4x4 Magazine - November 2022

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BRITAIN’S BEST ALL-MARQUES 4X4 MAGAZINE FOR 40 YEARS! PLUS New, improved and still hard-as-nails SsangYong Musso

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

SILENCE IS GOLDEN

The all-electric desert racer on a quiet charge towards Dakar glory

Archive find: What green laning looked like 50 years ago

£4.99

Mighty Mid-Welsh roadbook – some legendary laning!

NOV 2022

All-electric off-roading in the brilliant Skoda Enyaq iV DONE AWAITING PIC 4x4 Cover Nov 22 AK.indd 1

27/09/2022 18:16

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27/09/2022 10:30

19785 Allmakes Ltd 4x4 Magazine - 3 page advert - Discovery.indd 1

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November 2022

CONTENTS

30

‘Legacy make much of life in the slow lane. They take of hours of it’

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48

36

4x4 27/09/2022 19:13

60 BIG SAVINGS WHEN YOU SUBSCRIBE! A copy of 4x4 normally costs £4.99 to buy at the shops. So why not pay just £8.00 to have FIVE issues delivered to your door instead? Mad not to!

4x4 Scene: News, Products and More…

6 7 8 9 10 10 12 14 18 19 19

Land Rover Collectors-edition Defender celebrates 75 years of history Twisted The last of the famous stash of factory-fresh 110s are now for sale Nissan All-new X-Trail unveiled ahead of imminent on-sale date Kia Final testing for the EV9 – the first true all-electric SUV? Hennessey Moumental 6x6 Ford F150 could be your little piece of Texas Jeep Here comes the next step on the trail towards an all-electric future Rhino Charge If you’re made of stern stuff, a stern challenge awaits ARB Major Ford tie-up brings full accessory range for new Ranger Vredestein Pinza all-terrain comes to Britain after making waves in the US Terrafirma Heavy-duty tool roll designed for hardcore off-road action Mud-UK A new solution to mess Defender dashboards

Driven 26 36

SsangYong Musso Latest updates make high-value pick-up better than ever Skoda Enyaq iV Electric SUV has all-wheel drive – so we took it laning…

Every Month 4 60 62 80

Alan Kidd Tales from the early days of green lane are treasure today Subscribe Get five issues of 4x4 for just eight quid Roadbook Part 1 of a monster weekend in the laning heartland of Mid-Wales Next Month One of the coolest Jeeps ever… and one of the gnarliest Suzukis

Features 22 30 42 56

Audi RS Q e-tron E2 Lighter, more slippery and ready to bid for Dakar glory Classy 90 French Defender proves it’s not just fine wines that mature with age A herd of Cats The day we purred after meeting the Argocat and Supacat Dateline 1970 How the staff of Custom Car discovered green laning…

Travel 48

Himalayas Daring to drive the world’s highest roads… in a standard SJ410

62 Mid-Wales Roadbook

are sharp rock Caution – there as you climb the steps to negotiate hillside

Step

Step 40: Turn left off the main embankment track, dropping then plunging down the straight into a water trough (right)

37

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13

Step

12.3 41

Abbey Strata Florida

8.75

track to the left Take the rocky track the main Cat A

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14

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38 13.1

of

Step

15

Step

followed by a long

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16 11.8 Step

17 12.8 Step

18 12.8 88 | JANUARY 2020

It’s a steep, sharp climb up and over a bigger track – you can’t see ahead over your bonnet to start with

Caution over a steps as you short set of rocky drop down the hill

15.0

There’s a couple of huge water troughs after the junction

Step

43

11.7

their time – thousands

More rock steps, water trough

Step

4212.6

10.9

Step

48

Look out for you cross the the waymarker as ford

15.2

13.4 Step

Join the Cat A

track

44

You may find yourself driving a river bed along for a while…

13.65 Step

45

track Drop off the main the gate and immediately before trough water into yet another

14.7 Step

to clear these axleneed a bit of momentum right is much bigger to the Step 37: You might warned, the drop-off twisters – but be than it looks here

4x4

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2020 | 89

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4x4 Tel: 01283 553243 Email: enquiries@assignment-media.co.uk

Alan Kidd Editor

W

hen my managing director told me a few months ago that the company was about to buy Custom Car magazine, my first thought was that this was probably going to result in me having a very busy time over the summer. And so indeed it turned out.

It’s good to step out of your comfort zone once in a while, to be fair. And I’ve learned a lot about the world of hot rods and drag racing over the last few months.

Mainly, of course, the more you learn, the more you learn you’ve still got to learn, but I know a flopper from a gasser now so the process has begun.

Anyway, back to the day job. I’m still an off-roader at heart and however much I’ve come to appreciate the sheer artistry of the vehicles in the street rod scene (which I’d urge you to check out, if you’re the kind of person who digs anything on four wheels) I’ll always be happiest on a green lane.

So imagine my surprise when I took my first look through the oldest magazines in the Custom Car archive and found… an article about green laning. It was in the third ever issue, dated May 1970, and since we now own the copyright on it I decided to republish it in this issue of 4x4.

Why? Well, for one thing it’s a brilliant read. Custom Car was a quirky, anarchic, madcap thing back then, kind of like an early, four-wheeled version of Loaded for the post-hippy era – and like Loaded, the secret of its success was that behind the carefully cultivated image of an editorial office full of people who’d snorted a line for breakfast, it was created by incredibly skilled professionals who knew exactly what they were doing.

For another, an article about green laning in 1970 is a rare thing. It’s a valuable piece of history and, when you see it through the lens of what we know today, a fascinating reflection on how things used to be.

The team from Custom Car borrowed an Austin Gypsy from a dealer in London, put it on a Motorail sleeper to Devon (Motorail, remember that?) and proceeded to spend two days basically breaking every rule we now follow as responsible lane users.

Armed with a map that didn’t tell them anything much about rights of way, they set

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A story about green laning from 1970 is a valuable thing off solo with no means of recovery and by the time I’d reached the end of the article, I had already lost count of how often they had been stuck.

Two is the number of times they were reported to the local police, I remember that much. Three is the number of shovels they borrowed from people and managed to break. Remarkably, the number of tractors they got towed by is just one.

There’s a delightful reference to their King’s Road haircuts standing out among the good folk of Devon, which sounds like something out of Withnail and I, and when you see the pictures they do look like extras from an Emerson Lake and Palmer video.

Mainly, it was silly, seemingly harmless fun, a bunch of city boys being twits in the country and no harm being done.

Except, of course, when you multiply that one little Gypsy full of twits and it becomes hundreds of sodding great tuned Defenders on 35” Special Tracks, the fun stops being in any way harmless. Which is why it’s so important to recognise that what Custom Car was doing back then is not the way we need to be doing it now.

However, much as we are the victims in the whole laners-vs-the-world thing, we also need to recognise that bad behaviour does exist among our own kind. And I’m not just talking about the full-on criminals who go out at night to destroy the countryside in stolen trucks or last-hurrah-before-breaking Discoverys, either.

I’ve seen commercial tour operators encouraging clients to blast back and forth half a dozen times through mud pits of their own making. I’ve seen clubs go looking for lanes where a quarter-mile convoy of trucks will all get stuck and need winching. I’ve asked them about it and they’ve answered with a ‘yeah, but, you know…’

What I know is that the Custom Car guys had an excuse. And, if you read the article, by the end of it they had learned their lessons. Half a century on, it’s up to all of us to ensure that those early pioneers of green laning were the beginning, not the beginning of the end.

