 4X4 AND PICK-UP MARKET At just 40mm in height, the new Linear range boasts a low profile design and high-end styling, that ensures the lights are easy to install while impressing whatever time of day or night. Not all LED lights are made the same, visit lazerlamps.com and see for yourself.

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DESTINATIONS

The world’s greatest 4x4 travel adventures caught on camera – this month, the remote Andean outpost with a strange connection to home…

Uspallata An unremarkable village in the Andes, Uspallata is nonetheless a fantastic destination for overlanders. That’s because of the glorious mountain scenery surrounding it – and, in particular, the road you take to get there. Travelling from the Argentine city of Mendoza, you follow Ruta 13 – an unsurfaced mountain road which in places narrows to a single ribbon of stone and rock and is definitely only suitable for 4x4s. Carry on past Uspallata towards the Chilean frontier and you’ll encounter the Andes at their mightiest. And if you visit Las Bovedas, a cluster of old copper kilns near the town, you might spot that the bricks they were built with are stamped with a maker’s mark from Stourbridge. Small world. Left: Uspallata, by Hannah Walker @ flickr. com, CC BY-SA 2.o Other pics: Moriz Mdz @ flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0

8 | NOVEMBER 2018

4pp Gallery etc Nov.indd 8

4x4 21/09/2018 21:09

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18/07/2018 12:43

LOST LANES

In memory of Britain’s many rights of way which, over the years, have fallen victim to petty politics and local self-interest

Brushfield One of the most recent casualties in the war against freedom, Brushfield is a long, varied, beautiful and wholly sustainable public highway which was closed in late 2016. Combining a long, rocky gradient at one end with sweeping views to both sides as it skirts the ridge between Monsal and Taddington Dales to the south and the valley cut by the River Wye to the north, prior to its completely needless and senseless closure it was one of the jewels in the crown of Derbyshire’s rights of way network. When the axe was first lifted above its neck, the shameless venality of the system implemented by the Blair government in 2006 with its shabby NERC legislation was laid bare; in order to save it, green lane users had to prove they had driven it regularly it more than ten years previously, so naturally, given the complete impossibility of doing so, almost no-one came forward with evidence. The end result was that while anyone with a brain could see that it was a road, the planning inspector assigned to deciding its status had no choice but to downgrade it to a bridleway. Another victory for the self-serving local mandarins and anti-freedom campaigners whose greed-fuelled machinations have over the years laid waste to a once-proud network of unsurfaced road – stealing many thousands of pounds in green laners’ business from north Derbyshire’s shops, campsites and so on in the process.

10 | NOVEMBER 2018

4pp Gallery etc Nov.indd 10

4x4 21/09/2018 21:09

SuperPro_PickUpAd_AdjArms_2018_Layout 1 25/07/2018 12:57 Page 1

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The arms feature a ball joint that can be adjusted in-situ that allows for various degrees of caster and camber alignment. With the arms pre-fitted with SuperPro bushes, suspension performance and longevity are also enhanced. Further caster and camber adjustment is possible by fitting SuperPro’s alignment correction bushes to other locations on the vehicle.

SUPERPRO ADJUSTABLE UPPER FRONT CONTROL ARM APPLICATIONS Vehicle Ford Ranger PX / Mazda BT-50 (2011-2015) Ford Ranger PXII / Mazda BT-50 (2015-on) Mitsubishi L200 ML / MN (2006-2016) Mitsubishi L200 MQ (2015-on) Nissan Navara D40 (2005-2014-on) Nissan Navara NP300 (2015-on) Toyota Hi-Lux KUN26 / GGN25 (2005-2015) Toyota Hi-Lux KUN26 / GGN25 (2005-2015) Toyota Hi-Lux KUN26 / GGN25 (2005-2015) Toyota Hi-Lux GGN / GUN (2015-on)

Adjustment Adjustable ball joint gives +/- 2° of camber & 0 to +4 caster Adjustable ball joint gives +/- 2° of camber & 0 to +4 caster 2" lift correction gives approx +2° caster & +1.5 camber. Fixed settings 2" lift correction gives approx +2° caster & +1.5 camber. Fixed settings Adjustable ball joint allows for optimum settings up to 2" lift 0 to +3° caster Adjustable ball joint allows for optimum settings up to 2" lift 0 to +3° caster Adjustable ball joint allows for optimum settings up to 2" lift +/-3° camber & +4° caster Standard alignment: with camber bolts, heavy duty ball joints & SuperPro bushes With camber bolts, heavy duty ball joints & offset SuperPro bushes for up to 0.6° camber adjustment Adjustable ball joint allows for optimum settings up to 2" lift +/-3° camber & +4° caster

BENEFITS OF FITTING SUPERPRO CONTROL ARMS Increased articulation - ideal for off-road use Camber and caster adjustment Increased clearance between spring and control arm at full ‘droop’ Reduced tyre wear Fitted with durable and long-lasting SuperPro bushes No modifications required to OE suspension

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WHAT JEEP DID NEXT…

Historical highlights of the concept vehicles Jeep builds every year for the Moab Easter Safari. This month: a Wrangler for non-stop off-road action

2014: MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE ‘The ultimate in power and capability.’ That was Jeep’s claim for 2014’s Wrangler Maximum Performance, a five-door hardtop riding on 4.88:1 Dana 60 axles with electric locking diffs. Running on 37” BFG Mud-Terrains, the Maximum Performance had a 4:1 Rock-Trac transfer case giving it an overall ratio of 70:1 in low first. Its tyres were held on by prototype eight-stud beadlocks – and making space for them was a +4” suspension lift from Jeep Performance Parts featuring remote-reservoir Fox shock absorbers. Up front, a prototype stinger front bumper from Jeep Performance Parts mounted a winch as well as flowing down into a skid plate. The sills were protected by a set of Rubicon rock rails, and out back was a proto rear wheel carrier designed to cope with its outsize spare. Most of these mods were featured on several other of Jeep’s Class of 2014. But setting this Wrangler apart was a full-width LED light bar mounted across the top of the windscreen. Another lovely touch was a set of honour badges depicting the brutal Moab trails a Jeep is expected to tackle in order to win the coveted ‘Trail Rated’ award. Jeep described the Maximum Performance as being a Wrangler for ‘hard-core enthusiasts who spend every spare minute on the trail.’ And with a truck like this on the drive, why wouldn’t you?

12 | NOVEMBER 2018

4pp Gallery etc Nov.indd 12

4x4 21/09/2018 21:09

Untitled-1 1

29/03/2018 13:53

4x4 NEWS

NISSAN LOOKS TO THE STARS Dark Sky Concept and bespoke trailer go together to create a mobile all-terrain observatory

here’s a certain type of person who thinks we only drive 4x4s because we’re trying to compensate for some sort of insecurity in the wedding tackle department. Well, that lot might simply be compensating for some very deﬁnite insecurity, nay deﬁciency, in the coherent thinking

department – but my, won’t they just be frothing madly at the mouth when they see the Nissan Navara Dark Sky Concept. Debuting at the recent Hannover Motor Show, this is a version of Nissan’s extremely popular one-tonner which features more tech, some funky decals and… an enormous telescope. We can

Skoda has unveiled the new Kodiaq vRS, a high-performance version of its award-winning family SUV. The new rangetopper will pack 240bhp and 369lbf.ft from a 2.0 TDI engine, and runs 17” brake discs behind a set of 20” alloy wheels.

18 | OCTOBER 2018

2.5 News Nov AWAITING AD.indd 14

almost hear the disciples of Freud fulminating now. Lighting up Nissan’s stand at Hannover, the Dark Sky Concept was created in conjunction with the European Space Agency (ESA) in the UK. The idea is to highlight the capability and robustness that enables the Navara to power and tow a mobile astronomy laboratory.

Behind the Navara itself, an industry-standard PlaneWave telescope sits atop a bespoke double-axle all-terrain trailer unit. This is able to accompany the vehicle to the sort of locations that can only be reached by something with the Navara’s level of off-road ability – the sort of ‘dark sky’ locations whose

DS Automobiles’ DS 7 Crossback range is set to gain its ﬁrst fourwheel drive model, with the addition of the E-Tense 4x4. The plugin petrol-electric hybrid promises 300bhp, 332lbf.ft and a 31-mile range on electric power alone. UK sales will begin next year.

4x4 02/10/2018 15:43

a North Niche.indd 1

4x4 NEWS

Manby Ample kitc Spacious inter NICHE

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remoteness means they offer the best atmospheric stargazing scenery you can ﬁnd. The concept Navara is also ﬁtted with an advanced version of Nissan’s ProPILOT driver assistance technology. It’s reasonable to expect that these latest advances towards the era of autonomous driving will start appearing in showroom models before much more time has passed. On the outside, the vehicle’s bodywork features a unique colour scheme in which intricate white decals contrast with a darker paint colour. There’s also no small amount of dramatic red external lighting, because when you’re checking out a colony of extra-terrestrials with your big telescope it’s only fair to let them see you too. There’s also a full-width LED bar integrated into the Navara’s roof line along the top of its windscreen, for those occasions when only a Light Sky will do. The vehicle’s

cabin, meanwhile, displays a smart mixture of black leather and orange trimming that is similarly geometric to the exterior designs. Part of the Dark Sky Concept’s purpose is to express Nissan’s conﬁdence in the Navara’s platform and the diversity it brings to the table. Ashwani Gupta, Senior Vice President of the company’s Light Commercial Vehicle division, says it enables them to cater for a wide range of clients. ‘The tough pick-up trucks on display (at Hannover) are the perfect embodiment of Nissan’s dedication to excellence in conversions. Powered by Nissan Intelligent Mobility and including ProPILOT, the incredible versatility of each vehicle allows us to go above and beyond to support any business need and serve as an authentic partner for our customers.’ In particular those From the Sahara to with issues about the size of their have a demountable manhood, etc etc.

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Volvo has revealed the new V60 Cross Country, a version of its mediumsized estate with all-wheel drive, 75mm higher ground clearance and a selectable Off-Road driving mode. Initial UK models will be powered by the D4 diesel engine, with hybrid and plug-in versions due later.

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02/10/2018 15:43

4x4 NEWS

UPDATES FOR 2019 D-MAX New rear suspension leads the way as Isuzu aims to provide a more refined working vehicle

suzu has announced a range of updates to its high-selling D-Max pick-up. Effective from 1 October, the vehicle gains improvements to its suspension, cabin quality and safety tech, as well as a minor increase in payload and a set of new colour options. The headline story for commercial users and off-road enthusiasts alike will be the move from five-piece to three-piece leaf packs for the rear springs on double-cab models. The result of this is an improvement in ride comfort and reduction in cabin noise, helping enhance the truck’s overall refinement. This comes with no penalty in terms of overall strength and durability, as the new springs are made from a higher grade of steel. Indeed, the newer material has a higher hydrogen resistance, meaning

it will resist corrosion for longer. Towing ability remains unchanged, meanwhile, and a 10kg reduction in kerb weight means a concomitant increase in payload. On the subject of towing, the D-Max now gains Trailer Sway Control. This uses sensors to detect the onset of trailer swing and reduce speed if sway is identified. Speed is controlled by reducing engine torque and braking automatically. All of this happens without any input from the driver, however the vehicle’s brake lights will still illuminate to warn following traffic even though the pedal hasn’t been touched. Inside, the D-Max gains new soft-touch padding on its armrests, binnacle and cubby box lid. This aids the feeling of perceived quality, as does gloss black trim on the window switches, air vents and

SEAT has unveiled the new Tarraco, its biggest SUV. The vehicle will be available in five and seven-seater form, with a choice of petrol and diesel engines; 4x4 variants will come with a seven-speed auto as standard. Pre-ordering will open in December, with first deliveries in the spring.

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glove box. These features become part of the spec on all premium versions of the vehicle, as does a new D-Max badge on the glovebox. Moving to the outside, you get the choice of three new paint colours – Spinel Red, Sapphire Blue and Galena Grey. The rangetopping Blade model, meanwhile, becomes available in four colours,

with Obsidian Grey and Spinel Red added to its existing palette. The D-Max starts at £16,799 CVOTR for the 4x2 Single Cab model, climbing to £29,799 CVOTR for the top of the range Blade auto. The 1.9-litre Euro 6 diesel engine is retained from the previous model year, as are a 3500kg towing weight and 125,000 mile / 5-year warranty.

The new Suzuki Jimny has scored a lowly three stars in the latest round of EuroNCAP crash tests, in part due to deficiencies NCAP says it found with its autonomous braking system. The test regime does not appear to assess the value of a high driving position in preventing accidents.

4x4 02/10/2018 15:43

THE AWARD WINNING ISUZU D-MAX

3 NEW COLOURS THAT WORK

CHECK OUT THE NEW ISUZU D-MAX COLOURFUL CHARACTERS PREMIUM RANGE FROM

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CALL 03303 335126 OR VISIT ISUZU.CO.UK TO SEE THE NEW COLOURS AND BOOK A TEST DRIVE #Over 40 MPG figure applies to manual transmission models. MPG figures are official EU test figures for comparative purposes and may not reflect real driving results. Official fuel figures for the Isuzu D-Max range in MPG (l/100km): Urban 30.4 - 38.7 (9.3 - 7.3). Extra Urban 40.9 - 50.4 (6.9 - 5.6). Combined 36.2 - 45.6 (7.8 - 6.2). CO2 emissions 163 - 205g/km. For full details please contact your local Isuzu dealer or visit isuzu.co.uk †Prices shown are for a Isuzu D-Max Eiger Double Cab with manual transmission at £21,999 CVOTR and an Isuzu D-Max Blade with automatic transmission at £29,799 CVOTR. Commercial vehicle on the road price includes delivery, number plates, 12 months road fund licence and first registration fee, excludes VAT and mica/metallic paint finish. *3.5 tonne towing applies to all 4x4 models. **125,000 mile/5 year (whichever comes first) warranty applies to all new Isuzu D-Max models. Terms and conditions apply.

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02/10/2018 12:48

DRIVEN FIRST DRIVE Jeep Cherokee

he Cherokee has been one of Jeep’s stable members for many a year. This is the latest iteration, the revised Mk5 model, which has had a facelift and a bit of internal work done with a view to keeping it an appealing proposition on European soil. Jeep’s designers have improved the looks of the exterior, which leads with a neater front end that wears the traditional Jeep grille proudly. The rear, which is more forgettable, becomes home to a repositioned number plate. There are now LED lights front and rear, but it’s inside where Jeep has tried to make a real difference. The interior, although not particularly imaginative, is at least functional, and the latest version of Jeep’s Uconnect infotainment system is both quick and simple to navigate. The 8.4” touchscreen

on which it’s displayed boasts decent graphics, too, and Apple CarPlay and Android Auto come as standard. There’s a lot of driver info to scroll through, too, and all the controls work pretty painlessly. We praised the pre-facelift model’s cabin in a test-drive feature last month, and it retains the lounge-on-wheels ambience for which big Jeeps are known; there’s been a move to increase quality here, too, though it’s got to the point where time feels like it’s marching on. Certainly, newer competitors like the BMW

X3 and Skoda Kodiaq are more stylish and modern inside. There’s no issue with cabin space, on the other hand, and a sliding rear bench makes it easy to get comfortable. The seats feel more like chairs; here and there in the cabin, we thought we detected a whiff of parent company Fiat, but in this area it’s still typical Jeep. The list of safety features is impressive, too. Lane departure warning, blind spot assist, forward collision warning and rear cross path detection all come as standard on the Cherokee, so while its cabin design might not be cutting-edge it’s still looking after you. It’ll look after you better off-road than most of its class rivals, too. You can actually get a model with two-

wheel drive, which we’ll politely ignore here, but the standard 4x4 version (Active Drive I, Jeep calls it) has enough about it to get further than your average SUV. If you want a Cherokee you can really use off-road, meanwhile, next year the range will grow to include a Trailhawk model with Active Drive II – which means low range and a locking rear diff. This version will have enhanced suspension, too, to give it greater ground clearance; it still won’t be in Wrangler territory, but it’ll wipe the ﬂoor with pretty much anything short of a proper chassis-and-axles off-road truck. Bearing in mind, then, that the Cherokee is towards the rugged end of the SUV spectrum, we found that on the below-par roads of

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02/10/2018 15:37

THERE CAN BE

ONLY ONE IT’S TAKEN 60 PLUS YEARS OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT TO BRING YOU AUSTRALIA’S MOST SUPERIOR SHOCK ABSORBER, CREATED BY AUSTRALIA’S NUMBER 1 SUSPENSION SPECIALIST.