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 Art Editor Samantha D’Souza Contributors Graham Scott, Olly Sack, Gary Noskill, Dan Fenn, Paul Looe, Tom Alderney, James Watts, Mike Hallett, Vivek Sharma Photographers Harry Hamm, Steve Taylor, Richard Hair, Vic Peel, Tomasz Jarecki Group Advertising Manager Ian Argent Tel: 01283 553242 Advertising Manager Colin Ashworth Tel: 01283 553244 Advertising Production Sarah Moss Tel: 01283 553242 Subscriptions Sarah Moss Tel: 01283 553242 Publisher and Head of Marketing Sarah Moss Email: sarah.moss@assignment-media.co.uk To subscribe to 4x4, or renew a subscription, call 01283 553242. 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 1.08, Bretby Business Park, Ashby Road, Bretby, Derbyshire DE15 0YZ

© Assignment Media Ltd, 2022

4x4 27/09/2022 17:09

Off-roading Protecting Carrying Towing Enhancing Repairing Diagnosing Improving Winching Lighting

40 years ago, Britpart began selling a few Land Rover parts from a small outbuilding in rural Shropshire. From this starting point, Britpart has expanded, becoming the leading worldwide independent wholesaler for service parts, repair components and accessories for the entire Land Rover marque.

Servicing

Britpart supplies thousands of parts (from a galvanised chassis down to the smallest nut and bolt) to hundreds of customers across the globe and, with our extensive range of accessories, you can make your Land Rover as unique as you are.

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For 40 years, servicing, repairing and enjoying Land Rovers has been made easy with Britpart.

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We’d like to take this opportunity to thank all our customers and suppliers from around the world.

We could not have done it without you. Thank you!

To read more on Britpart’s 40 years, please visit - www.britpart.com/history

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

NEWS

Land Rover celebrates 75 years of the Defender with collectable 90 and 110 starting at £85,995

D

oesn’t time fly? Remember when the ‘new’ Defender came out? And here we are celebrating a 75th Limited Edition already. Gazes into whisky glass, frowning slightly and feeling slight befuddled. Perhaps the second dram was an error.

What year is this again? What did you say, the Year of the Tiger? How is that helpful?

Yet here we are. And, more to the point, here is the Defender 75th Limited Edition. Is this a new model?

Well, no not really, so what’s the point, I ask somewhat querulously.

Ah, Land Rover says this is ‘a highly collectible Defender’. Ah, right, see what they’re doing now. Taps nose.

So what has Land Rover done, apart from cover everything that isn’t moving or soft in Grasmere Green paint? Jolly fine it looks too, it

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must be said. Ah, the company can kit me out with a matching watch ‘featuring two straps’ (eh?) plus backpack and clothing, all with 75 graphics and detailing. Somehow I sense members will look down their nose if I arrive at White’s so attired.

(Don’t look up my club, it doesn’t even have a website.)

But everyone at White’s (and everyone there is someone) has or has had a Land Rover, so perhaps they might find it amusing. But if I start talking about ‘Resist Ebony’ I might get blackballed. However, that’s the colour of the seating inside so what can I do?

Some of the fellow members were probably members back in 1948 when the first Land Rover appeared – certainly a few of the members don’t seem to have moved since then. Back then of course any

talk of electric power focused on the rather inadequate battery. Yet here we are, in the Century of the Fruitbat, looking at the P400e Electric Hybrid or the D300 mild hybrid.

Whichever you go for, it’s all in the best HSE high-spec taste, with an absolute steamer trunk full of stuff that is now standard, including head-up display, 3D surround camera, configurable terrain response and lots of other kit that would be of considerable help at White’s when you want to navigate to the Gents at the end of a long evening.

The memsahib would be absolutely tickled too to enjoy the folding fabric roof or the sliding panoramic roof, below which we could sit in some comfort whatever the weather, thanks to the heated electric memory seats, heated steering wheel and three-zone climate con-

trol. Don’t get those at White’s either, damn those wingbacks.

Oh and Land Rover has also thrown in all kinds of options such as the towing pack, Secure Tracker Pro, headlamp power wash and oodles more.

Now, we don’t want to get all trade and start talking about costs because that would be vulgar, but should you be searching for an amusing runaround to add to the stable then prices start at an astonishingly reasonable £85,995 for the 90 version and £89,995 for the 110, although obviously you’d want to add more since nobody wants a ‘starting’ price Land Rover do they?

Anyway, for that sort of money you could only get a decent dinner at Rowley’s and a night at the club, so why not? Here’s to the next 75, what ho. Cheers!

4x4 27/09/2022 17:31

NEWS

Twisted Automotive puts final run of 16 Defenders on sale from legendary 200-strong stash

‘ALEXA, SHOW ME FORESIGHT.’ In 2015 Charles Fawcett, founder and MD of Twisted Automotive, went on a tour of Land Rover not long before the production lines fell silent for the last time. He focused on the line producing 110s.

He took out his titanium-plated cheque book and bought 200 Defenders. As you and I don’t.

Most were converted and sold through Twisted, but 16 of them went into a barn where they were not forgotten. Gradually they amassed a patina of dust, nostalgia and £50 notes. Now, with the patina thick enough, those 16 are for sale.

They won’t be sold as stock but as Twisted Land Rovers, twisted to the individual owner’s requirements. Let’s get this out of the way for dreamers. Prices start at £135,000 + VAT and rise to £185,000 + VAT. All 16 were registered in 2016, after production had ceased, and were chosen for their chassis numbers and build dates. These really are unique models, which is why, once they have had the Twisted treatment making them even more individual, the vehicle run is called One of One. Twisted is one of those companies that sensibly and cleverly rides on the raft that is the Land Rover heritage. But they add a modern pointy end

so that you can actually enjoy all that heritage in the 21st Century. Take one example. Twisted say this about their interiors: ‘One of One is stripped out, panels are realigned and the vehicle is made thoroughly waterproof. Once completed, Twisted’s dual-layer soundproofing is fitted.’ Imagine saying you’d had to realign the panels or whatever if it was a Toyota Land Cruiser or similar.

Naturally the interiors will be complemented in leather with buckets of electronic aids, many of them for communication or for listening to your favourite music – Twisted can’t help with your musical taste so Engelbert Humperdinck it is then through the eight-channel premium audio system.

Naturally you’ll need to turn it up rather less thanks to all the sound-deadening and thick carpets, but the noisy thing at the front will still make its presence felt. Thankfully, in some good ways. The TVS 2.3-litre four-pot turbocharged petrol engine will pump out 308bhp and 350lb ft of torque through the six-speed manual box. You get benefits like forged steel crankshafts and conrods but, on a mundane level, this vehicle is ULEZ compliant so you can drive into London in some style.

OH COME ON. You know how this goes, because you’ve heard it before. Yup, no spoiler alert, the least reliable used vehicle is the previous generation of Range Rover. Yes, it’s in top spot of the list from Warrantywise, the company providing extended warranty plans. They surveyed over 130,000 vehicles, all less than ten years old but out of warranty and all selling reasonable numbers. Nowhere to hide.

Range Rover No 1 spot. BMW’s M3 takes second but don’t despair – there’s another Range Rover, the Sport, in No 3. Two podiums, yay. In fact, look at the table. Notice something else? Five of the top seven are SUVs, and all but one are premium brands.

Make of that what you will.

4x4 4.5 Scene News Nov 22.indd 7

Or you could go for the 174bhp 2.2-litre turbo-diesel with 310lb ft of torque, also firing through a six-speed manual gearbox. As a consequence of more go, there’s more to stop it all, with six-pot front discs and four-pot rears.

The uprated suspension also aids control, with dual-rate springs, custom damped shocks and better anti-roll bars.

There’s a lot of detailing goes into a Twisted Land Rover, so you’d need to go and talk through all the attention to detail you’d be buying for your, gulp, 200 grand. If you want to talk that talk then check out www.twisted.co.uk or email info@ twistedautomotive.com.

‘Thank you Alexa, you’re amazing.’

‘You’re welcome darling. Would you like a drink?’

Warrantywise’s Top 10 least reliable models Rank

Vehicle

Highest Overall Repair Cost Score /100

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Range Rover BMW M3 Range Rover Sport Porsche Panamera BMW X6 Porsche Cayenne Audi Q7 Bentley Continental GT Mazda CX-5 BMW M5

£23,890 £12,115 £22,358 £10,785 £9,613 £6,360 £8,719 £6,227 £5,777 £10,129

20.2 21.4 23.1 23.4 23.6 24.9 25.7 29.1 29.6 30.8

NOVEMBER 2022 | 7

27/09/2022 17:33

NEW 4X4S

Nissan unveils all-new X-Trail ahead of autumn on-sale date

THE FOURTH-GENERATION X-TRAIL gives Nissan a potential problem. The problem is three previous generations of muchloved off-roader; two decades of production, and nearly seven million vehicles sold. Top that.

Nissan’s solution to this problem is big on words like ‘crossover’ and ‘advanced electrification’, giving a clear signpost of what you can expect. It remains to be seen if this is the solution you were looking for.

It’s built on the Alliance CMF-C platform (like the Qashqai), and like the older models can feature five or seven seats. The bodywork is slowly moving away from the rugged 4x4 idea, but the extensive use of aluminium panels at least makes it lighter. The C-pillar by the way is apparently based on a dolphin fin, making this the first Nissan to be dolphin-friendly.

Underneath all the swoopy stuff, you will be able to get a version with

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a turbocharged 1.5-litre petrol engine powering the front wheels only, via the Xtronic CVT. With 161bhp and 221lb ft of torque this variable-compression, mild hybrid is not expected to be the majority seller.

That is expected to be the one with the e-POWER drivetrain. The system features the 1.5-litre turbo petrol engine, but the engine only generates electricity, with electric motors driving the wheels.

Combined output rises to a useful 201bhp. This gives the ‘feel’ of electric drive, that instant max torque from nowhere feeling, something multiplied by the e-Pedal Step. What

we used to call the accelerator pedal in less enlightened times. It

does indeed help you accelerate but when you take your foot off it gently brakes so urban driving is smoother.

Although Nissan clearly sees this as basically an on-road vehicle, there is a new all-wheel drive system, which works instantly and easily because of the electric motors controlling the wheels. According to Nissan this is just one of the many systems onboard that make the only seven-seater electric crossover ‘the type of vehicle modern adventurous families are looking for’. After 20 years, let’s see if they have read the future.

Prices start from £32,030, and our first driving impressions will be in next month’s issue.

4x4 27/09/2022 17:31

Kia EV9… 8… 7… 6…

YES, THEY’RE COUNTING DOWN for the arrival of the latest addition to Kia’s line-up of all-electric SUVs. Following on from the success of the EV6 GT, Kia has announced that the EV9 will be globally launched in the first quarter of 2023.

We first saw the concept only last year, when it looked really pretty futuristic. The reality, at least from the outside, doesn’t appear to be radically different from that concept. All the more amazing then, that the gap between concept and production vehicle is only about two years.

Kia is expecting this to be its flagship model, so there’s a lot hanging on this big electric SUV. And it is big. This is full-size SUV with the option of three rows of seats. And it is being positioned as a definite SUV, not a road car with the ability to tackle a rough driveway. Now take pity on the engineers being told this news when they’re informed they have to make it powerful and with a decent range. And only electric power.

It seems that the EV9 will be built on basically the same underpinnings as the EV6 and will probably share much of the dashboard and other cabin elements as well. That doesn’t seem a bad thing at all. The concept EV9 had a future-unlikely cabin but the EV6 looks great, so we’re looking forward to getting behind the wheel – and yes it has a steering wheel.

From the outside it’s definitely not the EV6. The EV9 is bigger and boxier – to quote the film Crazy People: ‘They’re boxy but they’re good’. There are slightly curved slabs of metal everywhere and of course you can make the front end look even more rugged as you’re not bothered by needing a massive grille.

We’re not sure yet in any detail what the engineers have finally come up with in terms of motive power. It may well be similar to the EV6, with a 75kWh battery pack, so range could be close to 300 miles.

Whatever, Kia is making much of the final testing being proper SUV stuff. They’re using welcome words like ‘gruelling’, ‘4WD’, ‘rough terrain’, ‘deep-water wading’ and even ‘Belgian pavé’. We like those words.

A dual-motor set-up as part of that package should ensure this big new arrival really is an SUV as well as an EV. We like the present but are now looking forward to the future arriving just next spring.

SPECIALIST 4X4 VEHICLE DISMANTERS JEEP - LAND ROVER SPECIALIST 4X4 VEHICLE DISMANTERS AND MOST MAKES AND MODELS JEEP LAND ROVER QUALITY GUARANTEED USED PARTS AND MOST MAKES AND MODELS QUALITY GUARANTEED PARTS SOME OF THE VEHICLESUSED WE HAVE RECENTLY DISMANTLED: SOME OF THE VEHICLES WE HAVE RECENTLY DISMANTLED:

20012015 JEEPJEEP WRANGLER JK 2001 Jeep Grand CHEROKEE XJ 2.8CRD 2015 JEEP Cherokee WJ JK WRANGLER 2.8CRD

2007 DODGE 2018 JEEP NITRO 2.8CRD 2010 Isuzu RENEGADE 2007 DODGE Rodeo NITRO 2.8CRD

2014 RANGE 2016 2006 JEEP 2011 ISUZU ISUZU ROVER SPORT 4.4 D-MAX 2.5 DIESEL WRANGLER TJ RODEO 2010 2015 Mitsubishi V8 Jeep DIESEL 2014 RANGE 2016 ISUZU Cherokee KK Outlander ROVER SPORT 4.4 D-MAX 2.5 DIESEL V8 DIESEL

JEEP 2007 LAND 20152010 RANGE 2012ROVER CHEROKEE MK4 DISCOVERY 3 2.7 ROVER EVOQUE MITSUBISHI ASX 2015 Range Jeep KK 2.8JEEP CRD 20072016 TDV6 2010 LAND ROVER Rover Evoque Renegade CHEROKEE MK4 DISCOVERY 3 2.7 KK 2.8 CRD

TDV6

2016 RANGE 2008 NISSAN ROVER EVOQUE 2012 Range PATHFINDER 2.0 TD4 2016 RANGE Rover Sport ROVER EVOQUE 2.0 TD4

2014 2010 JEEP CHEROKEE MK5 MITSUBISHI L200 2020 Ford KL 2.0 MULTIJET 2014 JEEP Ranger CHEROKEE MK5 KL 2.0 MULTIJET

2008 HONDA 2013 TOYOTA CRV 2.2 CDTI HILUXGrand 2006 Jeep 2008 HONDA Cherokee CRV 2.2 CDTIWK

2006 NISSAN 2006 JEEP 2006 JEEP GRAND 2015 LAND 2004 JEEP CHEROKEE WK PATHFINDER 2.5 GRAND GRAND 5.7 V8 HEMI ROVER DCI 2020 Jeep Land2006 Rover NISSAN2015 Nissan 2006 JEEP2018 GRAND DISCOVERY CHEROKEE WK CHEROKEE WJ 2.5 X-Trail WK PATHFINDER WranglerCHEROKEE JL Discovery Sport Charlton Recycled Auto Parts SPORT DCI 5.7 V8 HEMI Vehicle Recycling Centre, Gravel Pit Hill, Thriplow, Cambridge, SG8 7HZParts Charlton Recycled Auto Tel 01223 832656 Vehicle Recycling Centre, Gravel Pit Hill, Thriplow, Email parts@charltonautoparts.co.uk Cambridge, SG8 7HZ PLEASE VISIT WWW.CHARLTONAUTOPARTS.CO.UK Tel 01223 832656 Email parts@charltonautoparts.co.uk PLEASE VISIT WWW.CHARLTONAUTOPARTS.CO.UK

4x4 4.5 Scene News Nov 22.indd 9

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27/09/2022 17:31

NEWS

Hennessey adds F-150 to roster of big Texan pick-ups

T

he Ford F-150 pick-up is hardly the vehicle of choice for introverts. But Texas is extrovert. So the Texan company Hennessey decided the pick-up needed more. More length, more height, more power, more noise, more everything. Oh and more axles and wheels too.

More power through upgrading induction, intercooler and twin turbos in the 3.5-litre V6. There’s now 558bhp at 5100rpm, and more torque too, with 672lb ft at 3500rpm.

Leading to more noise through the stainless steel exhaust.