Foam Cell TrakRyder Shocks 40 mm bore Foam Cell technology for minimum fade Sicily, where Jeep launched the new model, it felt… well, below-par. Firstly, UK customers will only be able to buy it with one engine following the facelift. That’s the 2.2 MultiJet diesel with 195hp and 332lbf.ft, which sounds alright on paper but felt sluggish on the road. We suspect the standard-ﬁt nine-speed automatic gearbox may have something to do with this. All too often, it would hesitate when we wanted it to snap into action, or hold on too long to a ratio we were clearly done with. The diesel unit is rather noisy, too, at least under acceleration. It’s not so bad on the motorway, and wind and tyre noise are well suppressed, so the Cherokee is a perfectly acceptable long-range cruiser. But on what you might call ‘interesting’ roads, when you’re working the brakes and throttle hard, you’ll spend a lot of time listening to an intrusive groan. There’s a 2.0-litre turbocharged petrol engine with 270hp coming next year, and we’d be tempted to keep our powder dry for that. It certainly ought to be more reﬁned, and with all that power you’d hope

for a lot more get-up-and-go, too. It won’t make the Cherokee any more agile on twisty roads, however. It can’t hide its two-tonne mass; it feels sturdy, as an off-road vehicle should, but not what you’d call agile. If you want a B-road weapon, there are many other SUVs that will make you happier. None of this makes the Cherokee dreadful, but there are just too many areas in which there are other vehicles that do it better. It’s good off-road, by SUV standards, but not as good as a real off-roader – and with UK prices predicted PED1738_130x90_QP_V1.indd to start in the region of £40,000£45,000 when sales begin early next year, it’s stretching credibility to say that this alone would be reason enough to choose it over better, cheaper rivals. Rivals like the Skoda Kodiaq and Hyundai Santa Fe, for example. The Cherokee will give you a lot of kit for your money, but so will these and many others – not to mention two extra seats, should you want them. And they’ll do it for substantially less money. This isn’t a bad vehicle: it’s just an increasingly hard one to justify.

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DRIVEN FIRST DRIVE Hyundai Santa Fe

he just-facelifted Santa Fe is Hyundai’s seven-seat rival to SUVs like the Land Rover Discovery Sport. We’ve got a Premium SE model here, ﬁtted with the only engine currently available – a 2.2 CRDi turbo-diesel with an output of 197bhp. Our tester was equipped with four-wheel drive and an eight-speed automatic transmission, effectively making it about as high up the Santa Fe chain as you can go. As you’d expect from any seven-seat SUV, it’s very family orientated – and it holds up against its rivals very well on this front, despite lacking any sort of passion or, dare I say it, X-factor… From the outside, it’s a relatively handsome craft that neither offends nor charms. Flashes of dark and satin chrome boost its case, while its lights are all on-trend and LED. Inside, you’ll ﬁnd a familiar graphite hue to the cabin, which isn’t so dark and gloomy when you’ve got a panoramic sunroof to call upon. With this latest version of the Santa Fe, Hyundai has endeavoured to take the model up another notch in terms of quality – and in truth, it does a decent job of feeling more premium.

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The displays are attractive, the seats comfortable and the Krell stereo most certainly welcome. Generally, all surfaces are nice to touch, with only a couple of nasty areas. Ten years ago, it would have been the other way round. As a family, it’s easy to appreciate some of the Santa Fe’s features. It has a powered rear tailgate – and a practical third row of seats that could feasibly keep even adults in adequate comfort. There’s more, too, because plenty of USB sockets can be found around the cabin, legroom is equally as plentiful throughout and this model features an array of useful driver aids like a bird’s-eye parking camera – which leaves you with no excuse at all in the Tesco car park. Another clever idea is the positioning of two switches on the driver’s side of the front passenger seat, which allow you to move it forward and backward without having to crane over it or even remove your seatbelt. Little things. To drive, it’s rather ordinary. It’s a larger vehicle than the Tucson, it’s smaller brother, so it’s no surprise that dynamically it isn’t as good. However, the diesel motor has accessible everyday power

and manages to remain in the background, as does the eightspeed gearbox. We found ourselves musing that Hyundai could have called it the Ronseal – you can rely on it to do what it says on the tin, but don’t expect it to make your heart sing with joy in the process. Nonetheless, this is very likely one of those cars which, without realising, a family would fall slowly in love with. It’s absolutely ﬁt for purpose: it doesn’t throw up any surprises, but will be very dependable on a day-to-day basis. There are a couple of issues. One is the lack of alternative engine options – the 2.2 CRDi is a good turbo-diesel, but it’s a turbo-diesel. The other is price – an area in which Hyundai used to make the opposition cry, but the Korean giant is a budget brand no more. To cut

to the chase, the Santa Fe we drove lists at £43,295. Just because Hyundai has ﬁgured out how to build good vehicles these days, it doesn’t need to start getting greedy. When you lose that sense of value, you also lose the sense of being a genuine, honest brand. SUV buyers who want to get soundly rinsed are hardly short of existing options, after all. With the Skoda Kodiaq in the world, asking this much money for a Santa Fe seems like a case of making heroic assumptions. Still, it’s a vehicle that gives you exactly what you’d expect: a good, practical well-rounded machine that looks the part and is pleasant to live with each and every day. You can’t use it for painting your shed – but if you could, you just know the ﬁnish would be bang-on.

4x4 29/09/2018 22:04

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13/08/2018 02:50

DRIVEN

VW AMAROK 163 MANUAL

Entry-level version of Volkswagen’s premium pick-up makes a convincing case for being seen as the best model in the range DRIVEN Amarok 3.0 TDI 163 Manual

ver since the revised Amarok came to Britain a year and a half ago, we’ve been praising Volkswagen for its premium approach to pickup manufacture. But we’ve also been saying that what the range needs is to expand downwards. By that, we don’t mean we want the Amarok to become cheap and nasty. It’ll never be either of those things. But until now, it’s only

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been available with high-powered versions of Volkswagen’s 3.0 TDI engine spinning an eightspeed automatic box – and what we’ve been yearning for is a manual model. There’s one overwhelming reason for this. In auto form, the Amarok doesn’t have a dual-range transfer box; to get that, you need to buy it with a manual unit, which has ﬁnally arrived in the range after a rather longer wait than Volkswagen had originally planned. The 3.0 TDI engine is now available in four different states of tune (with 163, 204, 224 and 258bhp), and the manual box is offered with the lower two of

these. You can only get a manual Amarok in entry-level Trendline trim, too; we’ve got it here with the 163bhp unit, which means that at £24,510 plus VAT this is the cheapest model in the range. You’ve got to add on-the-road costs to that, of course, plus the VAT if you’re not registered. In the case of our test vehicle, too, there’s a range of options: sat-nav, alcantara seats, a chrome styling pack, load liner, locking rear diff and all-round parking sensors. Add in all that little lot and you’d be looking at a ﬁnal invoice for £35,039.

CABIN AND PRACTICALITY Some of the other base-spec pickups we’ve driven recently have felt noticeably utilitarian inside.

These include the Isuzu D-Max and Toyota Hilux – as well, perhaps more surprisingly, as the Mercedes X-Class. But although the Amarok feels less sumptuous in Trendline trim than we’ve become used to since its facelift, it still has a classy air to it. We should add that the aforementioned base-speccers are all very good vehicles – in at least one case, our favourite from its range. But all have a buildingsite sort of air to them, which the Amarok doesn’t. Those alcantara seats help elevate its image here, as does the fact that even at the bottom of the range, alloy wheels are standard. Even without its optional cabin enhancements, though, it still wouldn’t feel like a hose-out work truck inside. Obviously, a grand and a half’s worth of chrome accessories can hardly help but

4x4 29/09/2018 20:17

Volkswagen makes no apologies for positioning the Amarok at the premium end of the pick-up market. The Trendline model isn’t as sumptuous as others we’ve tested, but if anything that makes it more convincing. Its layout is convenient and build quality is top-notch, even if the sat-nav and alcantara seats seen here are optional extras twist your perception here, too (yes, really, that’s how much the option costs); our view would be that we’d happily spend that much on getting them taken away, but if you’re into that sort of look then ﬁne. We’d think you’d probably be looking further up the range if you like chrome that much, though. 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, built to last. The seats will be cloth-trimmed if you don’t think it’s worth paying £762 for alcantara, and knowing Volkswagen as we do we have no doubt at all that the fabric in question will be as stout and hard-wearing as it is grippy and comfortable. But to test what we’re given, it’s a very nice perch from which to drive; the seat’s back bolsters feel a little narrow compared to the base, but overall it’s as supportive as it should be and you don’t want for comfort.

You do want for lumber adjust, though. But this is on the options list, too – at a thankfully modest £150 to cover both front seats. It’s always good when the stuff you don’t want costs silly money and the stuff you do is nice and cheap. In the back, our instinct is that the Trendline model has super knee room than the higher-spec Amaroks we’ve tested. The seat-backs 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 haven’t come away with that impression when we’ve driven the Highline and Adventura models.

Accommodation is well above average by the standards of the pick-up sector, with enough space in the two rows of seats to let one six-footer sit quite comfortably behind another. It’s not quite as roomy as the Ford Ranger, but it’s very close behind – and headroom is excellent, as is the view over a pleasingly low waistline

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The rear seats have just about enough legroom for a tall adult to squeeze in behind a driver of a similar stature. Headroom is poor, however, and a six-footer’s eye line will be above the top of the side window

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 large 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 add £672 to the bill, and it brings DAB digital

radio and sat-nav to the party. You can certainly spend more to get less, but the Trendline model already comes with an excellent 6.33” touch-screen set-up running app-connect and a mobile phone interface with voice control, so you might take the view that that’s enough. Having said that, VW’s own navigation system is outstanding, and once you’ve got used to the wonders of DAB you’re unlikely to want to go back.

DRIVING This may be the 3.0 TDI engine in its lowest-powered form, but 163bhp from 2750rpm is hardly

weedy – especially when it’s backed up by 332lbf.ft from just 1250rpm. And that’s the key. Use the manual box to dig out all that torqiue, 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’ll give you all the get-upand-go 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 needless to say there’s more than a trace of road rumble, though this model’s higher-proﬁle tyres keep a lid on the commotion. 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 the drop to part-time four-wheel drive on this model (autos have a full-time system) does nothing to detract from its grip and poise even when pushed. Naturally, all things being equal the full-time system will hold on for longer, but you’d have to ask some pretty extraordinary questions to get it to that point.

OFF-ROAD Off-road, what we’ve got here is the only Amarok to have. We’ve driven an auto model on tight, slippery woodland tracks and it remains as agile as ever, but you’re constantly holding it back on the brake. That’s no way to control a vehicle, but the presence of

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low range gives this model the drivetrain it needs to match its excellent chassis and suspension. Size is always an issue with pickups, but of all those currently on the market we’d say the Amarok is the best at disguising its wheelbase and rear overhang when tackling extreme terrain. Its 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 worse, you’ve always got that rear locker to fall back on. At least, you do if you tick the box on the options list. Yes, that subject again. The good news is that once again, the stuff you really want

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is at the cheap end of the scale – installing a locker in the back axle will only set you back an extra £300. That’ll be a no-brainer, then. As is always the case with pick-ups, the difference it makes is 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 cuts down your choice of all-terrain and mudterrain 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.

VERDICT

The six-speed manual gearbox is quite mechanical in operation, but it’s easy to get used to. It alone in the Amarok range is mated to a two-speed transfer case, making it the only one to choose for off-road use; this vehicle also has a locking rear diff, which at £300 on the options list is an absolute no-brainer

★★★★★

VW Amarok 3.0 TDI 163 Manual Adds a great price, and winning off-road ability, to the Amarok’s existing strengths That this is the best model in the Amarok range, at least if you’re buying with off-road use in mind, is beyond any doubt. Another grand or so gets you the next engine up, and we can see the appeal in that. But so long as you choose the manual box, you’ve got a vehicle with serious potential when you go off-road – and a genuinely premium demeanour the rest of the time too.

29/09/2018 20:17

PRODUCTS

THERE’S MORE TO GOOD SHOCKS THAN JUST PURE LENGTH: BILSTEIN OPENS UP ON THE NEED FOR DAMPING CONTROL…

IT’S COMMON KNOWLEDGE throughout the off-road game that if you want to get the best from your vehicle, the right choice of dampers is absolutely crucial. For most of us, however, the primary concern is just how much travel they’ve got. But there’s more to it than just being able to match the extra height of your new springs. When the terrain closes in, your shocks’ performance starts to matter more and more – and, no small matter, staying in control is a pretty big deal when you’re relying on a vehicle with lifted

suspension and outsize tyres to get you home safely afterwards, too. In the world of suspension, Bilstein is a name you’re bound to know well – if not necessarily from the world of off-roading. But the German company has been a world leader in damping technology for more than half a century, and during that time it has come to offer an array of options for most popular off-road vehicles – so it’s well placed to offer advice on what really matters once your quest for extra inches is at an end. ‘One of the most important considerations when choosing uprated suspension for an off-road vehicle is where you plan on using it,’ says Bilstein. ‘Articulation really is key. It’s essential to ensure that the tyre remains in contact with the ground as much as possible, and your choice of damper plays a huge role in this. ‘Too soft and the damper will “bottom out” when placed under compression (the “bump” stroke), leading to a loss of control. Too firm, and the damper will be unable to deal effectively with the effect of smaller bumps. ‘The flip-side of the above is “rebound,” the term used when discussing the rate of damper extension when no longer under

full load. This is dictated by the relationship between the damper and the spring and as such is harder to fine tune. The ideal set-up is the one that’s best able to control the release of built-up energy created by the initial “bump” stroke. This release of energy needs to be done in such a way so as to not impact the relationship between the tyre and the wheel.’ In most applications, Bilstein’s dampers have a monotube construction. This, the company says, makes them perfectly suited to work in the most hostile of conditions by allowing the nitrogen inside them to be placed under direct, even pressure at all times.

This greatly reduces cavitation, the term for the separation (foaming) of gas and oil molecules when placed under load. Cavitation results in a marked drop-off in damper performance, leading to a loss of suspension articulation and, in due course, a loss of traction. Bilstein says its monotube dampers are also able to dissipate heat faster than twin-tube designs, thanks to there being no barrier between the pressure tube and the atmosphere. And then there’s the aforementioned journey home. This is where you might be expecting Bilstein’s long-running reputation as a motorsport supplier to come into its own, and the company isn’t going to disabuse you of that notion. ‘Our engineering team goes to staggering lengths to ensure that all our dampers are every bit as suited to the hustle and bustle of the public highway as they are to the rigours of off-road competition,’ it says. The company promises a comprehensive range of fitments, too, including the subtly uprated B8 range of OEM-style dampers. It has applications for most popular makes and models, including the Land Rover Defender, Discovery and Range Rover and smaller vehicles like the Suzuki Jimny and Vitara, as well as a wide range of one-tonne pick-ups and double-cabs. Want to find out more? Head for www.bilstein.de.

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EXPERIENCED DRIVER DEPICTED

WHAT AR E YO U BU I LD I NG FOR ?

B U I LT T H R O U G H E X P E R I E N C E â&#x20AC;¦ E AR N E D O N T H E T R A I L BFGO ODRICH.CO.UK

800298_TireOnRock_RedBulletin_297x210.indd 1

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PRODUCTS

TYRES DIRECT BRINGS ROADCRUZA TO BRITAIN RECENTLY INTRODUCED TO THE UK is the Roadcruza range of all-terrain and mud-terrain tyres from Chinese manufacturer SNC. Imported by Tyres Direct Online, these are already proving popular in the USA and offer a range of fitments which is due to grow extensively over the next year with the arrival of many extra sizes in both patterns. The Roadcruza RA1100 is an all-terrain designed for 4x4s and pick-ups, with a typical asymmetric tread design punctuated with sipes and lateral grooves to help prevent road noise. The tyre is designed for dependable water ejection and has a silica compound for strong grip and reduced rolling resistance. The RA3200, which is available in aspect ratios of 70-85 as well as a wide variety of old-style flotation sizes, is a mud-terrain whose tread pattern and rubber compound alike were designed for efficient self-cleaning and grippy, cut-resistant performance in off-road conditions. Its shoulders overlap on to the sidewall for additional grip and strength – and, SNC admits, to look cool. This tyre is available in diameters of up to 40” and rim sizes stretching from 15” to a massive 26”. With their familiar patterns, wide range of sizes and tempting looking prices, these tyres are certain to appeal to a good many off-road enthusiasts and work truck users alike. The panel on this pages provides a full rundown of what’s available at present and slated to arrive soon, with prices wherever they’re currently available – for the latest info as the range develops, visit www.tyresdirectuk.co.uk.