It’s longer because of that lengthened load bed which, at 8ft length, allows a 45% increase in load volume even over the standard model, so now you have a load bed and a small swimming pool. That bed rides higher too, thanks to a 3in lift kit, 20in wheels and 37in tyres. It’s also better controlled through trick Fox suspension.

And underneath that bed now sits a third axle. Both the rear axles get locking diffs and the whole thing is six-wheel drive – a modification that Hennessey has a lot of experience in delivering.

So, if you can holler in public without having to go and hide under a sofa, it’s perfect. Hennessey will ship internationally and even give you a three-year/36,00-mile warranty. Wear a Stetson and talk loudly.

Jeep Avenger leads the way as world’s first 4x4 brand seeks to be all-electric in Europe by 2030 is being produced by coal fired stations than nuclear stations, just like in the good old days.

But hey, don’t mind me I’m just an analogue curmudgeon, and what the world is going to get is the Avenger, the Recon and the Wagoneer. All are battery electric vehicles and show Jeep is serious in its aim to become a leader in electric SUVs.

THE AVENGER. Does that make you think of a TV series or a really awful Hillman? Either way, it’s the rugged new name for a rugged new Jeep coming to Europe in 2023. It’s Jeep’s first full electric SUV. It’s part of the Dare Forward 2030 plan (yes, I know). Jeep is aiming for 100% of European sales to be all-electric by 2030. In the USA by that time the percentage is planned to be 50%.

The company is making much of the ‘100% Jeep; 100% Zero Emission’ strategy. Which of course works so long as you don’t ask where the electricity is coming from. Don’t ask Germany, where right now more power

ALONG WITH JEEP’S MOVE INTO MORE ALL-ELECTRIC SUVS, the brand has compiled a ‘Remote Charge Point Index’. At one level this is simply hugely helpful. It highlights where you can recharge your SUV when you’re out in the middle of nowhere. On the other hand it reminds everyone that keeping your electric SUV moving is not exactly guaranteed when you’re away from the main networks.

Still, it’s good to see Jeep taking an interest in Lochinver Community Hall in the remote Scottish fishing village (pitured), the Etal Village Hall in Northumberland, the 16th Century manor house, Plas Yn Rhiw at Hell’s Mouth bay in Wales and the village of Belleek in County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland.

In fact that would make a pretty fun (off) road trip, wouldn’t it? Just remember to take a spare jerry can of electricity with you before you set out.

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27/09/2022 17:31

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MOTORSPORT

Adventurous off-roaders sought for UK team to enter 2023 Rhino Charge in Kenya

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he Rhino Charge is one of the world’s best-known and longest-running off-road events. Held every year in Kenya, it pits teams against the terrain with a unique format requiring them to visit a set of checkpoints while covering the shortest possible distance, and over the years it has come to be dominated by portal-axled monsters capable of straddling massive rocks.

Best of all, the event is run entirely for a very good cause. The Rhino Ark is a wildlife charity which aids conservation in East Africa by helping animals and humans live alongside each other in harmony.

Its programme of funding electric fences has been hugely effective in keeping wildlife out of villages, allowing people to live without fear of incursions and animals to exist

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peacefully in their own territory. This helps conserve the mountain ecosystems known as the Water Towers of East Africa, preventing conflicts which can only ever end badly.

The first Charge was held in 1989, and this year alone the event raised £1.1 million towards Rhino Ark’s important work. Now, attention turns towards next year – and you could be part of it!

That’s because Kit Kaberry, a long-time off-roading friend of ours who is a Trustee of Rhino Ark (UK), is looking to put together a British team to compete in Kenya. Having taken part in three previous Rhino Charges, as well as numerous runnings of the currently mothballed UK Rhino Charge (a spin-off event which Rhino Ark (UK) is hoping to restart in the near future), he’s now in his late seventies and won’t be

competing. But he intends to be in Kenya to support the team – which is likely to be navigated by his son Angus, himself also a veteran of three Charges.

Shipping a Land Rover to Kenya is not easy, and it’s certainly not cheap, so Kit has worked hard to secure a suitable local vehicle. He has been in discussion with a Nairobi 4x4 specialist which is currently preparing a Land Rover 110 to the specifications needed to take part in the Charge, which will be held on 3 June 2023.

Needless to say, being part of the team won’t come cheap. Hiring the Defender will cost £12,500, which will be shared between all the team members – six of them, made up of a driver, navigator and four runners whose job, crucial to the success of any team, is to scout out a route across the terrain.

In addition to this, Kit estimates that your air fare, plus the cost of a stay in Nairobi and four nights in the camp at the Charge venue, will bring the likely price to around £5000 per person. And then there’s the fundraising side of it, with each team member expected to raise a minimum of £2000 to go into the Rhino Ark’s coffers.

‘All this for a week off work – but an exhilarating journey!’ says Kit. ‘Though if you have the time and the funds, you can of course add on a full safari in Kenya during your stay.’

Sounds like a good way to make the most of your air fare – and, as if you needed an excuse, to see for yourself the animals whose habitat you’ll be protecting. It certainly won’t be for everyone – but if it’s for you, you can contact Kit direct by emailing him at kit@rhinoark.org.

4x4 27/09/2022 17:23

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PRODUCTS

Major collaboration between Ford and ARB sees full range of off-road equipment ready in advance for launch of new Ranger

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here’s been no shortage of new 4x4s to get excited about over the last year or so. But few if any have been as hotly anticipated as the new Ford Ranger.

This arrives early next year, after making a cheeky early appearance in high-spec Raptor form. And from the word go, you’ll be able to turn it into the off-road weapon of your dreams.

That’s because Ford has been working with ARB for the last three years, sharing design data on the vehicle so that the Australian off-road

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giant can develop a range of accessories and modifications in readiness for the vehicle’s launch. Normally, when a new 4x4 is launched you have to wait months or years for the aftermarket to catch up, but this alliance has allowed more than 160 parts to be designed, tested, approved and finally moved through to manufacture in a process that’s been running behind the scenes since 2019.

‘Two iconic brands have joined forces to bring you an industry-leading vehicle personalisation experience ahead of the launch of the next-generation Ford Ranger,’ says ARB. ‘The exclusive partnership offers a wide range of accessories that have undergone a rigorous evaluation process by both Ford and ARB engineers to ensure they’re fully compatible with the Ranger, delivering optimal integration and performance.

‘A strategic collaboration between Ford and ARB has resulted in the best range of

accessories available, so you can take your new Ford Ranger to the next level.’

Fine words are cheap and easy, but in this case ARB’s reputation goes before it. The company traces its history back to 1975, when founder Tony Brown first hit on the idea of manufacturing equipment suitable for the rigours of the Outback, and since then it has grown into a household name among off-roaders.

With the imminent arrival of the new Ranger, complete with its full range of ARB accessories, that reputation is set to grow still further. And with so much potential added to the vehicle, its appeal to buyers is sure to be stronger than ever.

If it wasn’t hotly enough anticipated already, what follows should be enough to get any truckbuilder’s mouth watering…

Suspension

ARB’s range-topping BP-51 Old Man Emu suspension system is yet to be confirmed for the UK market as a new Ranger fitment, however it’s already a well known name among existing pick-up owners. This is an all-singing, all-dancing remote-reservoir set-up, however Emu’s everyday

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PRODUCTS Nitrocharger shocks have also been engineered for the new Ranger.

Locking diffs

The Air-Locker is almost a ‘hoover’ word in offroad circles; people even refer to them as ‘arbs’.

That’s how universal ARB’s legendary diff-locks have become, and not without reason – after all these years, they continue to be recognised as the gold standard in their field.

For the new Ranger, ARB is concentrating on the front axle rather than the rear, where the vehicle will be available with a factory-fit unit.

Here, the Air-Locker will offer a direct replacement for the standard electric traction management system, providing the opportunity for true fourwheel drive on suitably equipped vehicles.

For the Ranger, ARB has also designed a mounting bracket allowing its own air compressor to be located in the vehicle’s offside rear wing.

This leaves the rear pick-up bed free for whatever you want to put in it.