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PRODUCTS SNC ROADCRUZA – SIZES AND PRICES RA1100 (All-Terrain) P215/75R15 P235/75R15 31x10.50R15LT P235/70R16 LT235/85R16 P245/70R16 LT245/75R16 LT265/70R16 LT265/75R16 LT285/75R16 P265/65R17 LT265/70R17

100S 105T 109S 104S 120/116R 106T 120/116R 121/118R 123/120S 126/123R 110S 121/118R

6PR 10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR

New sizes coming 2019

Est. 1981

LT235/75R15 P215/70R16 LT215/85R16 LT225/75R16 P255/70R16 P265/70R16 LT235/80R17 P245/65R17 LT245/70R17 LT245/75R17 P265/70R17

104/101R 99T 115/112R 115/112R 111T 111T 120/117R 105T 119/116S 121/118S 113T

6PR 10PR 10PR

10PR 10PR 10PR

£69.95 £73.95 £89.95 £78.95 £90.95 £78.95 £99.95 £96.95 £112.95 £77.95

LT285/70R17 LT265/70R18 LT275/65R18 LT275/70R18 P275/60R20 LT275/65R20

121/118R 124/121S 123/120S 125/122S 114T 126/123S

10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR

35x13.50R20LT 37x13.50R20LT 33x12.50R22LT 35x12.50R22LT 37x13.50R22LT 37x13.50R24LT 40x15.50R24LT 40x15.50R26LT

10PR

RA3200 (Mud-Terrain} LT215/75R15 LT235/75R15 31x10.50R15LT 32x11.50R15LT 33x12.50R15LT LT235/85R16 LT245/75R16 LT265/75R16 LT285/75R16 LT305/70R16 LT315/75R16 LT265/70R17 LT285/70R17 33x12.50R17LT 37x12.50R17LT 33x12.50R20LT 35x12.50R20LT

100/97Q 104/101Q 109Q 113Q 108Q 120/116Q 120/116Q 119/116Q 116/113Q 118/115Q 121/118Q 121/118Q 121/118Q 114Q 124K 114Q 121Q

MILNER

6PR 6PR 6PR 6PR 9PR 10PR 10PR 8PR 6PR 8PR 8PR 10PR 8PR 8PR 8PR 10PR 10PR

124K 127K 109Q 117Q 123K 120Q 128K 127K

10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR

£166.95 £201.95 £134.95

New sizes coming 2019 £76.95 £81.95 £89.95 £101.95 £112.95 £93.95 £104.95 £109.95 £110.95 £128.95 £101.95 £110.95 £120.95 £184.95 £138.95 £156.95

LT235/75R15 P215/70R16 LT215/85R16 LT225/75R16 P255/70R16 P265/70R16 LT235/80R17 P245/65R17 LT245/70R17 LT245/75R17 P265/70R17 LT285/70R17 LT265/70R18 LT275/65R18 LT275/70R18 P275/60R20 LT275/65R20

104/101R 99T 115/112R 115/112R 111T 111T 120/117R 105T 119/116S 121/118S 113T 121/118R 124/121S 123/120S 125/122S 114T 126/123S

6PR 10PR 10PR

10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR 10PR

www.milneroffroad.com TEL: 01629 734411

EST. 1981

M.O.T & Service Parts Suspension Lift Kits Snorkels & Winches Wheels &Tyres Air Suspension Skid Plates Roll Bars Heavy Duty Clutches

** GENUINE & NON-GENUINE PARTS ** Mon-Fri: 8am - 5:30pm Sat: 8am - 12:30pm Old Road, Darley Dale, Matlock, Derbyshire, DE4 2ER

4x4 4pp Products Nov.indd 29

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PRODUCTS

TALKING ‘BOUT MUDFLAPS, MY TRUCK’S GOT EM… IF THE WORD ‘MUDFLAPS’ gets you thinking about This Is Spinal Tap, we’re with you. If, on the other hand, you’ve just had to Google what we’re on about, welcome back and I’m sure you feel your life is now a little more complete. These here mudflaps are less velvety but more rubbery, but they do come as a pair and at 330mm long by 250mm wide they’re more or less tuxedo-sized. Ahem. They’re made by Ironman 4x4 and even come with the Aussie off-road specialist’s logo stamped on them in 3D to prove the point, and they’re made from hard-wearing, premium-grade material to offer a heavy-duty response to the sort of mud, grime and flying rocks they’re designed to spend their lives being hit by. Ironman says the mudflaps are ‘ideal for 4x4s, trays, caravans, off-road trailers and light trucks,’ which covers a pretty wide spectrum of applications. To find out more, check out Ironman’s UK importer at westcoastoffroad.co.uk. POWERFLEX HAS INTRODUCED two new items for the original 2002-2010 Porsche Cayenne. These address an issue caused by the high outputs of the vehicle’s engines, which is that the factory fitted torque rod bush is put under particular pressure. If it fails, the result will be excessive engine movement, leading to an increase in noise and vibration. Powerflex now offers its PFF57-1620 Torque Rod Bush Insert, which is quickly and easily fitted into heavy voiding in the original mount to prevent excessive movement. Should a whole new bush be required to control engine stability, the PFF57-1621 Torque Rod Bush is an ideal replacement for particularly worn or damaged OE items. In each case, visit www.powerflex.co.uk.

Market Leading Exterior & Interior Protection

RLG Tyres

Tyres cheap. Not cheap tyres!!

OFFICIAL STOCKIST Rhino Linings provides the highest level of corrosion, impact and abrasion resistance for your truck bed, truck grille guards, bumpers and truck rocker panels. Farmers, contractors, outdoorsmen and YOU can count on Rhino Linings® products to protect your investment. • • • • • •

Excellent slip resistance Good impact resistance Excellent abrasion resistance Excellent corrosion resistance Good chemical resistance Reduces noise from vibration and impact

£499 PLUS VAT

Price includes all the preparation work prior to full application of the Rhino Protective coating to your truck bed.* Additional cost items can be sprayed such as Bumpers, Wheel Arches, Side Steps & Sills etc.

Main supplier of and all major 4x4 tyres

CALL US TODAY TO GET YOUR TRUCK BOOKED IN FOR RHINO PROTECTIVE COATINGS!

Paintseal Direct (01283) 703777 Waterside Way, Nottingham NG2 4DP www.paintsealdirect.com | enquiries@paintsealdirect.com @paintsealdirect @paintseal

Groundcare • Car • ATV • Tubes • Mobile Tyre Fitting Puncture Equipment & Repairs • Four Wheel Alignment Durrants Farm, Rushlake Green, Heathfield, East Sussex TN21 9QB

www.rhino-linings.co.uk *Excludes any rust or dent removal

30 | NOVEMBER 2018

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Workshop: 01435 830664 Mobile: 07710 372672 Email: chris@rlgtyres.co.uk

www.rlgtyres.co.uk

4x4 02/10/2018 15:58

PRODUCTS

RING LAUNCHES ITS SLIMMEST EVER INSPECTION LAMP SPECIALIST 4X4 VEHICLE DISMANTERS JEEP - LAND ROVER AND MOST MAKES AND MODELS QUALITY GUARANTEED USED PARTS SOME OF THE VEHICLES WE HAVE RECENTLY DISMANTLED:

IT DOESN’T MATTER what you drive: one thing we all have in common is that we really need to be able to see what we’re doing in the workshop. We also share an aversion to barked knuckles and an over-arching requirement for more space beneath our vehicles’ bonnets. So the last thing any of us need is to be yielding most of that space to a clumsy great work light. Ring’s new RIL3900HP MAGflex Pivot LED Inspection Lamp is definitely great, but it’s not clumsy (unlike its name, which is ridiculous). It measures a mere 6mm in thickness, allowing it to shine a light on the most inaccessible of spots, and with Ring’s MAGflex pivot action and ratchet movement it’s designed to let you position its beam exactly where you need it. How much light does it actually produce? A hefty 400 Lumens, that’s how much, and a nice, crisp colour temperature of 6000K means you can use it without knackering your eyes. You won’t knacker its lens, either, as it’s protected against damage while the light is folded – in which state it’s small enough to fit in your pocket for the easiest possible transport around the workshop. The lamp is fitted with a variety of magnets and hooks for hands-free use, and comes with a mains-powered charger for zapping its batteries back to life. You can get it at motor factors nationwide, with a price of £39.99. To find out more, visit www.ringautomotive.com.

4x4 4pp Products Nov.indd 31

2015 JEEP WRANGLER JK 2.8CRD

2007 DODGE NITRO 2.8CRD

2016 RANGE ROVER EVOQUE 2.0 TD4

2014 RANGE 2016 ISUZU 2014 JEEP ROVER SPORT 4.4 D-MAX 2.5 DIESEL CHEROKEE MK5 V8 DIESEL KL 2.0 MULTIJET

2010 JEEP 2007 LAND ROVER CHEROKEE MK4 DISCOVERY 3 2.7 KK 2.8 CRD TDV6

2008 HONDA CRV 2.2 CDTI

2006 JEEP GRAND 2006 NISSAN CHEROKEE WK PATHFINDER 2.5 5.7 V8 HEMI DCI Charlton Recycled Auto Parts Vehicle Recycling Centre, Gravel Pit Hill, Thriplow, Cambridge, SG8 7HZ Tel 01223 832656 Email parts@charltonautoparts.co.uk PLEASE VISIT WWW.CHARLTONAUTOPARTS.CO.UK

NOVEMBER 2018 | 31

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CHIISANA MAHOU

It’s Japanese is wot it is, and it means ‘a little magic.’ Which is a pretty good description of the Suzuki Jimny –except that the new one, while it might still be little, has cranked up the magic by several notches. Introducing your new most-wanted 4x4… WORDS: ALAN KIDD PICTURES: ALAN KIDD AND SUZUKI 32 | NOVEMBER 2018

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ike the Suzuki Jimny, the phrase ‘chiisana mahou’ is Japanese. It means ‘a little magic’, which could be a pretty apt way of describing the small but brilliant offroader that’s been slaying giants ever since its introduction in 1998. Yes, 1998. It’s been a long time. The original Jimny lasted two full decades, but now at last the new one is here. And it looks absolutely brilliant. It looks brilliant in pictures and, now we’ve seen it in the metal, it looks brilliant for real. If anything, actually, it looks even better for real. Everyone seems to say it looks like a scaleddown G-Wagen. On the launch event, even some of Suzuki’s own people said that. You might also note a similarity to the old LJ, or go looking for a Wrangler-style cues in its styling. We prefer to see it as a new Jimny – there’s a bit of retro to it, but most of all its styling is a focused work of off-road function. But what you want to know is whether it’s any good. And yes, it is. Actually, here comes that word again: it’s brilliant. As brilliant as it looks. And, if you didn’t notice, it looks brilliant. Right then, with that off our chests we can get into it. The new Jimny is a little wider and taller than the old one, but a little shorter too, and its approach, departure and breakover angles are all better. It’s still built on a ladder chassis, it still has live beam axles and it still has a dual-range transfer case. All boxes ticked so far. Suzuki says it designed the vehicle to appeal to people who will use it professionally. People who work on the land, in forests, around construction sites and so on. The lurid green colour featured on launch vehicles is a nod to high-vis jackets, and there’s also a dark green designed to blend in with the landscape, should your recreational

4x4 4pp Jimny.indd 33

bag involve ridding said landscape of as much wildlife as possible with your big gun. So, it’s aimed at the sort of people who would once have bought a Defender but who now buy a Ranger, Navara or other double-cab instead. It is, in Suzuki’s words, ‘the world’s smallest authentic off-roader.’ Does this mean it still has the world’s smallest cabin? Well, it’s definitely not enormous, but it’s certainly a lot less cramped than the old one. You can stretch your legs quite comfortably and, while elbow room is still pretty slender, headroom is excellent. In the back, knee room is as tight as you’d expect – though with soft and deeply sculpted seat-backs ahead of you, it actually is possible for one tall adult to sit behind another. It won’t feel spacious, but head room is plentiful here too and there’s a very decent view out from a position that’s bang in between the B and C posts. Drop the back seats, and you get a nearflat cargo space with a floor that’s hard and waterproof, albeit completely devoid of grip. Some way of securing your luggage would be good, otherwise it’ll set off sideways every time you go round a corner. The rear aperture is huge and almost square, which is excellent, though when the seats are up you’re left with next to no baggage room at all.

Up front, the dash is very reminiscent of the Wranglers, both in terms of its general design and the use of exposed hex bolts to secure the trim panels. It’s all trimmed in hard plastic, of course, but none of this feels brittle – though there’s a bit of creaking from behind the facia, and the ﬂoor console is pretty wobbly. Most of all, it looks great. And it’s home to a world of features that leaves the old Jimny far behind – think cruise, climate, heated seats, satnav, phone pairing and so on. Even the entry-level SZ4 model is well equipped, while the SZ5 adds a further dollop of good kit – as well as giving you the option of automatic transmission, should you want it. This goes on to the back of a 1.5-litre petrol engine with 101bhp at 6000rpm and 95lbf.ft at 4000rpm. Those don’t sound like big numbers (well, the rpm ones do), but the vehicle only weighs in at 1135kg and the result is that so

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The new Jimny’s interior takes a quantum leap forward in terms of material quality and overall design. There’s still only so much accommodation you can pack into a small space, however, so elbow room is tight and, while you can fit four adults into it, those in the back will feel pretty enclosed. Headroom is excellent all-round, however, and the rear seats fold near-flat to create a cargo bay with a floor that’s hard and splash-proof but short on grip. Baggage space is very limited with the seats up, though – but a very good design feature is the nearly-square door aperture that lets you make the very best of what you’ve got long as you don’t have stupid expectations, it’s perfectly brisk enough to keep you happy. The engine doesn’t need an offensive amount of revs to get the vehicle going, though we found it quite easy to stall when pulling away. First gear is nice and deep all the same, though the spread of ratios isn’t helped by the fact that there’s only five of them – there’s a long step up to second, and the vehicle’s civility at speed would definitely be helped by an overdrive sixth. Not that it would ever be in its element here, with a good bit of wind and road noise at anything above about 60mph and steering that doesn’t really settle at speed. It’s not made for the motorway, however, and both around town and on back roads it’s in its element. By that we don’t mean it’s some sort of B-road weapon, but for general tooling around it’s as zesty as you could reasonably want. It

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corners exactly the way you’d expect, which is no bad thing unless you wish you were driving a hit hatch instead, and is far, far smoother than the old one on any kind of road surface. Off-road, our instinct is that there’s more ground clearance than before. We were shepherded round a forest, on a very tight leash, over terrain that rarely provided any sort of test for the vehicle, but there was enough there to demonstrate good articulation from the threelink suspension system and enough space below the diffs to navigate typically rutted conditions without alarm. Its small footprint makes it exceptionally manoeuvrable, too, and its 195/80R15 tyres are tall enough to be tractable most of the time. One thing we didn’t see much evidence for, however, was the brake-operated LSD system that’s standard on all models. We managed to

break ranks for long enough to get the Jimny quite well cross-axled – whereupon its traction management software should start braking the wheels with no traction in order to shuffle drive to those planted more firmly on the ground. What we found was further evidence for what we always say: there’s no substitute for locking diffs. Naturally, the aftermarket will already be working on solutions. There was no shortage of diff-locks, suspension lifts, bash plates, snorkels, winch bumpers and so on for the old Jimny, and that won’t change with the new one. You’ll soon be able to put one of these on your driveway and turn it into the coolest off-road ride in town. How soon is soon? Suzuki says the UK on-sale date is 1 January, which we’re fairly sure is a bank holiday but never mind. Initial deliveries will be spoken for well before then, at any rate – the factory has allocated 1500 units to Britain in the first year, and with more than twice that number of prospective customers already having registered their interest you can safely assume that demand is going to outstrip supply. What this means, of course, is that you can forget all about dealer discounts. Which brings us to one of the big questions that’s so far been answered solely with hints and suggestions. We asked Suzuki’s people if it was fair to assume the new

4x4 29/09/2018 22:03

The Jimny is agile enough in corners for what it is, but it was built to be most at home in really rough terrain. Approach, departure and breakover angles are all better than the old model’s – it’s very well shaped to avoid damaging itself during the most extreme manoeuvres

Jimny would cost around 10% more than the old one, and they said ‘maybe a little more’ or words to that effect. Which we take to mean it’s going to cost about £2000 on top of what the old one used to be. This of course means that the Jimny will be the cheapest real 4x4 in Britain by a long, long way. It’ll cost signiﬁcantly less than any of the aforementioned pick-ups, and even the nextcheapest proper off-road station wagon in the UK market (the new Utility-spec Toyota Land Cruiser) comes in at about twice what you’ll pay for a range-topping Jimny. In fact, assuming those price forecasts aren’t out by an eye-opening degree, the Jimny is going to undercut most of the road-legal side-by-side UTVs on the market by a handy degree too.

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Inevitably, its towing weight is going to look more like that of a UTV than a big 4x4; whichever gearbox you plump for, it’ll haul 1300kg tops. For cargo carrying, a 1435kg gross weight means you should be able to put 300 kilos’ worth of load in the back, depending on what options you’ve fitted and how heavy you are yourself. Talking of figures that matter, the 1.5-litre engine will return 35.8mpg on the combined cycle and put out 178g/km of CO2. Those figures become 32.2mpg and 198g/km if you opt for the four-speed automatic, which we wouldn’t be inclined to do. All of which leaves us on tenterhooks. That the new Jimny is a totally worthy successor to the old one is, we think, without doubt. Indeed,

on the basis of what we’ve seen so far we think it’s fair to say that it’s a quantum leap forward. But we’ve already had one bucket of cold water thrown over our reaction to a new off-roader this year, when Jeep told us that the new Wrangler, exceptional vehicle though it is, was likely to start at approaching £45,000 when the UK order book opens. Yes, Jeep can get away with being greedy, because demand is way ahead of supply. But that’s the same very happy situation that Suzuki is going to ﬁnd itself in. If prices do indeed rise as modestly as the UK importer says they will, this is going to be a devastating new arrival here. We’ll ﬁnd out in November. For now, what we’ve found out is that the Jimny is back – and it’s brought more than a little magic with it.

29/09/2018 22:03

All Seasons. All Conditions. All Terrains.

Davanti has spent years developing this AllTerrain tyre, applying the latest design and manufacturing innovation to develop a tyre as comfortable on the road, on the construction site, in the fields or up in the mountains. Terratoura is a high performance All-Terrain tyre. Its innovative tread pattern provides exceptional traction across all environments.

U C • • •

•

Coming January 2019

TO FIND A DAVANTI DEALER IN YOUR AREA, PLEASE VISIT WWW.DAVANTI-TYRES.COM Untitled-1 2

04/09/2018 13:01

Beating Rough Terrain & Tough Competition in Independent Tests Wet Braking

Leading Rival

115

110

Davanti Terratoura

105

100

Dry Steering

Wet Handling

Terratoura is designed to be effective both on and off road. At IDIADA in Spain we were able to challenge Terratoura in the toughest road conditions imaginable. From hot, dusty, dry handling to torrential rain and standing water, nothing fazed it.

Dry Stability

Dry Braking

Ice Stability

Leading Rival

115

Snow Handling

110

Ice Steering

Davanti Terratoura

105

100

Snow Acceleration

Ice Braking

Ice Acceleration

Snow Braking ABS

Ice Handling Laptime

Snow Steering

This frozen proving ground inside the Arctic Circle is where Terratoura earned its 3PMSF certification. The harsh winter of Finland enabled us to push Terratoura to the extreme in ice and snow to ensure it could conquer the most severe sub-zero conditions.

Snow Stability

Sand Traction 110

105

Leading Rival Davanti Terratoura

100

Jungle Handling

Grass Traction

Gravel Braking

Stability

Steering

Unique Enhanced Tread Compound • Durability • Endurance • Excellent grip in cold and wet conditions • Class-leading longevity.

Carcass Construction • Reinforced polyester cords for higher load capability • Two wide steel belts for harmonic load distribution & even tread wear • Additional nylon layers for improved shock resistance.

The UK’s own testing ground at Millbrook offered Terratoura the chance to prove itself in rugged wilderness and agricultural applications. From jungle trails to sandy hills, wet grass paddocks and extreme uneven terrain, Terratoura outperformed its rivals on every type of terrain.

Three Peak Mountain Snowflake • Earned through rigorous cold-weather testing • Tyres are snow-rated, giving them winter tyre classification throughout Europe • Enhanced control in snow and ice.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT INFO@DAVANTI-TYRES.COM Untitled-1 3

04/09/2018 13:01

TRAILBLAZER With our first experience of the all-new Suzuki Jimny coming this month, here’s a look back at a groundbreaking example of the original model –one of the first to be modified into a true super-Jimny WORDS: GARY NOSKILL PICTURES: STEVE TAYLOR

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here’s a lot of Suzuki Jimnys in Britain. There’s a lot of modified ones, too, and even quite a few that have been turned into what Suzuki fans tend to refer to as ‘super-Jimnys.’ This was one of the first of that breed. It was originally built more than a decade ago, at a time when modded Jimnys were still relatively thin on the ground and people were still as likely to think about Samurais and Vitaras when the subject of Suzuki-based off-roading came up. Seen on its own, it doesn’t look that radical. But if you were to park it next to an everyday Jimny, you’d see the difference immediately – the standard one would just about come up to its door mirrors, and only occupy about two-thirds of the road space. That’s what happens when you merge G-Wagen axles, a large-capacity Ford petrol engine and 35-inch Simexes with Suzuki’s SJ heir apparent. You end up with a vehicle that has all the visual cues of a Jimny, combined with the offroad presence and ability of a hardcore challenge truck. Which is pretty much exactly what it was designed to be. The guy who commissioned the build had spent the previous decade or so dabbling in the winching scene and had already changed trucks a couple of times before moving over to Suzuki. Changing trucks was evidently a running theme, though, because in 2009 he put this one up for sale too and it was bought by a chap called Eron Baxter, who at the time was off-roading a modified Mitsubishi L200. ‘I agreed to go along and have a look,’ he told us. ‘That was a mistake, because the minute I set eyes upon the Jimny, I knew I just had to have it!’ The L200 was one of two such vehicles already in Eron’s possession when the Jimny came along. The second was a newer, higherspec Warrior model, which immediately became a tow truck for his new toy. ‘Towing your off-roader to events means you can be more adventurous with the terrain you tackle,’ he said, ‘and you know you’ll still be able to get back

Top: Lee Bond, who built the Jimny, was a long-time fan of G-Wagen axles. And with standard diff locks plus the strength of an ox, what’s not to love? Another beneﬁt when you sling them under a Suzuki is that they massively increase the width of the vehicle’s footprint, meaning it’s a lot more stable, too. They’ll think nothing of wearing a set of 35-inch tyres, either, even when the hefty shock loads coming back through them are ﬁghting against a big engine Above: Helping the Suzuki achieve spectacular amounts of front-end articulation, a three-link suspension set-up features a central arm whose leading rose joint allows the axle to pivot through an unlimited range of travel. The outer radius-arm links are cranked to provide a greater degree of droop, while Pro-Comp shock absorbers were chosen for their extensive travel Left: Here’s how that three-link front set-up looks in action. This boulder was a good three feet high, and the Jimny waltzed up it. There’s a bit of rubbing against the chassis when the wheels’ articulation is pushed to its limit, but with those lockers available as back-up it’s nowhere near enough to hamper the truck’s mobility

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Right: A 2.8-litre Ford V6, warmed up by a pair of Zenith carburettors, is more than capable of spiriting the 1.4-tonne Jimny along. You can also see the Twin Optima Yellow Tops here, on either side of the engine bay. These provide plenty of power for the winches and other auxiliary electrics. The cooler you can see at the front of the engine is for a three-speed Mercedes automatic gearbox, which is turn feeds the axles via a Rock Lobster transfer case

home in one piece.’ So long as you can get back to your trailer in one piece, obviously, but there’s a businesslike looking roll cage in place to help with that.

Eron had got into off-roading about five years before buying the Jimny, and obviously its purchase was a bit like firing up the secondstage boosters on the sort of stuff he was

able to tackle. His first 4x4 love was a lifted Frontera which he experienced on a weekend out green laning with some friends, and it was this that prompted him to fit bigger tyres and a suspension lift to his Mitsubishi double-cab. Most people who catch the bug who are happy to build a competent lane truck and leave it at that. But there are those who are forever thirsting for something more extreme than whatever they’ve currently got – and it’s fair to say that Eron fell into the latter category.

Above left: The original bonnet and front wings were replaced by weight-saving fibreglass copies. This is nice, light stuff, but it’s easy to shatter, so the exo cage includes a pair of wing bars to protect them from knocks. The air scoop you see here comes from a Subaru Impreza – it’s actually there to clear the raised carburettors, but there’s nothing wrong with a bit of boy-racer eye candy, is there? Above centre, right: At the back of the vehicle, the roll cage is welded to the rear bumper – which in turn ties it to the chassis. Unlike the GRP front wings, those at the back are made from yet more steel tube. The A and B hoops, meanwhile, are tied to the chassis via the rock sliders, to which they’re welded

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Above left, top centre: The wing bars run down to a deceptively solid front bumper, which features a custom winch cradle that’s fixed directly to the chassis. Mounted in it is a Warn 8274 powered by a Gigglepin upgraded motor. These pictures also gives a sense of how tight a fit things are in the engine bay – the radiator is mounted a long way forward, and the front crossmember was more or less dismantled in order to fit the Ford engine in, so the winch really is as far back as possible Above centre, above right: A brutally strong rear winch mount is welded directly to the Jimny’s chassis. Ferreted away within it is a Warn X9; like the 8274 up front, this too is spooled with synthetic rope. Viewed from above with the rear door open, you can see how well tucked away the Warn X9 is in its cage – its Albright solenoids and remote spooling controls are just visible from this angle, too

‘I agreed to go along and have a look. That was a mistake, because the minute I set eyes upon the Jimny, I knew I just had to have it!’ ‘I’ve given up on green laning,’ he admitted. ‘There isn’t really enough of a challenge in it for me now. I like fun days on really big sites, where I can find plenty to test my vehicles.’ It’s fair to say that finding something to really test this Jimny took some doing. Going back to its build, this was carried out by a chap called Lee Bond, who was one of the most respected 4x4 engineers of the early challenge era. The G-Wagen axles were kind of a trademark of his – and it’s safe to say that with the comparatively light weight of a Suzuki up top, even the shock loadings you get from a set of grippy 35-inch Simexes being spun by a tuned Ford V6 engine weren’t going to do any damage. You could say that being used as a playday toy was a bit beneath this Jimny’s dignity, when it was conceived with the goal of winning national-level challenge events. But as we all know, many of us to our cost, playdays can get very, very extreme very, very quickly. Which, when you look at it, is how Eron’s off-road career appeared to have gone when this little monster came into his life. ‘Little’ monster, did we say? There, see, it’s still fooling us even now. This truck might have been a Suzuki Jimny – but a decade on, it’s still one of the biggest, and best, there’s ever been.

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best-ever 4 The off-road scene in Britain is dominated by just a few makes and models of vehicle. Go to a typical 4x4 playday and almost everything you see will be Land Rovers, Jeeps and Suzukis – while on a construction site, it’ll be a few select brands of pick-up. But there’s a whole world of alternatives out there, too – some of them a common sight, others rare and hard to get, but all of them with lots of offer if you’re willing to think outside the box. Whether it’s for work or play, here’s a selection of 20 off-road heroes worth thinking about for your next project. Some are very well known, but there are others that you’re unlikely ever to have thought about. As always, ﬁnding a good, solid truck on which to base your build is critical – but so long as you get that nailed, any of these vehicles here could be turned into an off-road machine to be truly proud of…

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Jeep Wrangler Jeep says the new model is the best Wrangler yet, but they’ve all been pretty good. The original YJ, with unpopular square headlights, only came to Britain in small numbers, but its combination of leaf springs and a cheerfully boorish 4.0-litre straight six engine made it pretty hilarious to drive. It was in 1998, though, that Jeep hit the off-roading mainstream in the UK with the arrival of the coil-sprung TJ. This sold in much higher numbers, and plenty of people modified them – usually to a high standard, too. The good thing about all Wranglers is that with the combined output of America’s aftermarket on your side, there’s almost no limit to what an imaginative (and rich) owner can do with one. Another advantage the Wrangler has over the Land Rover Defender is that it commonly comes with kit like cruise, leather and air-con, and in some cases you can hear the stereo. But the real step forward came with the introduction of the JK model in 2007. As well as being far more refined than the TJ it replaced, this was the first Wrangler available in either diesel or five-door form, and as a result it out-sold all previous models several times over. The JK was also available in Rubicon form, with a set of off-road enhancements making it probably the best factory-standard off-roader in the world. You could only get this with a petrol engine, but the new JL model has righted that wrong (if a wrong is what it was). Every Wrangler has been cool, and people like them for that alone, but more than that there’s no other 4x4 that’s so well set-up for modifying. Their values have gone up strongly since the Defender went out of production, but the number of them you see being used off-road has spiralled upwards in recent years – whether you’re looking to buy new, old or really old, the Wrangler is a very good bet indeed.

Daihatsu Fourtrak The Fourtrak was ugly, rough and boring, and any that are left now are likely now to be rusted half to death. But you could drive a stake through its heart and you still wouldn’t be able to kill it – its doughty unbreakability means you’ll still see ancient examples chuntering around playday sites and hill farms as reliably as the day they were born. There are almost none left for sale now, and those you do see are mainly the later Independent model whose front wishbones and low-slung gearbox meant it wasn’t a patch on the old leafer off-road, but anything with Daihatsu’s absolutely legendary 2.8 TD engine is going to have traction to spare. You almost never see a modified Fourtrak – just beaten-up ones, on no more than a set of mud tyres, still showing the rest of the world how it’s done.

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Toyota Land Cruiser

Where do you even start with the Land Cruiser? It’s an entire family of different vehicles with many major differences – but with strength, mighty build quality and serious off-road skills common to all of them. The Land Cruiser range can be divided roughly in two. Up top, there are the big ones – as exemplified by the 80-Series from back in the 1990s, which many people will tell you is the best car ever made. It had proper beam axles at both ends, each of them with a locking diff, as well as long-travel suspension that made it stunningly agile, and its built-in strength was such that you still see them for sale today with a quarter of a million miles or more under their belts. The later 100 and 200-Series Cruisers are less popular with off-roaders due to their greater complexity and independent front ends, but both are still massively capable both on and off-road. There’s a rare 105-Series model, too, which wasn’t made for the UK but whose non-nonsense spec and front beam axle made it ideal for real work, and also in the realms of the grey import you might be tempted by the hefty 70-Series trucks which, again, don’t come here officially. Smaller Land Cruisers, which have been sold under the Prado name elsewhere around the world, offer a more manageably sized option whose off-road abilities are scarcely less epic. Anything from before the 90-Series Colorado is now very rare indeed, but the 120-Series from 2002-on is a fantastic vehicle – and the current 150-Series, which has just become available in basic Utility form, is now one of the most attractively priced off-road vehicles you can buy new. As with all Japanese vehicles, the supply of parts for modding Land Cruisers is limited. But the best specialists are exceptionally good – and with just a minimum of mods, any of these mighty Toyotas will tackle most terrain at a stroll.

Range Rover The original Range Rover was the truck that launched a thousand jokes about panel gaps that were visible from space. It’s incredible off-road, though, and there’s no end of ways in which people have modified them – including taking the body off and replacing it with something else altogether. The only problem is that there aren’t many Rangeys around now, and those that are still in one piece have normally either already been modded or restored. Buying someone else’s old project is a massive leap of faith, but if you enjoy your workshop time it can yield a huge amount of truck for your money. Find an original one, meanwhile, and you’re far better treating it as a classic car. Even the second-generation P38 model is lurching into classic territory now – though between its shocking build quality and a degree of complexity that more or less guarantees pain for people who own one in later life, you’ll soon come to understand why they cost so little to buy. For this reason, the P38 has never caught on among off-roaders, and nor have subsequent models – whose luxury levels, and running costs, have continued to climb almost exponentially. Use one of these later Rangeys as a daily driver or towcar, and it will be imperious. But for a vehicle with soul, whether or not you’re going to off-road it, only the Classic will do.

Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen The original G-Wagen was a fantastic off-roader, with proper axles, diff-locks everywhere and the build quality of a tank. It also had the weight of a tank, and in recent times came to cost pretty much the same too, but with a set of the right tyres on board it would drive absolutely anywhere. A new model with an independent front end was announced at the start of this year, but for anything close to modern you’ll need to be properly rich to own a G-Wagen, let alone off-road it. Find an early one, however, with one of Merc’s slow but unstoppable diesel engines, and aside from those tyres the only mod you’ll need to make is to strip out as much weight as possible.