Raised air intake

You don’t need to be heading for the deepest water you can find for a snorkel to be your best friend. Raising your vehicle’s air intake is a great way of protecting your investment in its engine – which will always thank you for keeping it supplied with clean, dust-free air.

Just as importantly (admit it), snorkels make vehicles look cool. And the latest V-Spec Safari Snorkel has been designed for the Ranger using the latest scanning and CAD techniques, so you can expect it to look cooler than ever. Especially when you’re wading it through the deepest water you can find…

Heavy-duty bumpers

ARB’s winch bumpers are already a common sight on high-end builds, particularly those based on pick-ups – with the existing Ranger having traditionally been one of the most popular choices among UK enthusiasts and adventurers.

Its full range includes several different options; not all of these will be homologated for road use in this country, however, with ARB itself advising that only one has been approved for use in Europe.

This is the StealthBar, which has become increasingly popular over the last few years.

Made from moulded polyethylene, it’s capable of deforming to absorb the impact of a full-on kangaroo strike – a feature which also makes it far kinder on pedestrians than a traditional allsteel design.

The winch mount hidden behind the StealthBar won’t deform, on the other hand. And as is normal with ARB, it doesn’t come with recovery points – these are sold separately, and like the winch tray they’re made from heavy-duty steel which is attached directly to the chassis. Each recovery point is rated to 8000kg up to the maximum turning angle of the front wheels.

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Being a bumper rather than a full-height bull bar, the StealthBar is also significantly lighter than the other options in the ARB range. This is no small matter when it comes to the vehicle’s braking and handling, not to mention its fuel consumption – and once you’ve seen how easy it is for accessories to interfere with your payload and towing weight limits, you’ll never take them for granted again.

As the illustrates, ARB has these days moved well beyond the traditional off-roaders’ answer to everything of simply throwing as much massive strength as possible at the issue. The company does still make its familiar all-steel range of Summit, Summit Sahara and Commercial bars, which are in effect three variations on the same basic high-strength theme each incorporating different levels of premium features, as well as the full-height polyethylene SpartanBar, but for UK customers the ever-growing popularity of the more subtle StealthBar is easy to understand – and you can expect it to be very well suited to use on the new Ranger.

At the back, like all pick-ups, the Ranger’s rear overhang will be among its most vulnerable areas. Here, ARB’s Rear Step Tow Bar is a well proven way to prevent the inevitable ground hits from wrecking your vehicle’s pick-up bed, and for the new model it has been engineered to work with the vehicle’s original equipment lower tub step. In addition, it will be available with optional lower tub protection and recovery points, again rated to 8000kg.

Rock sliders

The need for a long wheelbase means pickups are also vulnerable to grounding out on breakovers, or in deep ruts. So a set of rock sliders is always likely to be near the top of your shopping list. That’s what ARB’s Summit Side Rails and Steps are all about – these shield the vehicle’s sills and doors against damage, whether from rocks, stumps or debris; if you’re buying a set, it’s likely that you’ll be combining them with one of the company’s front bumpers, but they’re available with a return for solus use too.

Underbody protection

ARB will offer not one but two ranges of underbody protection products for the new Ranger. One is its traditional Under Vehicle Protection, made from pressed, folded and lasercut 3mm steel, however you’ll also be able to shield the vehicle’s underside using… plastic.

Seriously? Traditional bash-it-with-a-hammer types, look away now. ARB’s Under Vehicle Armour is made from crosslinked polymer, making it far lighter (that again, and still as good as ever), and like the StealthBar it will deform under impact before popping back into shape. It’s tough as old boots, too (easily able to support the vehicle’s weight many times over) and for extra reassurance it’s ribbed in critical areas. It is, of course, compatible with ARB’s other protection products, so you can use it on a vehicle also equipped with the company’s bumpers, rock sliders and recovery points.

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PRODUCTS Drawers

This is another area in which ARB is well known, and its UK arm has been reporting strong sales of drawer kits over the last year. The company’s trim panels turn the Ranger’s pick-up bed into a perfectly sized space in which to mount its drawers – whose smooth action and sky-high load capacities make them ideal for everything from kitchen instals to ground anchors.

Talking of kitchens, ARB offers one as a slide-out unit with a three-burner stove, sink and enough worktop space to cook up a storm. Ideal for Rangers being built for expedition use, general camping weekends or even just to cater for work crews on site, the Slide Kitchen is available solus or with its own vehicle-specific fitting kit.

Rooftop stowage If you really want to keep it made of metal, the traditional steel plates mentioned above come zinc-plated and powder-coated, wit recessed mounting bolts securing them firmly to the chassis. Choices, choices…

Long-range fuel tank

As a general rule of thumb, the more a place is worth visiting, the less likely you are to be able to fill up with fuel there. No, we’re not talking about downtown Huddersfield when the tanker drivers are on strike.

If you want to conquer the Canning Stock Route or Anne Beadell Highway, cross the Sahara or spend a week off-grid in the Khan Khentii, one tank of fuel is not going to be enough. You’ll have jerry cans, of course, but those take up space – and you’ll need less of them if you’ve fitted ARB’s 140-litre Frontier long-range diesel tank.

This isn’t a secondary tank; it’s a direct replacement for the factory-fitted unit holding approaching twice as much of the good stuff. It’s made from the same kind of crosslinked polymer as the underbody armour, so it’s no heavier than something containing about 140 litres of diesel will ever need to be – and while it’ll sure cost a lot to brim it from fumes, at least you won’t see the

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inside of a petrol station anything like as regularly as most people.

Truck-bed canopies

Since work started on its collaboration with Ford, ARB has put down a serious marker in the offroad market in the UK by buying Truckman – a company which has long since been regarded as a frontrunner in pick-up accessories, particularly canopies. Not all of its hard-tops will be imported here, but those that do will come from a fourstrong range of options.

Foremost among these is the Ascent – ARB’s flagship Canopy, with every feature under the sun including central locking and push-button window switches. The Classic is a no-nonsense loadspace cover built to very high quality standards, while the Classic Plus is the same but with more features including a single rear door with an electric handle. The Sportlid, meanwhile, is a secure, weatherproof loadspace cover which sits at top rail height to maintain the truck’s classic pick-up lines.

In addition to these, ARB will also be offering a Tailgate Assist option to prevent dangerous and damaging crash-down openings and allow far easier , one-handed opening.

ARB already offers a wide range of load-carrying solutions which are widely interchangeable around many different vehicles. The common factor is the company’s Base Rack, a low-profile, lightweight unit whose flexibility means it can be put to an almost endless variety of uses. Anything from jerry cans and spare wheels to carrying your home on your back… safe to say the new Ranger will be seen doing it all.

Electrics

The new Ranger is a pretty connected kind of a vehicle, with electrical systems almost everywhere you look. So what it really needs is… more electrical systems.

For starters, there’s a Ranger-specific plugand-play wiring harness to connect into ARB’s own Solis and Intensity driving lights. There’s also a universal plug-and-play patch loom, which provides a clean high-beam signal output to suit other brands of LED, and this can also be used when fitting front-facing lights on a roof rack.

The range also includes an auxiliary battery kit allowing you to add a consumer circuit, and this is supplied complete with its own loom as well as a charger, battery tray and mounting hardware. And if you take a high-tech approach to off-roading, there’s an A-post bracket available for mounting ARB’s Linx vehicle accessory interface.

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PRODUCTS

Vredestein launches first off-road tyre with all-weather, all-terrain Pinza Price: Varies Available from: www.vredestein.co.uk APOLLO TYRES HAS LAUNCHED ITS FIRST DEDICATED ALL-TERRAIN TYRE, the Vredestein Pinza. Designed to be ‘comfortably rugged’, this is an all-weather, all-terrain fitment for 4x4s, pick-ups, and SUVs that are used on and off-road.

The tyre is based on a three-ply carcase and features a three-pitched shoulder and sharp edge blocks for efficient self-cleaning and additional grip on loose surfaces. It’s also designed for low noise and good road manners, in particular for all-round grip and responsive steering.