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Land Rover Defender The Defender has been a dominant presence throughout the UK scene more or less forever, though the sky-high prices they command means more and more people are thinking twice before using them off-road. Values have kept on climbing since production ended just under three years ago, and most owners now think in terms of prettying them up and keeping them nice rather than modding them into the mud-bashing warriors they’re meant to be. Either way, there’s a vast aftermarket in place to help you maintain, rebuild, restore, customise or modify a Defender into whatever sort of machine you want it to be. Even a reliable one… though one problem with them is that by now, the vast majority have been worked hard, abused, neglected, modiﬁed and/or hit with spanners by persons unknown. Buying a proper shed and using its identity to basically build yourself a new vehicle from scratch is a common approach, though even this will probably mean shelling out several grand on the donor vehicle. Prior to its demise, Land Rover liked to say the Defender had been in continuous production since 1948. Taking it at its word, that means we need to include the old leaf-sprung Series models here; they’re completely different in character and these days fall squarely into the classic car category, though they’re incredibly willing off-road whether in standard or modded form. For day-to-day use, though, it’s got to be a Defender. Many people go for the later ones from 2007 onwards, with the 2.4 or 2.2-litre Puma engine, but many others would sooner chew their own arm off. If DIY maintenance is your thing, the 200 or 300Tdi will suit you best, but the Td5 from 1998-2007 is very popular – even if later ones cost an eye-watering £535 a year in road tax. Whichever Defender you own, you need to expect it to require regular work, but the good news is that when you come to sell it, you’ll probably get your money back – and, if you’ve tidied it up, even turn a proﬁt. This fact alone means the Defender is potentially the cheapest vehicle to own in the entire used car market.

Jeep Cherokee There have been four iterations of the Cherokee, but for serious off-roading there might as well only ever have been the ﬁrst. The XJ model, which came here from 1993 to 2002, was amazingly capable even in standard form. It only took a small lift and slightly bigger tyres to turn it into a proper boss off-roader, but with the colossal American aftermarket behind you there’s almost no limit to what can be done to one if you want to go the extra mile. Finding a Cherokee from this era will be your biggest challenge now – they sold in enormous numbers back in the nineties, but most of those vehicles have long since breathed their last – and of the ones that are still running, the majority have already been modiﬁed into offroad weapons.

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Isuzu Trooper

Suzuki Jimny Replacing the brilliant and vastly popular SJ wasn’t going to be easy, but somehow the Jimny managed it. Small but strong, agile but affordable, it retains all the virtues that have made Suzuki into one of the world’s favourite 4x4 makers. It wants a bit for ground clearance in standard form, but the breadth and depth of accessories and modifications available mean that whatever you want to do to one, from mild to wild, the only limits are your imagination and, of course, wallet. There’s a new Jimny on the way, and you can read our first impressions of it elsewhere in this magazine. But the original was manufactured for two whole decades – and for a budget off-road project (as opposed to a cheap shed you’re going to wreck), there’s precious little that can touch it.

For some reason, the Trooper hasn’t ever entered the mainstream for off-road modding. But there are some excellent examples out there which prove how much you can do with what is a stout, long-lasting truck with bags of potential. Whether you go short or long-wheelbase, you can get more height and flex from a Trooper with relative ease, and so long as you avoid the infamous 3.0 TD engine from the last few years of production its drivetrain is bomb-proof. There are still plenty around to choose from – and if you can’t find the Trooper you want, the little-known Vauxhall Monterey is basically exactly the same vehicle underneath.

Nissan Patrol

Toyota Hilux It’s been around for more than half a century, and in that time the Hilux has sold more than 16 million units, carving itself a rock-solid reputation for hard-working indestructibility on the way. Early ones were leaf-sprung front and rear, which did nothing for their ride quality, but since 1997 they’ve gained an independent front end which transformed their refinement on the road without wrecking their abilities in the rough. The most modern Hilux was designed to be more SUV-like inside, but it’s still a world-class truck whether for work or play. And the previous model was probably the best off-road one-tonner of its generation. In each case, there’s plenty of kit available for modifying a Hilux into something really special – but it says a great deal that when you go looking to buy one, there’s a notable dearth of cheap examples around.

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It’s not quite as famous as the Toyota Land Cruiser, but the Patrol has a similar history of popping up wherever there’s a war to be fought, a desert to be crossed or a natural disaster to be mopped up. It’s a rarity in Britain, which can make for some fairly excruciating parts prices, but if you want a truck that was built to last you can’t do much better. As with the Land Cruiser, you can modify a Patrol – but the kit for doing so is rare and therefore expensive in the UK, and anyway it’s already so stout and capable that you don’t really need to bother. Unlike the Land Cruiser, on the other hand, the Patrol doesn’t hold its money nearly as strongly – meaning it could be an appealing alternative if you’re on a budget. It remained beam-axled all-round throughout the whole of its time in the UK, too, so if you do want to lift its suspension you’ll find it easy to work with.

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Ford Ranger Once a bit of an also-ran in the pick-up market, let alone the 4x4 market overall, the Ranger turned that on its head when the T6 model arrived in 2012. Big, imposing and roomy inside, this is also extremely capable both on and off-road – and you can get it with a 3.2-litre diesel engine that thumps out 200bhp and can easily be tuned for more. All this and an attractive purchase price has helped the Ranger muscle its way to the top of the one-tonne market. But its time truly came when Land Rover stopped making the Defender. Suddenly, well heeled vehicle builders needed something else to invest in – and with very limited supplies of the Jeep Wrangler being available in the UK, they turned en masse to the Ranger. Now, there’s a wealth of equipment available for them, and more and more specialists are turning them into street machines, off-roaders and everything else in between. Older models are worth some thought if you’re on a tighter budget, as they’re plentiful and a lot better than they tend to be given credit for – but rarely has there been a more dramatic example of a vehicle muscling in on a market where once it hardly even registered.

Suzuki Vitara The original Vitara was a giant-killer par excellence – and a good laugh on the road, too. Amazingly capable off-road, cheap, more robust than it looked… and you could get it in pink. Stick with a three-door model, though, as the long-wheelbase version needs a lot of lift to overcome its low belly. That’s if you can find one that hasn’t already been modded to within an inch of its life. Straight Vitaras are very rare now, but rather oddly no-one has ever done much with the Grand Vitara that replaced it, even though it was basically the same vehicle in a lot of ways. A welcome bonus is that towards the end of the vehicle’s run, Suzuki fitted the SWB Grand Vitara with a diesel engine; find one of these, and you could have the makings of a left-field project par excellence. Just don’t go buying the later Mk2 Grand Vitara from 2005-onwards by accident, though, because it’s as much use off-road as a piece of cheese.

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Land Rover Discovery The Discovery has long since replaced the Range Rover as the thing you turn to if you want a Land Rover but can’t afford, or abide, the Defender. The original model, which was the purest in the traditional 4x4 sense, was basically a 100” Defender with some posher kit and a smarter set of clothes, and it was fantastically capable off-road. It was also hilariously unreliable, but parts and know-how are in plentiful supply and neither costs too much so long as you shop around. There’s almost no end to what you can do with them in the workshop if you want to build a modified off-road machine, too. The Discovery 2, which came along in 1999, is bigger and more complex than the D1, and it’s hilariously unreliable too. One difference is that while the original was infamous for body rust, particularly in the boot, floors, sills and footwells, the Disco 2 is more likely to suffer from a rotten back chassis. In each case, the diesel engine is the one to go for. The Tdi in the D1 is best for DIY maintenance, while the Td5 in the D2 is one of the most reliable things Land Rover has ever made. Elsewhere, common sources of irritation on the Disco 2 include the rear air suspension, ‘active’ anti-roll bars and sunroofs (a vehicle without them is worth more if you can find one), while with the D1 your biggest problem will simply be finding one worth having. In each case, whether it’s maintenance or full-house modding the aftermarket has come up with an answer to every question the Discovery asks. That’s the case with the later Discovery 3, too – though while this was a great leap forward as an all-rounder, its monumental complexity means it’s a risky one to take on, and it’s nothing like as naturally capable off-road, far less as easy to modify, as the earlier models.

Mitsubishi Shogun The Shogun was once derided as a glam wagon – in fact, it still is by some. But while it was once at the soft end of the spectrum, it’s stayed true to its roots and is now one of the most truck-like 4x4s on the market. For off-roading, the 1990s’ Mk2 model is the one to go for as it still had a live rear axle and proper chassis, and the 2.8 TD engine is as strong as an ox, but they’re all very capable in rough terrain – and in long-wheelbase form they’re brilliant tow barges. The Shogun is much more moddable than you’d expect, too, even if the amount of stuff available for them is limited. And because they last well but don’t often tend to get used and abused off-road, there’s plenty around for you to choose from.

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Volkswagen Amarok The Amarok has always been positioned as a premium vehicle among pick-ups, and not all models have low range. Those that do, however, are astonishingly agile for their size in rough terrain, making this a seriously attractive alternative to the traditional Far Eastern double-cabs. The Amarok’s timeline is a little odd in that the engine choice changed completely when it was facelifted coming on for a couple of years ago. Initially, it came to the UK with a 2.0 TDI unit which was at the time the smallest in the market; now, it has a 3.0 TDI which is one of the biggest. The engine is extremely strong and currently comes with a choice of four power outputs. If you want to use an Amarok for off-roading, however, you need to stick with one of the lower ones, as a dual-range transfer case is only fitted to models with a manual gearbox. Even the old 2.0 TDI didn’t always come with the right stuff for off-roading – but either way, there’s a good, if not normally cheap, choice of equipment available for modding the Amarok into an even better machine than it was in the first place.

Nissan Terrano When it came out in 1993, nobody thought the Terrano would ever be seen as a serious proposition for off-roading. But after almost 15 years on the market, it was one of the few trucks left with a proper chassis, low box and live rear axle. Better still, while there’s next to no off-the-shelf modding kit available for it, the Terrano can easily be turned into an even more capable performer than it already was as standard. They’re not as cheap to buy as you might expect, but a good one is a real investment. The 3.0 TD engine from towards the end of production is the most attention-grabbing engine option, but it’s been known to suffer oil pressure problems; at the other end of the scale, the very earliest 2.7 TD is as simple, and therefore reliable, as it’s possible for a diesel engine to be.

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Vauxhall Frontera Early Fronteras had shocking build quality, and late ones rode like a giraffe on a trampoline, but you can modify a Frontera into a very willing off-roader. There’s not a lot available in the way of off-the-shelf mods, but people have done effective suspension lifts for next to no money – and for a few quid more, there are some exceptionally tidy ones out there. There’s not exactly a lot of choice on the used market these days, as so many have been broken, but if you can find one a SWB 2.8TD Sport from just after the arrival of coil springs is the ideal base for an off-road project.

Jeep Grand Cherokee Mitsubishi L200 The L200 was at the forefront of the double-cab revolution in the UK. It’s been overtaken by the Ford Ranger now, but the sales success it achieved during the noughties means there’s loads of choice on the used market. Most of these are higher-spec models, as this was the original lifestyle truck, but that’s no bad thing as it means you get the option of full-time four-wheel drive – even if you need to stay at the bottom end of the range if you want a locking back axle. As with the rest of the pick-ups on the market, there’s a good range of equipment available for the L200. If you want to build a one-off project, on the other hand, the wide availability and low prices of older trucks means you can cut one up without spending big bucks in the process.

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As with the smaller Cherokee, the Grand has come to the UK in various forms but there’s only one worth thinking about in terms of modding. The 1999-2005 WJ is strong, plentiful and ideal for modifying, with beam axles front and rear and no end of kit available. The 2.7 CRD diesel is the one to get, and if you choose an Overland model Jeep will already have done some of the modding work for you – but whatever you start with, and wherever you take it, there’ll be no end of American specialists ready to help you. For a daily driver that’s still very able off-road in standard form, the more modern WK from 2005-2012 is extremely good value too. Its independent front end means it’s not so appealing to modify, but unless you want to go really hardcore there’s no such thing as a bad Grand Cherokee.

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MULLING IT

Just over forty years since Mull of Kintyre topped the charts, we visited the quiet outpost where Paul McCartney went to hide after the Beatles split up. A Nissan X-Trail took us there in style… cue family adventures with kayaks, walking boots and enormous jellyﬁsh WORDS: GRAHAM SCOTT PICTURES: SAM SCOTT

t seemed a good moment to broach the subject. Behind us the day before was a 500-mile journey in a Nissan X-Trail, from the English South Coast to Scotland’s Mull of Kintyre. My teenage son was sort of awake and enjoying a kipper from the very splendid Kintyre Smokehouse in Campbeltown. Out the window through the mist we could see the Isle of Arran across the water. The scene was set. ‘So, you know The Beatles?’ Grudging but confused nod.

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OVER

‘And their singer Paul McCartney?’ Another nod, clearly wondering where this was going and would it involve bacon? ‘Well, he wrote this song, Mull of Kintyre, which is where we are. It was the biggest hit single in the world for years. Millions of people bought the 45 or the tape.’ Pause while I explain the meanings of these archaic terms. ‘So we’re only a few miles from his farm, where he wrote the song, and the beach, where

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they recorded the video to go with the song. And we’re going to go and see them.’ Eye roll. Time for the clincher. ‘And there’s a memorial garden in Campbeltown for his wife, Linda, who’s in the video. She died.’ Even as I speak I can hear this isn’t the kind of clincher this really needs, but it’s all I’ve got. The thing is, Mull of Kintyre was in 1977. That means that last year it was 40 years since it hit

the Christmas No 1 spot and wouldn’t leave. That made it exactly a quarter of a century before my son was born. Naturally he hadn’t heard the song and wasn’t remotely thrilled when I told him it featured bagpipes. We listened to it, and he allowed it wasn’t bad, so we thought we’d head off to find High Park Farm. That’s where Paul McCartney and Denny Laine sat down one afternoon in 1977 with a bottle of whisky to pen a love song to the area. Paul (not yet Sir Paul at that point, though next year it will be half a century since John Lennon returned his MBE) had bought the 183-acre farm in 1966 and used it as his escape pod after the break-up of The Beatles. The thing is, it’s quite hard to find, possibly deliberately, even with the local map. We trudged through bogs, across whole swathes of hillside where the firs had been cut down, and on and on for hours. We couldn’t find it. When we got back to our home for the week, soaked through and footsore, the host laughed when we said what we’d done. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘lots of people go looking for it. But nobody ever finds it.’ Which doesn’t sound creepy at all. So instead we decided to find Saddell Bay, where the video was recorded. It wasn’t far, but distance and time in Kintyre aren’t close cousins. It was perhaps five miles but took quarter of an hour. The roads are tiny and not always more than single-track, but the Nissan rolled steadily along, working as well on twisty lanes as it had on the motorway on the way up. The 500-mile journey up had shown just what a fine cruiser the X-Trail is. We arrived and got out at the end looking like we came from the right end of that diagram showing the ascent of man, rather than the left. Engine noise from the 1.6-litre diesel was totally subdued at a motorway cruise, while

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Author fights map while trying to find McCartney's hidden farmhouse. He never did manage – though two very different forms of Scottish architecture obligingly cropped up around Saddell Bay. The bothy featured in the video for Mull of Kintyre, which was played on Top of the Pops every week for approximately a quarter of a decade, and the 16th Century castle overlooking the beach is actually available for hire should you dream of being a Scottish nobleman

there was just a faint hint of wind noise from the big mirrors. The only intrusion was road roar if we crossed concrete or expansion joints. Then it was noisy, but otherwise it was pretty hushed and comfortable. The cruise control worked well, though an adaptive function isn’t among the many safety features Nissan packs in to the X-Trail’s long spec list. It was a shame that we were already in Kintyre before I discovered there was a lumbar support adjustment. Doh. Working along the coastal road to Saddell Bay, the Nissan added excellent grunt to the equation, meaning you could stay in a higher gear if you wanted to just roll along. In-gear acceleration was surprisingly strong everywhere up to sixth. The only bugbear was one that’s hardly even worth mentioning because it’s so common on so many vehicles nowadays. The steering was light and the lock was very good, but there was

a total absence of feel or feedback. There, I’ve mentioned it. Saddell Bay is a Landmark Trust area, so you could hire the 16th Century castle at the back of the beach should you so desire, which many people would. On this beach in the video we see Paul McCartney strumming away on his guitar while Linda wanders down from the little bothy behind them. Then we see the rest of Wings and the Campbeltown Pipe Band joining in as they march between sea and seaweed. When we arrived, in prime school summer holiday time, there wasn’t a soul on the beach, not even a lone piper. It’s a lovely beach. We wanted to find the bothy but couldn’t find it anywhere, so we decided to forget the song and go out for a kayak ride. This is where the X-Trail scores big points. The kayak is a two-man inflatable, a serious bit of kit which folds down into a large bag. Add in paddles, wetsuits, pumps

and so on and you have a lot of equipment. The Nissan swallowed it all with ease. Back in the day, I found myself in Japan looking at a pre-production model of the first X-Trail. The engineers showed me the boot area, which had a sort of dimpled finish which was waterproof so you could wash out the whole boot. That’s gone these days, but the space remains, augmented by a false floor which sits above the spare wheel. It’s very practical, although why you really need a powered tailgate escapes me – more weight, more complexity, more to go wrong over time. No, I’m not a millennial, you can tell. Kayaking off the long pale curve of beach, we spotted not just the many enormous jellyfish in the freezing water, but also the bothy, tucked away amid the trees at one end of the beach. Time for a photo, we agreed, once we’d enjoyed paddling in the crystal-clear waters.

The life of McCartney’s late first wife Linda, who appeared in the Mull of Kintyre video and became famous for her work as an animal rights activist, is now celebrated by a memorial garden in nearby Campbeltown

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Elsewhere in our time there we shared the water with otters, seals – who were very nosey and interested – and even a porpoise. We kept an eye out for the huge basking sharks that sometimes drift through, but sadly didn’t see one. You do find yourself taking more of an interest in nature generally in such a place. There was a tiny island outside our house, which was right by the sea, and we soon got involved in the social life of gulls – not always sociable – while spotting things like cormorants and oyster catchers which rested on the rock. I knew it had gone too far when, peering through the binoculars, I heard myself say ‘Woah, look at the beak on that’. Accepting that maybe it was time for some medicine, we headed into Campbeltown to get supplies – mostly the very fine single malt from the local Springbank Distillery for me and some Irn Bru for my son, who thought it tasted like bubble gum. One bottle was enough – of either drink. We figured it was time to pay our respects at the Linda McCartney memorial garden. It’s small, neat, well tended, and has a statue of Linda sitting with a lamb on her lap. We looked, nodded, and went off to find some lunch before heading home. The journey back was fine until they shut the M6 because of a major accident.

Immense amounts of traffic star-burst across North Yorkshire. There were jams everywhere, so we headed across the moors on tiny rough roads, dodging sheep (Linda would have approved) and enjoying a clear view of the way ahead. The X-Trail just felt so comforting as well as comfortable. The long-travel suspension soaked up the rough surface, keeping bangs and thumps away from the occupants. The cabin is smart and practical, while in N-Connecta form the tech through the 7in touchscreen is suitably useful – except of course the sat-nav kept wanting to get us back on a major road. And if it all went wrong, having the security of the all-wheel drive – which had proven itself on a damp slipway to the sea several times – meant we could churn on without any concern. Then we hit a ‘road closed’ sign with a section being resurfaced and had to wait an hour – going round would have taken near double that. We shrugged – it was that sort of day. The road crew there commented on what a good looking vehicle we had, resplendent as it was in Monarch Orange Pearlescent – that’s paraphrasing their exact words. This particular vehicle had the addition of the £1999 Platinum Edition pack to

go with that £745 paint job. The pack adds those 18in black metallic alloys as well as styling plates all round, bits of chrome and so on. While we liked the looks, they also seemed a bit of an overclaim. It looked a bit full of bling, particularly those black wheels, adding a touch of Croydon drug dealer to a vehicle that is actually an honest workhorse. Perhaps we’d not tick the Platinum Edition box. On a long journey like ours, what you notice is the old-school grunt of the diesel, as well as the suspension that can really cope with all road surfaces – naturally if you want to go faster down a twisty road there’s a penalty in terms of body roll that you wouldn’t pay if you went for a Porsche Macan or similar, but I know which I’d prefer for a trip encompassing motorway and seaweed-covered slipways, with a boot full of large volumes of slightly damp kayaking kit. By the time we got home we were tired but not grumpy or exhausted, and the Nissan had done it all without a moment’s hesitation while also managing a whisker over 50mpg overall. Given it can do over 500 miles on a tank of fuel, that worked for us. And listening to its six speakers playing Mull of Kintyre endlessly on the way home wasn’t torture at all.

The X-Trail has evolved away from the days when the original model was one of the most truck-like soft-roaders on the market. It can still hack it off-road, but these days it’s more at home in the company of things like kayaks. The author, meanwhile, appears to be a little too much at home in front of the Saddell Bay bothy, We’re seriously concerned that he may actually have been singing when this picture was taken, though in the absence of any reports of mass casualties among the local wildlife we can only assume he did it quietly

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OUR 4X4S: PROJECT OFF-ROAD 90

What does THIS button do…?

Since we bought our 90, we’ve been trying to come to terms with the switches and cables running everywhere in its cabin. Now we’ve had an investigation… and we’re still none the wiser

he process of figuring out the 90 continues. It’s quite a staccato process, which is what comes of having a young family taking up most of your time and a magazine to fit in to the rest of it, but that’s what ya sign up for. Anyway, while I was on my way to Wales to set out this month’s roadbook, I started trying to count the mysterious switches that have been fitted around the 90’s cabin. This would quite quickly have led to a crash, so I gave up even more quickly and settled for just trying not to get tangled in the various cables running between the switches in question. Which is actually easier said than done in some cases, as one in particular is quite determined to annex the area around the steering wheel. I know the 90’s previous owner, and I know he’s a man who likes his toys. There’s plenty of evidence on the 90’s dash – a mounting plug stuck

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to the top of it, a set of holes where it looks like something has been screwed into place, and various lengths of sticky-backed velcro. I’m guessing some sort of GPS unit is likely to have lived up there once, perhaps along with a compass, and there was definitely a Terratrip on the passenger’s side at one point. The latter is easy to deduce, because there’s a cargo net attached to the side of the cubby box with a hand-held Terratrip controller in it. This is at the business end of one of those cables; halfway along this is a 12-pin connecter which presumably goes into the back of the Terratrip itself, something I’ll find out one day if I ever have a call for such a thing. I do like roadbook events, which is what it would have been installed for in the first place, but something that strikes me is that all three of the items mentioned above have these days been superceded by apps.

Is there also an app that turns your phone into a CB radio? If not, excuse me while I go and invent it. That’s something else the 90 has in it, anyway, squirrelled away in a steel box bolted to the front of the cubby. This in turn is home to all sorts of things that don’t make any sense. Like a bracket mounting an electrical connecter whose purpose is shrouded in the mists of time, for example. There’s also a rocker switch that makes a little green light come on next to it, which is pretty but I’m fairly sure it was put there to do more than that. Beneath it, another rocker ﬁres up what sounds like a pump or air compressor. Whatever it is, it sounds unhappy, so switching it on to try and locate is tends to be closely followed by switching it off again before it gives its location away by exploding. While we’re rummaging around down there, there’s the kill switch. A very ﬁne thing, except

4x4 02/10/2018 17:43

The switches you see above left appear to make a green light come on and engage a pump that sounds like it’s about to snuff it. Those to the right appear to do nothing and, er, nothing. At least we know about the one in the middle, which adds a pair of aux driving lights to the main beam circuit. As for the thing seen below right, it appears to be conducting a solo campaign to keep bakelite alive that it kills the central locking – meaning you can’t remove the key for extra security. Up top, there’s another pair of rocker switches just below the instrument panel to the right of the steering column. One is a complete and utter mystery; the other looks as if it’s meant to light up green when you switch it on, which doesn’t happen – leading me to suspect that it might have fed the LED roof lights. I removed the inline fuse protecting these not long after buying the 90, as they had taken to bypassing whatever switch they do have and lighting up the work car park like a slightly rubbish disco. Then ﬁnally, there’s a button on top of the instrument shroud. This is the one thing whose

job I do know; it’s wired in to the main beam circuit, allowing the big old-school spot lamps to become part of it at the driver’s command. A nice touch, this. An old 90 I used to own had similar lights on a circuit all of their own, meaning you had two main beams to switch off separately when someone appeared coming the other way – which of course meant in turn that there was a delay in knocking one or the other of them off. Always popular. Not as popular as being surrounded by a mass of electric string, though – most of whose purpose I’m still none the wiser about. But I do know that there’s a lot of cabling running around beneath the carpet on the 90’s tranny tunnel.

“ F O R T H O S E W H O DA R E TO E X P L O R E ”

Tracing that lot is going to be a job for a very quiet day and a very big pot of tea. As someone said really quite recently, the process of ﬁguring out the 90 continues.

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Top: Actual air-conditioning. In our actual 90. The loose grille just adds character, but what matters is that it blows ice-cold – and on one of those roastingly hot days we had towards the end of July, that’s all the excuse we needed to go laning and call it work Left: You see so many offensive, threatening or deliberately misleading home-made signs on public rights of way, so let’s hear it for the landowner who addresses green laners like this. And let’s hear something else altogether for the morons whose selﬁsh behaviour forced him to put it there in the ﬁrst place

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OUR 4X4S: SKODA KODIAQ

Are we there yet? Our Kodiaq Scout was built tough. And even without any off-road action, the tests for a family SUV don’t come much tougher than this: 17 hours and 900 miles of driving, without the three small boys in the back seat getting wound up… WORD AND PICTURES: SARAH LOWE

hen my partner and I decided this summer to ‘do Disney’ with our three boys, aged 4-8, we had to make a choice between ﬂying to Paris and renting a car large enough to accommodate our suitcases for a week, or making the journey in my car: a slightly childbattered 60-plate Grand Scenic. The speed and relative ease of ﬂying obviously appealed, but the idea of taking the children on a road trip was also an exciting, if slightly daunting, prospect. Then I remembered that I’m the Managing Director of Assignment Media, and that our Kodiaq would be perfect for the 900-mile journey. Not only was it far more appealing than my old

Renault, but it was also a vehicle we were actively interested in buying in the near future. Taking it to Paris and back was the sort of test drive most potential customers could only dream of. This isn’t the ﬁrst test vehicle I’ve driven, but most recently seem to have been autos. I found that our Kodiaq’s manual gearbox felt perfectly natural and, as I had suspected I would, I instantly preferred the way it drove as a result. It also felt much lighter to drive than the most recent 4x4 I had driven - the Range Rover Evoque. Setting up my phone to connect to the multimedia system was as easy a process as I have ever known (in my own car, it takes me months after I get a new phone to be bothered even to try and

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01/10/2018 22:00

Here’s the Kodiaq parked outside a lodge in Davy Crockett Ranch. Or it could be the other way round, as both appear to be more or less the same size. Getting here was an exercise in staying patient – if you’re going to Disneyland Paris and someone tells you the roads around it are ridiculously complicated, rest assured they’re not pulling your leg

remember how it’s done). Selecting media was also very simple – the only delay I encountered was how long it took me to work out where the volume controls were located. Arriving home, and checking my to-do list, I was reminded that my next challenge was to find out where to position the headlamp stickers that are legally required for driving in Europe. A quick Google, however, was soon to confirm that my trip to Halfords had been a waste of time and money – as the Kodiaq’s beam can be adjusted for driving on the right. All you have to do is go into a menu and set it. Then came the big job: loading up. We were both surprised at first by how small the boot looked, but, by using the compartments beneath the main boot floor for buckets and spades, we were easily able to load one extremely large suitcase and five small suitcases, a rucksack and two bags for life loaded with holiday equipment, even without the use of a complicated packing strategy. It’s worth saying as well that at no point during the holiday did the loaded boot become a headache. Almost every suitcase or bag was quite readily accessible, which indicates that the boot

itself was by no means jam-packed and there was plenty of room for more – inflatable sharks and so on (you know how it is). Day one took us from the Midlands to Folkestone, with a pause to let off steam at a play area (not my word for the M25). We stayed in a B&B with a family room, meaning a) we could all be together, and b) by the time we embarked for Dunkirk the following morning, we’d basically not slept at all. Not a great state to be in when you’re trying to negotiate the world’s tightest car park, so we were very grateful for the Kodiaq’s array of sensors and cameras which took care of the tricky bits for us. Once in Dunkirk, it took a while for the sat-nav to agree that we weren’t still sitting stationary in Dover docks. Once it picked up the plot, we set off for Plage de Malo-les-Bains, site of the famous Dunkirk Evacuation during World War II. Codenamed Operation Dynamo, this saw 338,000 Allied soldiers rescued between 26 May and 4 June 1940 by a fleet of 800 swiftly amassed boats. We had lunch (milkshakes and crepes) in Le Kof’ty on the beachfront and visited the Musée Dunkerque 1940 Opération Dynamo, which was

free for the children and proved very interesting with plenty of large artillery which had been recovered from the beaches after the evacuation. Back on the road, we now had a long motorway stint ahead of us. Impressively, we could quickly adjust all the Kodiaq’s displays to metric, which helped make Euro-driving as stress-free as possible. Short of moving the steering wheel to the left, it couldn’t have made life any easier. On another note, we both found the Kodiaq’s speedo to be more than a little confusing while we were in Britain, as the km/h numbers seem to jump out more clearly than those for mph. Taking it across the Channel of course turned this on its head, which sounds like a good excuse for going on holiday more. We had been advised by a friend that the road layout around Disneyland Paris is an absolute nightmare, with completely atrocious signposting, and sure enough this turned out to be true. Finding the Davy Crockett ranch, our home for the next four nights, was like something out of the Crystal Maze – and with a restaurant booking to keep, we were pretty frazzled by the time we finally got there.

It’s not just the sheer amount of stuff the Kodiaq managed to swallow that was impressive. It’s the fact that it took all this without any of it becoming hopelessly inaccessible. And that was with this little crew occupying the second row of seats – it says a great deal for the vehicle that after the thick end of a thousand miles, complete with Channel crossings via both ferry and tunnel, despite the are-we-there-yets coming at approximately 21-minute intervals no major confrontations had had to be dealt with

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OUR 4X4S: SKODA KODIAQ As least I wasn’t in pain, though. Sat in the passenger’s seat for this part of the adventure, I found the Kodiaq’s seats had far more support than I’m used to in my own car – along with so many different adjustable settings that even a four-hour journey didn’t cause my knees, legs or back to ache. My other favourite thing about the Kodiaq is the size of the storage space in the door panels. On a holiday like this, paperwork is needed in abundance – I had booking confirmations galore to contend with, as well as boxes of crayons and activity books, half-drunk juice cartons and packets of sweets and crisps all needing to be housed there. And I was very pleased that it swallowed the lot so easily. For each of the next four days, we climbed aboard the Kodiaq to do battle with Disneyland’s road system. It was only ten minutes to the park itself, and by the final day we were able to do it without getting lost even once. We were also lucky in that the swimming pool at Davy Crockett’s was shut… which meant we got free passes to use the Aqualagon at Villages Nature. Result! This is a collaboration between Euro Disney and Center Parcs, and it proved such a hit with the boys that it was tough to tear them away so we could get back to Disneyland itself. Again, it was only a ten-minute drive – though of course it was a different ten-minute drive, complete with its own array of tempting opportunities to get lost. If you’re going to get lost, though, the Kodiaq is a pretty good vehicle to do it in. Chilled, easy to drive, able to take short-cuts across the terrain if you finally run out of roads altogether… anyway, four days later we were packing it back up again, this time with additional Stitch cuddly, Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise and Rock ‘n’ Roll-

ercoaster ride photos, for a journey to the coastal resort of Le Touquet. It was only at this point that we were forced to refuel. We were pleasantly surprised by the Kodiaq’s fuel consumption for the trip (we averaged around 39mpg), but not by the cost of diesel – a whopping €1.46 per litre, which comes to about £1.30. Remember the days when the exchange rate meant it was cheap to fill up on the other side of the Channel? Well, they’re gone. The journey to Le Touquet was much less stressful than the run down from Dunkirk, and we both took turns at the wheel. I’ve never driven on the right before (despite being a confident driver and passing my test over half my life ago), but I settled right in to it is – testament, to how easy I found it behind the wheel of the Kodiaq. When it came to navigation, however, teamwork was more difficult between driver and passenger. The sat-nav only provides next-step details to the driver within the dashboard, whereas the nice big media screen that was visible to both of us simply showed a route overview. At times, this meant using a combination of the car’s own navigation system and Google Maps on my phone. Perhaps we were being overly cautious but, having already been lost in Folkestone, Dunkirk and Marne-de-Vallée, and with the sat-nav saying 22:56 for arrival at a hotel whose check-in closed at 23:00, we weren’t taking any chances. Incredibly, we arrived in time at the Hippotel, a funky family-friendly aparthotel which is located a 15-minute stroll from the centre of Le Touquet and just under half an hour from the beach (which is nothing for a family whose legs have traipsed the length and breadth of Disneyland several times in recent days). We enjoyed two days and nights in Le Touquet before making the journey to Calais, where we

returned on the Channel Tunnel. Having given the boys the ferry experience on the way out, this time we thought we’d take them underground. It must have struck a chord, because they occasionally looked up from their Kindles to notice – if you think I was getting over-excited about the door pockets earlier, you should see how popular the Kodiaq’s USB sockets proved with all the family… The Kodiaq was a hit with my partner, too. Which takes some doing, as he’s a confirmed petrolhead. ‘It drives like a car, not a 4x4,’ was his verdict. ‘That’s a massive plus for a family vehicle. Really practical space. Nice interior. Had enough “go” for general urban and distance driving. Cruises nicely. The infotainment system wasn’t the most intuitive, but that was partly down to being used to different systems. I struggled to get really comfortable in the seats, but I was always going to be tense with the stress of driving abroad with three bickering boys in the back!’ All-in-all, our week’s holiday involved more than seventeen hours in the car, with three children, which meant being asked at least fifty times how long it was going to be until we got there. But while the holiday itself was amazing, what came as much more of a surprise was that so too was the journey. It was unexpectedly pleasant and relaxing (for the most part), and I put that down to the many features of the Kodiaq that make life that bit easier. This was a proper family test for the Kodiaq, and it proved itself big-time. I know it wouldn’t be feasible for Skoda to give every potential customer a week’s loan of a car to take on holiday. But if they could… well, they’d sell even more of them. Speaking as someone who’s about to place an order for a new family SUV, it impressed me every step of the way.