Already well established in the USA, the Pinza is available here in two forms: ‘P’ and ‘LT’. The latter is intended for working vehicles which are primarily used in more demanding off-road conditions, with the ‘P’ has a more road-biased design to suit passenger-carrying SUVs. In each case, the Pinza carries the 3-Peak Mountain Snowflake logo, meaning it’s approved for use as a winter tyre in nations where this is a thing. It’s initially available in 24 sizes, with more to follow.

From roof tents and awnings to cookware and barbecues, LVB supplies all your overland and camping requirements.

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PRODUCTS

Heavy-duty tool roll at the ready for all your running repairs Price: £41.95 From: terrafirma4x4.com NEWLY OUT FROM TERRAFIRMA FACTORY RACING, this heavy-duty 20oz canvas tool roll is designed to be stashed in your competition vehicle in readiness for when you’re out on a stage and need to make running repairs. It has no less than 23 pockets and pouches, variously secured by zips and velcro flaps, and unrolls to give easy access to all its contents. All you need now is to supply the tools to go in it.

Keep your Puma’s dash tidy when adding extra switches Price: £63.00 From: www.mudstuff.co.uk DESIGNED TO SUIT genuine TDCi-era switches used from 2007 to 2016, Mud’’s Defender TDCi Switch Mount can also be used for the company’s own range of Land Rover style switches.

There are two versions available – a 5-gang mount for simply adding extra switches to your dashboard, and a 4-gang plus hazards version. The latter is intended for vehicles with a pop-out or halo-style single-DIN head unit, which restricts access to the top row of switches on the dashboard.

‘The Puma dashboard has an abject lack of space for extra switches,’ explains Mud. The traditional method is to mount switches into any spare flat surface, which normally results in an ugly and untidy spread of aftermarket switches. The Puma dashboard doesn’t help, with its large empty spaces to the left and right having a compound curved profile preventing traditional gang mounts from sitting flush with the dashboard.’

These mounts provide an answer by snapping into an outer frame which is moulded to follow the compound curve of the Puma dash. They come with colour fitting instructions, hardware and a cut-out installation template.

The kit comes without actual switches, but Mud offers a range of its own designs with various legends for accessories like winches, lockers, compressors and work lights, as well as USB sockets and switch blanks for any unused housings. They can accommodate switches from the Discovery 2, Freelander and soft-dash Classic Range Rover, too.

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4X4 TYRE EXPERTS & OFF ROAD SPECIALISTS Alloy and steel wheels for van, car, SUV & 4X4

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Call 01926 490002 Silverline 4x4 Units 3 & 4, Nelson Lane, Warwick CV34 5JB www.silverlinewheels-tyres.com | www.facebook.com/Silverline4x4 Silverline_4x4Mag_A4.indd 1 Silverline advertorial Nov 22.indd 20

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x4 lovers have got three more reasons to visit Silverline 4x4 – one of the most respected specialists and conversion centres in the UK. A hattrick of unique promotions* have been created to bring more motorists to the forecourt, including:

Free brake pads provided for life •when you buy a set of discs and pads from Silverline 4x4

Buy two or four premium •Bridgestone tyres and receive an Amazon voucher code of up to £40 in value

From October, Bridgestone ‘winter •safety kit’ for customers purchasing two or more Bridgestone A005 Weather Control tyres The Warwick-based centre boasts the best brands under one roof, and one call to centre manager Simon Mepstead and the team is all you need to find out what solutions suit your 4x4.

Its wheel and tyre packages are amongst the most impressive to be found in the UK, both on price and genuine quality.

Rather than sell on price, Silverline 4x4 advises on the right solution for each vehicle they see.

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Centre manager Simon Mepstead said: “Our services aren’t like conventional automotive centres in so far as our products aren’t viewed as distress purchases, so price isn’t the overriding factor as the specific solution is the main requirement.”

Silverline 4x4 is the only garage anywhere in the UK to stock the crit-

ically-acclaimed Unigrip tyre range, starring the Unigrip Lateral Force and Road Force tyres, available in 15” up to 20”.

Meanwhile, the Bridgestone Dueler M/T 674 tyre is a rugged new product which is mud-focussed, but drives really nicely too. It’s a great all-round performer, so if the split

between all-terrain and mud outings is around 50/50, this could be a perfect tyre. * Terms and conditions apply.

For more about Silverline 4x4’s services. call Simon and the team on 01926 490002 or visit them online at https://bit.ly/4x4Silverline

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SECOND-GEN ELECTRIC RACER Audi’s new RS Q e-tron E2 is lighter and more aerodynamic than last year’s car – which Words: Graham Scott Pictures: Audi

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BIDS TO MAKE DAKAR HISTORY itself won four stages in its Dakar debut

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eat, dust, shocking impacts, dehydration, flying stones, punctures, boulders, airtime followed by heavy landing time – an event like the Dakar Rally makes dramatic and extreme demands of vehicles and crews. Now plan on doing it in an electric vehicle with complex and advanced electronics.

Fans for the engine, air-conditioning for the crew – just these take huge amounts of energy. And – gazes round desert – can anyone see a recharging point?

But Audi is making this work. After all, the company has proven its original thinking more than once in the rally world. At the beginning of 2022, three RS Q e-trons represented a new class, T1 Ultimate for low-emission vehicles, in the Dakar. All three finished, notching up four stage wins in the process. Sure, they had some top talent, like Stephane Peterhansel and Carlos Sainz, but to enter three totally new cars and for all three to finish, let alone win stages, is quite an achievement.

Just a couple of months later they went one better and actually won the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. You and I (well, okay, not you) at this point would have celebrated, put our feet up and basked in the warm glow of a job well done. Audi’s feet, in comparison, seem to have hardly touched the ground since. Which is how they’re already announcing the vehicle they hope will conquer the 2023 Dakar: the Audi RS Q e-tron E2.

The looks are different because all the composite body panels over the tubular steel frame are different. It’s lighter and more aerodynamic but it’s also wider, allowing more elbow room for the crew. When you’re on the ragged edge for days in a tumble dryer full of dust and stones, a less uncomfortable environment pays real dividends.

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What is underneath those futuristic panels is fundamentally the same as before but obviously improved. And it has slightly less work to do. The first version was overweight so that, even though the rules have lifted the regulation weight from 2000kg to 2100kg, the E2 still had to shed quite a few kilos to get under the new limit. And that bodywork package has led to a 15% decrease in aerodynamic drag.

That all adds up to less energy required for the same output (regulations limit top speed to 170km/h, or 106mph). Energy? Yes, there’s plenty of that. Those who actually know what a piston rod is, rather than assuming it is a cocktail, will at least recognise some of the source of that energy. It’s the 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbocharged TSFI petrol unit used in the company’s DTM car.

We used to call that ‘the engine’. I know, quaint isn’t it? Now it is an ‘energy converter’. It is linked to an MGU, which is a motor-generator unit. That combination recharges the main battery, which weighs in at a considerable 370kg/815lb. What with the weight of the ‘engine’ you can see how shedding kilos becomes important.

The MGU is taken almost directly from Audi’s Formula E car. There are another two on board, one on each axle, meaning all power delivery is from the 52 kWh battery and so is entirely electric. Total system power is rated at 288 kW, or 387bhp. It pours through a single-speed racing gearbox on each axle, each of which also has an electronic limited-slip diff, with a ‘virtual’ centre diff between them and selectable torque distribution on both.

It works – 0-62mph time is just 4.5sec. And that is on a loose surface.

You can only imagine how complex the electronic control system of that complicated electric drivetrain has to be. When you used to have to worry about sand in the carburettors, now you have to worry about the system generating too much power – what they call ‘excess energy’.

There are strict limits imposed by the FIA and Audi found this was a problem in the first vehicles when they were in the air – which happened often – or when jolting about on rocky terrain with wheels spinning for short periods. The software monitors each of the MGUs in the axles and adjust within milliseconds if traction is broken. For days, over thousands of miles of broken terrain, without a fault.

Aerodynamics have tended to take second place to suspension and sheer power in the world of off-road racing. But when top speeds are limited and what matters most is to eke out every last bit of energy from the vehicle’s battery pack, slipping through the air as efficiently as possible is crucial to being competitive. The cabin, meanwhile, looks at first glance like something from an arcade, but it’s built for driving, fast, over extended periods of time. The latest version of the RS Q e-tron has greater elbow room and is air-conditioned to within an inch of its life – a comfortable crew is a fast crew

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Dakar legend Stephane Peterhansel, who’s won the rally more often than anyone else in its history, will lead the Audi assault on the 2023 title. With Carlos Sainz and Mattias Ekström also piloting RS Q e-trons, Audi has assembled one of the most stellar Dakar line-ups of all time

But, as mentioned, that electric power has to do more than keep the wheels turning. The focus on power consumption means things like ancillaries like servo pumps are all optimised so that, for example, they run differently on liaison stages than they do on full-bore special stages.

This includes the air-con.

Of course, air-con is essential when racing in the desert all day and sometimes all night, but Audi encountered a problem. When it was running flat out it could actually freeze the coolant! The solution is an intermittent mode, so that it works in bursts without having a notable or detrimental effect on the crew.

The crew sit in a cockpit which is called ‘the elephant’s foot’, which may make sense to elephants but not to us. Again as mentioned, this is a larger space than before, more ergonomically set up. Anyone who has driven or ridden an endurance vehicle is usually surprised at first at how soft and easy everything seems compared to a more hard-edged track vehicle. After hours and hours it makes more sense and you realise how it helps to keep the crew sharp and effective for longer. This is not a sprint vehicle.

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When you’re tired or under pressure, reading dials can become confusing – it’s one reason fast jets still use some analogue dials. In the RS Q e-tron there is a central switch panel with 24 fields, and previous experience showed this was simply too much for the crews in moments of high stress.

This has now been broken down into four system areas, accessed through a simple rotary switch. The two the crews will mostly use are Stage, which uses speed limiters, the air jack if needed and so on, and Road, which brings in stuff like turn signals and even the rear-view camera.

The other two areas, Error and Settings, are more for the engineering team who can download the day’s data when the vehicle eventually arrives out of the desert each day.

The focus on the welfare of the crew extends to them keeping on the move. Punctures are of course an ever-present hazard – anyone who thinks a desert is just sand has clearly never spent time in one. Wheels and tyres are as light as possible, but the 37x12.50R17 BFGoodrich tyres are substantial bits of kit. New bodywork makes it easier to get to the tyre, while 10-spoke

Rotiform rims make it easier for the crew to hold and change.

This really is a vehicle that has had as much thought put into the warm squishy things inside as to the vehicle itself. That’s not just being nice, that’s being prepared to put all the effort needed in to get the result they want. Which is victory.

Although the Dakar Rally, starting in January, is the big goal, before then, in October, the vehicle will get its first competitive outing. The three vehicles will be competing in the Rally du Maroc (in Morocco) and hope to build on the successes of its predecessor.

While Audi is just slightly unlikely to launch a production version of the RS Q e-tron Q2 (oh yes please), new technology tested under extreme conditions may yet make its way onto a production line at some point. With its emphasis on energy efficiency, that’s just the sort of technology we’re all going to welcome, whatever its shape, in the years ahead.

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DRIVEN

SSANGYONG MUSSO SARACEN After a mini-facelift this time last year, the Musso returns with a broaded set of updates – including a revised engine to give it the power its assertive new look demands

IT’S BEEN FOUR YEARS NOW since SsangYong replaced the dire old Musso with an all-new model based on our former 4x4 of the Year, the Rexton. In that time, it’s won four consecutive Best Value titles in the Pick-Up of the Year awards – but, while SsangYong certainly does still trade on offering lots of kit and a huge warranty for less money than the rest, the Korean giant has been moving the vehicle ever upwards.

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The latest step in the Musso’s seemingly never-ending evolution sees its 2.2-litre diesel engine revised to achieve greater output while using less fuel.

The e-XDi220 unit now produces 202bhp at 3800rpm and 325lbf.ft from 1600-2600rpm. These are increases of 12% and 5% respectively, and fuel economy has been improved by 7% across the range.

What the latter means in figures you can do something with is a combined figure of 33.8mpg for vehicles fitted with a manual box. Upgrade to the sixspeed auto option, and this goes down to 31.5mpg.

It’s the auto that’s in the Musso we’re testing here. An Aisin unit, it does its job well, very rarely shifting with anything other than imperceptible smoothness, whether you’re tickling it around in town or punching it up to speed on the motorway. Or, indeed, pushing several tons of water in front of you on your way through a deep water crossing.

The same smoothness is there in the Musso’s general refinement level, too. We remember the days when SsangYongs rode like a trampoline and sounded like a wounded elk, but that’s all changed now. The company called in Pininfarina to tune the vehicle’s NVH, and the Italian specialist didn’t let its fellow Mahindra subsidiary down – there’s very little in the way of cabin noise or drivetrain harshness in any driving scenario, on or off the road.

Similarly, there’s little to criticise in the way it rides. Broken surfaces around town do upset its rear springs at times (they’re coils, as opposed to

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The 2.2-litre diesel engine has been revised and now produces 202bhp and 325lbf.ft while returning 31.5mpg. Saracen models gain new black alloys – complete with lower-profile tyres than the rest of the range, so this might not be the one you’d choose for off-roading.

You’d certainly choose it for carrying rear-seat passengers, though – with its Rexton-derived cabin, the Musso has space here to put the rest of the market to shame the leaves you see on every other pick-up, but they still have to be able to carry a tonne so they’ll never settle completely when unladen) but in the main it feels hefty, planted and positive. It steers well, too, and body control is nice and taut in corners so you can hustle it along without ever feeling like it’s going to go ragged on you.

You wouldn’t choose the Saracen model tested here for a steady diet of off-road work, because it’s on 18” tyres rather than the 17” jobs you get elsewhere in the range, but it still acquits itself very capably even in this chromed-for-the-street form. The suspension works well to keep all four wheels in meaningful contact with the ground and even when one or more lift, you’ve got a barrage of electronics to keep you moving.

For customers looking to put their truck to work, it’s also relevant to note SsangYong’s oft-stated boast that the Musso, uniquely in the pick-up sector, can carry a 1000kg payload and tow aa 3500kg trailer at the same time. A gross train weight of 6750kg sees to this; we’d imagine it wouldn’t feel quite so lively when loaded to the gunwales like this, and its fuel economy would definitely drop, but you won’t get taken off the road by mole from the ministry. This is in auto form, at least; the manual loses a little towing weight and posts a GTW of 6450kg, which is still quite well into monster territory, but if you want every last scrap of capacity you know what you must do.

Doing it will cost you from £23,610 plus VAT on the road. This gets you the base-spec EX, itself no slouch in terms of spec, while the Saracen tested here lists at £30,665 (£37,158 with the dreaded). Definitely not the rock-bottom prices SsangYong used to be known for, but then it’s not making rock-bottom trucks any more. And a 7-year, 150,000mile warranty lobs a good bit of value on top, too.

So does the vehicle’s spec, of course. You get Nappa leather seats, for starters, and they’re heated, ventilated and 8-way power adjustable. Those in the back are heated, too. Further kit includes cruise control, all-round parking sensors, dual-zone climate and a 9.2” media screen running TomTom nav, Android/ CarPlay, Bluetooth and DAB. This also turns into one of the sharpest, highest-definition rear-view cameras in the game.

As this demonstrates, it’s not just kit you get with the Musso – it’s good kit. And even without any of it, this is the most SUV-like pick-up on the market thanks to an interior derived straight from the Rexton. The dash design is that of an SUV, the trim materials are those of an SUV – and the space in the rear seats is

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absolutely that of an SUV. If you want to carry your family in a double-cab, or you regularly carry a crew of big blokes on the way to work, you ignore this truck at your peril.

Yet people do still ignore it, simply because of its funny sounding name.

There are whispers doing the rounds that SsangYong may soon be getting a new title, because the company is, as we speak, in the process of changing hands and its new owners are said to be keen on a change – but for now, parking your Musso next to a Hilux or Ranger is still likely to give you an attack of small man syndrome for that reason alone.