Right: This is what a man struggling to get really comfortable looks like. Not exactly a picture of suffering, is it? Mind you, we’ve no idea what might have been kicking off behind him when this picture was taken…

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MYSTERY SURROUNDS DESTRUCTION OF CAM STEPS

Before (top) and after: The rock steps on West Cam Road were removed and ﬁlled in some time in the ﬁrst half of this year. These pictures show how the slabs appear to have been broken up and moved to the base of the wall to the left of the picture. We have contacted North Yorkshire County Council several times to ask if it was responsible for the worlk, but it has failed to reply

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MYSTERY CONTINUES TO SURROUND one of the most popular rights of way in the north of England, after a well known set of rock steps on West Cam Road, near Hawes in North Yorkshire, disappeared without explanation. The steps, which have been a popular feature of the area’s green lane network for many years, made the trail suitable only for well prepared vehicles. We drove them in November 2017 – however at some point since then, it appears that they have been ﬁlled in, leaving only a steep but smooth hump which is easy to drive and markedly ugly to look at. The steps’ demise has been greeted with dismay by rights of way users. Comments posted on the Green Lane Association’s old Trailwise website showed that whatever happened to the lane took place during the ﬁrst half of

4x4 29/09/2018 22:00

OFF-ROAD SCENE

this year – however we drove it at the start of August and the surface still looked freshly disturbed. There is some suggestion that the steps’ disappearance may have been caused by natural forces, in a vicinity where the topography makes the surface of the ground fairly prone to mobility during harsh weather. However no other signs of land movement are visible in the immediate area, suggesting strongly that the inﬁll was placed there on purpose. Despite repeated requests from 4x4 magazine over a period of more than two weeks, North Yorkshire County Council failed to respond when we asked if it had been responsible for the work, whether directly or through a third party. Its unwillingness, or inability, to answer leaves open the possibility that the material was

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placed on the highway by a third party – potentially in an attempt to discourage motor vehicles users from driving the route. Without the highway authority’s consent, doing this would be a criminal offence. That hasn’t stopped many other landowners from obstructing rights of way in the past, however – even when evidence is abundant and in plain sight, this must be one of the most routinely tolerated forms of lawbreaking there is in this country. Thus it is at least plausible that the Cam Steps were buried by a third party – and in the absence of any information from the highway authority, we are unable to rule it out. We will of course bring this story up to date in a future issue if North Yorkshire County Council does eventually favour us with a response.

Land Rovers fly the off-road flag at Classic and Supercars Show What has the Classic and Supercars Show at Sherborne Castle got to do with this magazine? The answer is that with Land Rover being 70 years old (bet you didn’t know about that, did you?), the event featured a grand celebration of the Great British off-road marque. In the main display marquee sat an early prototype vehicle – as well as the 1953 Royal Ceremonial Land Rover used by the Queen and Prince Philip during the fifties and sixties. Then at 11.30am, just in nice time for the heat of the day to have become unbearable, a parade of vehicles from 1948 through to 2018 set off in homage to the marque in its many forms and guises. Commentary here was provided by none other than Richard Beddall, he of Dunsfold Land Rover Collection and All Wheel Drive Club fame. There was various other parades too, showing off everything from classics to racers. The day saw in excess of 2000 cars on display, with around 12,000 attendees at the show, and to top everything off the organisers donated around £45,000 to local charities. Big thanks for helping make that happen went out to the clubs, traders and private punters who exhibited, all the visitors and in particular the Rotary club volunteers who helped make it happen.

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OFF-ROAD CALENDAR

UK Convoy Tours 13-14 October

31 October

Onelife Adventure Lake District

UK Landrover Events North York Moors

Protrax Wales

3-4 November

Trails and Tracks Yorkshire

Trails and Tracks Northumberland

14 October

4 November

UK Landrover Events Tynedale

4x4 Adventure Tours Salisbury Plain

15 October

UK Landrover Events Peak District

UK Landrover Events North York Moors

7 November

20 October

UK Landrover Events Eden District

UK Landrover Events Dales and Eden

10-11 November

21 October

Atlas Overland Wessex

UK Landrover Events Tyne and Wear

17-18 November

27 October

4x4 Adventure Tours Mid-Wales

UK Landrover Events Lincoln and Belvoir

18 November

27-28 October

UK Landrover Events Durham Dales

Onelife Adventure Wales

21-26 November

Protrax Wiltshire

Ardent Adventures Whitby to the Lakes

28 October

25 November

Protrax East Midlands

UK Landrover Events Yorkshire Dales

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NEW WORLD RECORD SET AT BILLING OFF-ROAD SHOW

THE HISTORY OF the Billing show is pretty well known. Based at Billing Aquadrome, with an off-road course at the farm next door, it became the country’s premier Land Rover gathering and stayed that way for several centuries. But the Land Rover side of things moved to nearby Kelmarsh a couple of years back, and Billing was no more. Except it was, because the owners of the farm next door reinvented it as an off-roading event. All good, then. Now, as we all know, it’s illegal for two or more Land Rovers to be in the same ﬁeld together without trying to break the world record for the longest ever convoy of Solihull’s ﬁnest. And even though the Billing show is an off-road event rather than just a Landy fest, it happened there this year. Someone had to do something for Land Rover’s 70th anniversary, after all. And what better thing to do than have a tilt at the record of 632

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vehicles, which had stood for all of a month. And so, with the people from Guinness World Records in attendance, a total of 912 Land Rovers set off on a three-mile parade around Billing. But the adjudicators, and their clipboards, were watching eagle-eyed to ensure that each and every one of them stayed within the rules to qualify for the record attempt… which not all of them did, resulting in the ﬁnal number being cut rather drastically. But what was it cut to? A total of exactly 640 Land Rovers – meaning the old record had been beaten by

just eight. Close, but still enough – Billing, and all 640 of those Landies, had done it, and their place in the record books was assured. As is normal at this kind of thing, there was a charity element, which meant Help 4 Heroes were there collecting donations – £590 in total, which is less than 640 and a lot less than 912 but still a lot more than would have been raised if none of this had happened in the ﬁrst place. Apparently, though, the collection pots also ended up with three euros, two washers and a Spiderman sticker in them, which is all grist to the mill.

It’s fair to say that interest in the record attempt exceeded all expectations. As a result, Billing’s organisers say they’re working on sending out everybody’s participation plaques – but to speed things up, they would appreciate an email (to info@ thebillingoffroadexperience.co.uk) telling them your wristband number and vehicle registration plus your name and address. Then you can have your souvenir from the historic day – though rest assured someone will already be planning to beat the record. It might even be you.

4x4 29/09/2018 22:00

OVERLOADING IS COMMON

YOUR INSURANCE COULD BE INVALID IF YOU’RE OVERLOADED

4x4 Overloading – a problem easily solved What would your thoughts be if you were told your vehicle, trailer and everything carried on it and in it were not insured? Scary thought isn’t it, but of all the vehicles stopped and checked by DVSA (2015-2016), over 80% were found to be overloaded and/or exceeding the driver’s licence entitlement. When was the last time you checked your vehicle weights? If you knew there was an inexpensive option to avoid your overloading problems, would you be interested? For over 20 years, SvTech have covered GVW rerating on vehicles, from small sub 3.5t vehicles all the way up to 150t Special Types vehicles. SvTech can uprate the GVW of most 4x4’s and in some cases also increase the towing allowances. e.g. Toyota Hilux, Isuzu D-Max – GVW increase to 3500kg + GTW of 3500kg (7000kg combined) A GVW uprate can increase your payload allowance thus reducing the size and number of vehicles involved for transporting your goods. Try using SvTech’s free Load Distribution Analysis program to check your weights. www.svtech.co.uk/lda

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TEAMWORK TO THE FORE AS FAVOURITES DOMINATE RAGNAROK CHALLENGE

Words: Pip Evans Pics: Pawel Frackowiak

THE 2018 RAGNAROK CHALLENGE, for teams of ﬁve trucks, was held as usual at the Boughton Estate near Kettering. The event has previously taken place during May, but this year’s was moved to the last weekend of July due to a clash with the Mayhem event in Scotland. Date clashes with other events are always inevitable, of course, as various clubs vie to entice the UK’s top competitors. As if that’s not enough, though, as it turned out this year’s Ragnarok happened to share its date with the

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wedding of a prominent member of the challenge fraternity! As a consequence, entrant numbers were down on last year. There was, however, still a fantastic ﬁeld of competitors comprising most of the top challenge crews from all over the UK. This event was sponsored by Morris Lubricants, whose proud heritage dates back to 1869. The company, one of the largest privately-owned manufacturers of premium quality lubricants in Europe, delivers its products to more than 80 countries.

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OFF-ROAD CALENDAR

Pay-and-play events 13 October

4 November

Burnham Off Roaders Tring, Hertfordshire

Devil’s Pit

14 October

Muddy Bottom

4x4 Without a Club

Parkwood 4x4

Harbour Hill,West Berkshire

Tong, Bradford Picadilly Wood Bolney,West Sussex

Essex, Rochford and District 4x4 Club

11 November

Frickley 4x4 Frickley, South Yorkshire

4x4 Without a Club Harbour Hill,West Berkshire

Slindon Safari

Essex, Rochford and District 4x4 Club

Fontwell,West Sussex

Rayleigh, Essex

21 October

Frickley 4x4

Devil’s Pit

Slindon Safari

Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire trucks ﬂew through the section and the last guy in the line only collected one punch, the whole team were only credited with one punch score. Most challenge crews are used to competing on their own and rarely have to work in conjunction with anyone else. However, working as a team of 10 people in ﬁve trucks involved a level of complexity seldom encountered and required a completely new approach to tackling a challenge section. Team 1 (named ‘Ballsi’) featured Allen Sharp and Duncan Smith, two of the UK’s top challenge drivers.

Minstead, Hampshire

Burnham Off Roaders Tring, Hertfordshire

Rayleigh, Essex

The Ragnarok comprises a series of sections with copious amounts of cordon tape guiding competitors over the toughest terrain available on the site. Four teams of five trucks each were entered, so the organisers had set out four reversible sections. Each section had a deadline (DNF) time of 30 minutes, with a 15-minute travelling time to start the next section. Clocks would start whether competitors were ready or not. Each section contained five punches, and all five trucks in a team had to collect a punch for it to score – so if four

Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire

Explore Off Road Silverdale, Stoke-on-Trent

Frickley, South Yorkshire Fontwell,West Sussex

18 November

Hilll N Ditch Mouldsworth, Cheshire

Devil’s Pit

Muddy Bottom

Explore Off Road Silverdale, Stoke-on-Trent

Minstead, Hampshire

Mud Monsters East Grinstead,West Sussex

Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire

Hilll N Ditch Mouldsworth, Cheshire

27 October

Muddy Bottom

Kirton Off Road Centre Kirton Lindsey, North Lincs

Mud Monsters

28 October

25 November

Bures Pit Bures, Essex

Burnham Off Roaders Tring, Hertfordshire

Cowm Leisure Whitworth, Lancashire

Devil’s Pit

Frickley 4x4

Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire

Frickley 4x4

Minstead, Hampshire East Grinstead,West Sussex

Frickley, South Yorkshire

Kirton Off Road Centre Kirton Lindsey, North Lincs

Slindon Safari Fontwell,West Sussex

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They would be the team to beat, but the other three were very eager to knock them off their perch at the Ragnarok. It was fascinating to watch the various ways in which the teams gelled together, some more successfully than others. As expected, Team Ballsi were the class act, working together like a welloiled machine. If the first truck set out a strop to winch off, it would stay where it was for all five to use and was then collected at the end by the last crew through. All the winchmen helped all the drivers, then the last truck through ended up with a mass of strops which was sorted out afterwards. In fairness, many of the other teams were also working well together, but some crews were more inclined to work individually within the team, so the first truck would use a strop then collect it

in and the second truck had repeat the process, then the third and so on, thus taking far longer to get through. The idea was to complete each section by collecting the punches in it within the 30-minute DNF time to be awarded a score. Teams were permitted to carry on without the full complement of trucks, but if any less than ﬁve turned up for a section, they would automatically be awarded a zero time score. However, they were still able to

accrue punch scores for as many trucks as collected all punches in the section. Teams with no breakdowns and a quick section time were therefore at a huge advantage, as they could saunter over to their

next section, check it out, plan their method of attack and have some down time before the next start section started. However, any team that left their section after the full 30 minutes would only have 15 minutes to ﬁx any issues and get

‘Working as a team of 10 people in ﬁve trucks required a completely new approach to tackling a challenge section’

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to the start of the next section on time. So, taking it steady and keeping your truck in one piece was a far more successful approach than going hell for leather and risking breakages. Reliability is a huge factor in the Ragnarok, but it was amazing how few breakdowns there were. There were some issues of course – but with ﬁve trucks in each team, if anyone broke something in the drivetrain, the four others could drag the stricken truck through a section. The ingenuity of competitors was incredible as they rigged up various methods of doing this. Amazingly, every team made it back to the paddock for the mandatory lunch break with the full complement of trucks, some of which needed a bit of TLC but were still repairable. Team 1 (Ballsi) had a strong but not unassailable lead at this point, with Team 4 (Goonies/OCD) in second spot. Team 3 (WKD) were nipping at their heels just a few points behind, while Team 2 (Smurf) were clearly there to enjoy the event and test their abilities against the course and didn’t seem too concerned about battling it out for the win. With the lunch break over, everyone seemed to have organised themselves into some kind of working pattern, so things had by now settled down and started running smoothly. Everyone seemed to be working steadily and methodically to get through the sections with relatively few dramas – though Allen Sharp missed a few sections with electrical problems, meaning Team Ballsi’s lead was looking slender going into the evening section. This is designed with spectating in mind – teams go out one at a time, so each can watch their rivals in action. It started with a

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ridiculous drop straight into a 15-foot deep drainage hole; each truck lowered itself vertically down into the soft mud at the bottom of the hole and was basically stood on its nose with its tail end just protruding over the top. The driver then had to winch vertically out of the hole, which was no mean feat, but incredibly everyone in the team got through. The rest of the section was tough, but fairly straightforward after the big hole. Team Smurf’s Dave Adams didn’t enjoy it much, though – he impaled his arm on an inch-thick tree branch and had to be taken to the nearby hospital for treatment. Team Ballsi had been drawn to go last on this section, and this worked in their favour as the previous teams had knocked the edge off the exit to the big hole. Sure enough, they made it look easy where others had struggled – something that helped them build a commanding lead to take into day two. This involved more of the same, this time in the narrow conﬁnes of the

infamous Deep Scar site. This has a fearsome reputation, and the sections would more difﬁcult than the previous day – but with the same 30-minute DNF time. The toughest section of the day started with an eight-foot vertical climb over a rock shelf before carrying on over yet more huge rocks. Tom Hirons and winchman Tom Wilson deserve a special mention here as they were the only crew to complete the whole section. Others made valiant attempts and got up on to the initial shelf but then failed to make it over the rest of the rocks in the time allowed – while some drivers ﬂatly refused to attempt it as they felt it was not worth risking damage to their trucks. Nonetheless, most teams were doing well and enjoying the ultimate challenge against the very worst that Deep Scar could throw at them. It says something about the quality of the trucks taking part that aside from the injured Dave Adams, everyone was still up and running – and again, teams were pretty much intact when they returned to the

paddock at the end of the event. Intact, but weary! It had been a relentless battle against the terrain, but when the scores were totted up it emerged that sure enough, Team Ballsi had smashed it with a staggering 44,605 points. Second spot went to CSW, on a very impressive 31,342, while Goonies/OCD ended the event on 24,605 points. The ﬁnal place went to Team Smurf whose 12,529 mainly reﬂects the fact that they had a man down for the whole of Day 2. All in all, competitors had enjoyed the opportunity to get together with a group of mates and do battle against the other teams in what is the only event of its kind currently available in the UK. It might have clashed with the wedding of the year, but the Ragnarok once again proved hugely successful. A huge thank you from the organisers goes to sponsor Morris Lubricants and of course to the marshals, without whom there simply would not be an event. Team Ballsi may have won it – but the whole of the Viking 4x4 Club emerged victorious!

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Overland Travel

OFF-ROAD CALENDAR

14 October –1 Nov

April-May 2019 (6wks)

Protrax Morocco

Onelife Adventure Namibia/Botswana

25 Oct – 7 Nov

May 2019

Trailmasters Morocco Atlantic Sahara

Venture 4x4 Iceland

27 October

9 May 2019

Peru Safari Peru

28 October –15 Nov

26 May 2019

Protrax Morocco

Peru Safari Northern Peru

15 November

5-19 June 2019

16-30 August 2019

22-30 September

Peru Safari Peru

Protrax Pyrenees

Venture 4x4 Iceland

Trails and Tracks Pyrenees

17 Nov – 2 Dec

12 June 2019

24 August – 4 Sept 2019

29 Sept – 17 Oct 2019

Onelife Adventure Morocco

Peru Safari Peruvian Steppes

Trailmasters Morocco

Protrax Morocco

3 December

18 July – 1 August 2019

11-25 September 2019

3-16 October 2019

Peru Safari Peru

Venture 4x4 Iceland

Protrax Pyrenees

Trailmasters Morocco Atlantic Sahara

16 Mar – 4 April 2019

22 July 2019

16-29 September2019

11 October 2019

Protrax Morocco

Peru Safari Peru

Trailmasters Morocco Marrakesh Classic

Peru Safari Peru

April 2019

27 July – 10 August 2019

17 September 2019

25 Oct – 8 Nov 2019

Venture 4x4 Iceland

Peru Safari Peru

Trailmasters Morocco Draa Valley

19 April – 3 May 2019

1-15 August 2019

October 2019

15 November 2019

Trailmasters Morocco Marrakesh Classic

Venture 4x4 Iceland

Peru Safari Northern Peru

20 April 2019

10 August 2019

13-31 October 2019

3 December 2019

Peru Safari Peru

Protrax Morocco

Peru Safari Peru

76 | NOVEMBER 2018

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Peru Safari

4x4 29/09/2018 22:01

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B U I LT T H R O U G H E X P E R I E N C E … E AR N E D O N T H E T R A I L BFGO ODRICH.CO.UK

ROADBOOK

800623_KM3_15x210.indd 1

NORTH-EAST POWYS

21/09/2018 15:52

Tricky hillside lanes amid a glorious setting

Wales is a perennial favourite among green lane users, and on these rights of way to the west of Welshpool it’s easy to see why. This route provides a perfect combination of scenery, driving challenges and easy, wide-open lanes for cruising along and enjoy the view. It’s not one for soft-roaders, however, as you’ll need low range and tall tyres to stay in control on some of the lanes – but if you own a proper 4x4, it’s an absolute treat. Don’t do it without some means of recovery, though – this is deﬁnitely a route that’s best tackled in tandem with at least one other vehicle

ROUTE GUIDE

IS IT SUITABLE?

START FINISH HOW LONG? TERRAIN HAZARDS

TYRES

OS MAPS

Llangadfan (SJ 012 107) Llanfechain (SJ 189 203) 39.65 miles / 5-6 hours Hill farms and forestry Steep climbs and descents; enclosed tracks; large drop-offs; ruts, quite deep in places; surface ﬂoods; other users Landranger 125 (Bala & Lake Vyrnwy)

WEATHER LOW BOX SOFT-ROADERS SCRATCHING DRIVING DAMAGE

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Tall proﬁle and mud-terrain pattern essential Avoid when very wet or icy Essential Totally unsuitable Occasional but quite severe risk Some taxing climbs and deepish ruts, plus wet ground; one or two major drop-offs to avoid Shouldn’t be any danger if you drive properly

4x4 29/09/2018 16:27

8006

B U I LT T H R O U G H E X P E R I E N C E â&#x20AC;¦ E AR N E D O N T H E T R A I L BFGO ODRICH.CO.UK 15:52

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21/09/2018 15:52

Step 1: The Cann Ofﬁce Hotel is a perfect place to stay the night before your day on the lanes Step 3 (right): The turning isn’t signposted, but it’s the only one like this in the vicinity

0.0

1.55

1.85

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SJ 012 107

Start at the Cann Office Hotel on the A458 in Llangadfan, which is the perfect place to stay the night before your lane run. Zero your trip as you turn left out of the car park, then immediately left again on the A458 heading west

Turn right in Foel. It’s hard to spot as you approach – the turning is straight after a terrace of creamcoloured buildings on the right, and opposite a small track on the left

SH 991 119

Bear right on the track through a gate and up the hill. It’s not signposted and there are no landmarks, but it’s the only junction around so you won’t confuse it with anything else. It’s pretty steep from the word go, and quite scratchy as well

1.9

2.05

3.75

4x4 29/09/2018 16:28

8006

B U I LT T H R O U G H E X P E R I E N C E … E AR N E D O N T H E T R A I L BFGO ODRICH.CO.UK 15:52

USING OUR ROADBOOKS

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Our roadbooks guide you through the countryside on a mixture of surfaced and unsurfaced roads.The tracks we use are public rights of way, either Byways Open to All Trafﬁc or Unclassiﬁed County Roads, all commonly referred to as green lanes.

NAVIGATION

Step 8: The turning is pretty easy to spot. Look out for the post with a number 5 on it as conﬁrmation that you’ve got the right one

Turn right on to what feels like a main road as you come to the junction but is just a Cat A track

3.9

4.55

4.6

As the main track forks gently left, bear right on to another track that’s smaller but still well defined. You can identify it by the wooden post with the number 5 on it

Continue ahead through the gate (beware – it’s the kind that wants to take all the skin off your hands), keeping the edge of the forest immediately to your left. The section ahead is quite deeply rutted

10 5.0

We’ve deliberately made it as easy as possible to follow the route, using a mixture of instructions, tulip diagrams and grid references.We normally only include junctions at which you have to make a turning or don’t have right of way, so just stay on the main road or take the most straight-ahead option unless we tell you otherwise. If you’re unfamiliar with six-ﬁgure grid references, you’ll ﬁnd a guide to using them on the legend of any OS map. Our aim is for you to be able to do the route without maps, but we do recommend having them.

SAFETY

The notes on the ﬁrst page of the roadbook advise you of how suitable it is for your vehicle.These are just guidelines, however.We’ll warn you of any hazards or difﬁcult sections, but the nature of any green lane can change quickly.Wet weather can make a huge difference to the conditions underfoot, and what’s wide open in winter can be tightly enclosed and scratchy in summer.The responsibility is yours! Our roadbooks are designed to be safe to drive in a solo vehicle, and are largely suitable for standard 4x4s on road tyres. We do recommend travelling in tandem wherever possible, however.The risk of getting stuck can be greater than it appears – and if you break down, having help at hand can make the difference between it being inconvenient and downright dangerous.

RESPONSIBILITY

11 5.25

12 5.8

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Your turning isn’t signposted, but it’s shortly before a brown sign pointing left into Pen y Ffordd forest and equestrian centre, which you’ll be able to see as you turn

Irresponsible driving is a massive problem on green lanes. In particular, you must always stay on the right of way. Never drive off it to ‘play’ on the verges or surrounding land, even if you can see that someone else has; doing so is illegal and can be tremendously damaging, both to the land and to 4x4 drivers’ reputation. The fact that you can see where it’s happened shows how much harm it does. It’s no excuse to say you’re just following where another driver has already been. Most green laners have taken to videoing anyone they see behaving like this and passing the evidence to the police. Elsewhere, simple common sense and courtesy should be your watchword.The do-and-don’t list

21/09/2018 15:52

below should always be in your mind, but keep your speed down, be ready to pull over for others and show the world that 4x4 drivers aren’t the hooligans some of them think we are.

ANTIS

Anti-4x4 bigotry does exist, but it’s less common than you’d think. By and large, it’s limited to organisations who just want to get the countryside all to themselves. These organisations are beyond being reasoned with, but it’s rare to encounter real hostility even from their rank-and-ﬁle members. If you’re friendly towards the people with whom you share the countryside, the vast majority will respond in kind. There are always bad apples, but no more so than anywhere else. Likewise, most local residents will accept your presence if you’re driving sensibly.What suspicion you do encounter is likely to be from farmers worried that you’re there to steal from them, so be ready to offer a word of reassurance. Once satisﬁed that you’re not after their quad bikes, their mood will lighten. It only takes one vandal to tarnish a person’s view of all 4x4 drivers, and once the damage is done it tends to be permanent. But if enough of us resolve to be ambassadors, it might make a difference to the way we’re perceived by society in general.

DO AND DON’T

• Keep your speed right down • Pull over to let walkers, bikers and

horse riders pass • Don’t go in large convoys: split into small groups to avoid hassling others • Leave gates as you found them • Don’t drop litter. Do carry a bin bag and a pair of stout gloves so you can pick up other people’s, though • Don’t go back to drive the fun bits, such as mud or fords, again • Scrupulously obey all closure and voluntary restraint notices • Don’t cause a noise nuisance, particularly after dark • Ensure you have a right to be there.We research the routes on our roadbooks very carefully, but the status of any route can change without notice • Be prepared to turn back if the route is blocked, even illegally • If you find an illegal obstruction, notify the local authority • If someone challenges you, be firm but polite. Stay calm and don’t let them turn it into a fight • Stick absolutely scrupulously to the right of way • You have as much of a right to be there as everyone else.Which means they have as much right as you

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Step 13: The turning is easily identiﬁed by the fence line next to it. The track does get quite rutted further along, but we did it without an issue on 265/75R16s

This track gets rather rutted further along

6.15

14 6.75

SJ 032 136

6.95

The ruts get deeper as you drop down towards the bottom of the field, then there’s likely to be a flood as you roll up to a gate. Fortunately it’s a pusher, so you can drive right up to it

16 7.2

Fork left between the old wooden gate posts

7.6

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24 0.5

Step 27: The undergrowth gets pretty serious as you drop down the hill. This was in early September

Free Car Park

If you look carefully, you’ll find a bit of blue twine hiding in the bank, with a hook on the end of it for holding the gate open!

The track drops into a steep, bumpy descent between ferns which at some times of the year will be taller than your vehicle

Caution – this is the kind of track that could lure you in to going too fast, but all of a sudden there’s a huge drop-off to the right

0.6

7.85

7.9

20 8.0

0.8

This is a big, wide ford, and the river is fast-moving. It’s not normally deep, but if the water level is up you shouldn’t attempt it. There’s a tight left-hander as you climb out at the far side, and a steep step up – use whatever lockers you have so as to minimise wheelspin

8.35

9.45

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1.05

1.25

8.2

There are toilets on the right at this junction

Fork left on to a slightly smaller track. There’s a slight step up the bank as you turn

1.3

Caution – this is a main road, even if it doesn’t look like one

ZERO TRIP

30 1.5

The track becomes sloppy and rutted for a short spell, including one sharp step up in front of your nearside wheels which will require a bit of momentum. It looks pretty nasty as you approach, but we did it on 265/75R16 BFG Muds at 30psi with no axle lockers, so there’s no need to go nuts

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Step 43: The shop at the junction is a good place to stop for provisions – and, if you fancy a nostalgia trip, what’s surely the only petrol pump left in Europe that’s not self-service

Caution through the farmyard and on to the road

The track on the left at this junction is so well surfaced it looks like a road at ﬁrst

5.05

1.85

2.15

Caution - this is a major road

5.3

7.6

2.35

Cownwy

34 2.65

SJ 075 153

40 8.7

2.85

3.9

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There are several Cat A tracks branching off this road, all of which look lovely but none of which are rights of way

9.3

ZERO TRIP

9.7

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There’s a fuel station and shop at this junction

0.6

2.0

Pen-y-Bont Fawr

44 1.6

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SJ 044 200

This is just after a small bridge with stone parapets

46 3.15

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The climb gets pretty steep at this point

7.85

The track becomes semi-surfaced in patches

54 8.2

3.65

4.0

8.7

10.1

5.45

Caution – this turning is very tight, and blind to start with.You’ll need at least one shunt

5.6

Turn right then immediately left again for Llanﬁhangel-yng-Ngwynfa and Dolanog

ZERO TRIP

SJ 079 167

0.55

Village Centre

0.6

7.7

52 7.75

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In the village, stay to the right of the war memorial then through the gate with a sign on it reading Penisarllan

Follow ahead past the sheep pens on the right

59 1.2

Turn left just ahead of a gate that looks like it might be protecting a secret nuclear installation or something like that

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Step 64: This climb is quite deceptive – it doesn't feel like much to start with, but gets pretty steep and goes on forever

60 1.6

The surface gets a bit cut up at the bottom of the hill, and it’s poor;y drained so you’re likely to be splashing through standing water

You might ﬁnd a pile of branches and so on dumped on the track as you approach this junction

1.7

3.05

1.8

2.3

64 2.35

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There’s a sharp hump just before the junction

2.7

62 63

At the top of the climb, the going gets quite rutted

Just after Cefn Llwyni on the right, the road swings hard left down the hill; the junction is just after that

The track is quite deceptive – it feels easy, but you’re soon into a steep climb that seems to go on forever

SJ 102 175

4.85

4.6

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Step 75: Fork right on the green road – it doesn’t look very distinct to start with, but you’ll ﬁgure it out pretty soon

Caution – the turning is very shallow, with poor visibility in either direction, and this is a fast road

75 6.45

4.85

5.05

6.65

Ll`anfyllin Y Trallwng Welshpool

Step 76: It looks like the track is petering out, but in fact it splits in two; yours goes down the hill to the left of the trees SJ 151 196

Where the road heads towards the farm buildings, bear right through the rusty old gate and up a green road with a line of trees immediately to your right

Bear left where the track splits around the trees. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be anything, but it soon becomes clear – though it could be slippery, and there’s a big drop-off to the left

1 4

This is in Llanfyllin

5.7

Join the concrete farm road

6.8

Bwlchyddar

72 5.9

SJ 143 196

Don’t go too early – it’s not Maes Myllin on the right, but just a bit further on round the corner, and yes you really do drive straight into a river bed!

Bear left on the track when you reach the wooden gate

6.0

74 6.25

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78 7.2

79 7.9

This turning is very tight back over your shoulder, with a sharp climb up on to the road which is likely to need at least one shunt

80 8.1

SJ 169 206

This is very tight back over your shoulder – it’ll need at least one shunt

With a gate in front of you, turn right up a track (wrongly) signposted with a blue horse rider sign

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It’s a big track on the right, but stay on the road

8.95

87 9.3

Fork left down the hill

8.55

88 10.0

Follow the track through the gates, ignoring the one straight ahead towards the old building

After the second gate, the track starts dropping steeply and getting uneven

8.6

84 8.65

10.1

Arrive at the Plas yn Dinas pub in Llanfechain for the end of the route

10.4

There are quite deep ruts as you approach the junction, but they’re gently shaped rather than sharpsided and you’re going steeply downhill, so you should be ﬁne

85 8.7

Step 90: The route ends at the Plas yn Dinas in Llanfechain

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