Change comes slowly even when change comes fast, so this latest round of upgrades won’t result in a deluge of new customers – not even with the black grille and alloys that make the Saracen model look meaner than ever.

What it will do, however, is keep on pushing more and more people towards the point where their prejudices are no longer enough to prevent them from seeing what’s staring them in the face.

And with the new-look Musso staring you in the face, you’re definitely dealing with a truck to take seriously. It ticks every box there is to be ticked, then it draws some more boxes and ticks them too. It might still sound like something you order with a side of egg fried rice, but sneer at SsangYong and, more than ever before, the joke’s on you.

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NOT JUST YOUR AVERAGE SWAMP MONSTER The Congaree National Park in South Carolina is a wild land of swamps and forests where, back in the day, European settlers feared to tread. This Land Rover Defender 90 is another kind of European settler in the United States – but having just been remanufactured from scratch by Legacy Overland, it’s not afraid to tread anywhere Words: Graham Scott Pictures: Legacy Overland Background pic: Congaree National Park, by John Manard @ flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0

W

hat’s in a name? You’re a company remaking – reimagining – old time classic 4x4s. You have a project Land Rover Defender 90 in for a major upgrade. As an American company, you’re looking for a name that references the USA as well as the UK. You go for Project Congaree.

That doesn’t mean much to a UK audience, but it’s the name of a national park down in South Carolina. So, great outdoors, national park, USA, boxes ticked. The Urban History Association obviously wasn’t consulted: ‘The history of Columbia, and of South Carolina more generally, would look markedly different if it were not for the existence of the Congaree Swamp, now a National Park. Being a home for

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Native Americans, a place of mystery for Europeans and a refuge for escaped slaves.’

Yup, that’s the vibe we’re looking for.

However, to be fair, the donor vehicle was a bit of swamp monster anyway. Actually, that’s not being fair. We’ve all seen 90s in worse nick than this one. But it was certainly tired. Or, to be precise, it was ‘fatigué’. Or ‘fatiguée’ if you see vehicles as being female. The previous owner was, and there’s no other way to put this, French.

Legacy Overland is based in Connecticut and has a mantra of making vehicles ‘new vintage classic’. That means complete projects, from sourcing the donor vehicle through the entire documented dismantling and rebuilding to a spec and quality that most manufacturers would find

alarming. We’re talking thousands of hours for every vehicle, whether it’s a Toyota Land Cruiser, Land Rover or Range Rover, G-Wagen or whatever, so long as it’s a classic model.

In this particular case the classic model that Legacy sourced was a 1990 Land Rover 200 Tdi – but a hard-top, which may come as a surprise as you look at the finished photos. However, not all of the vehicle was hard, as Monsieur Rouille had made a permanent home in the metalwork, gorging on the steel like Monsieur Creosote on a wafer-thin mint.

On the plus side, from the Americans’ point of view, the French drive on the same ridiculous side of the road as themselves, so that made life considerably easier. So, all they had to do was take

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this tired old 90 apart and rebuild it. To a standard that would have made the original Solihull crew spill their tea and drop their bacon sandwiches, then go on strike because management expected them to pick them back up themselves.

Legacy make much of life in the slow lane, harking back to an analogue past rather than the frenetic digital present. They take their time, thousands of hours of it as we’ve already mentioned, and you get the sense that they do something then stand back and look at it a while, before nodding slowly in satisfaction and possibly readjusting their baseball cap. What’s the hurry?

After all, this old Land Rover had already been kicking around the planet for more than quarter of a century, so what difference did a bit more

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time make? They took the vehicle apart, literally, back to component parts. At this point many of us are hoping for a garage fire or an urgent need to go abroad for a while, but the good ol’ boys at Legacy are made of a sterner gauge of steel.

The engine and five-speed gearbox with transfer case were rebuilt and gained some remarkably bright and cheerful blue paint and silicon hoses as well as the ability to actually work properly and smoothly. Most of the rest of the mechanicals were rebuilt, replaced or repainted.

But of course, however painstaking the rebuild, at this point you’re simply doing a rebuild, albeit slowly and carefully. What owners of a Legacy Land Rover want is a 20th Century vehicle built for the 21st Century.

That’s where the detailing starts to matter.

Every bracket, bolt, fastener, whatever was galvanised. The door hinges are stainless steel. The paint, Pangea green with black highlights, is thick and lustrous. At the front there’s a KBX facelift kit with black mesh, X-mark LED headlights and round LED lamps either side, which are matched by round LED lamps at the rear.

Below those rear lamps is a NAS-style bumper matched by a satin black front bumper with rubber caps. Front and rear are joined by black running steps for when, according to the photos, a woman wants to drive around in a satin evening gown.

She’s obviously never been to Solihull.

Rounding off the outside are some gnarly Cooper Discoverer S/T Maxx tyres on some

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Legacy Overland doesn’t spruce vehicles up – it remanufactures them completely from scratch. Hence a 200Tdi engine which, despite the miles in its block, is probably better than new. The chassis, suspension and axles all look the way they did when they left the factory, too – all the way down to the somewhat surprising retention of drum brakes on the back seriously black alloy Sawtooth 16” rims. Behind them are a pair of disc brakes at the front backed up to a degree by drums on the rear. The tyres are 265/70R16s and ultimately it’s still a standard Tdi 90, so while upgrading to rear discs would be second nature to any off-roader it’s actually not necessary in this case. The spare remains in its original place on the rear door, and inside there’s a wooden Momo steering wheel attached to those front wheels.

All of this is of course jolly fine, but it’s when you sit behind that racy, stylish wheel that it all starts to really come to life, even if under the bonnet there is still just a 200 Tdi. The most obvious difference is the lavish application of tan leather pretty much everywhere, with black chevron inserts. They’re all made for the vehicle but, rest assured, no cows were hurt in the creation of this.

That’s because the interior is full of vegan leather, whatever that is. (Since cows eat grass, doesn’t that make them vegan?) Whatever, there’s a lot of it and the stitching looks top class. It covers pretty much anything that doesn’t moove, including the front bucket seats. They’re Porsche 911 style, with high headrests and substantial side support for when the off-roading gets radical.

Ahead of those seats and ahead of the Momo wheel are Legacy’s own custom-made white dials, adding further to that modern, sporty vibe, while behind them are two foldable benches with lap straps. This is obviously a very different rear to the original, with the soft-top conversion allowing

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all that positive sunshine in that the Americans are apparently so full of. For when that doesn’t suit the mood, there’s a powerful air-conditioning unit to keep the swamp outside.

So far so fairly analogue. But of course a modern classic has to also include some of the latest goodies as we hurtle through what is apparently the 21st Century. Our lady in the silk gown may sometimes be lost but, when she is, she doesn’t just dial up Google Maps or whatever. She gets out a proper paper map from the glovebox. Hmm, but it’s dark so what to do? Ah yes, use the map light, which is mounted on to a telescopic arm.

Obviously such a light would also help when you drop your bag of Parma Violets on the fitted rubber floor mats or when you want to scare someone by underlighting your face as you overdose on sugar having scooped them back up, and you can’t do that with Google Maps so let’s hear it for analogue.

For maximum effect you’d need a decent soundtrack, perhaps Bach’s Toccata and Fugue

or Nessun Dorma at full blast, or some classic Lubricated Goat, and that requires something that can handle some serious bass for when they really pull out the stops. Legacy have obviously thought of that. There’s an 800-watt subwoofer, enough to make any swamp vibrate enough to scare the alligators. A substantial amplifier adds to the sound for the four big Pioneer speakers, in the front doors and in the rear.

There are plenty of other little touches, like Bluetooth and USB ports, showing the attention to detail and the thought that has gone into this ‘modern classic’. This 90 is a long way from the vehicle that rolled off the production line back in 1990. It’s also a long way from home. Made in England, lived in France and now remade in America for a new life in the New World.

Once upon a time it lived in the Bordeaux area of France. It would be a fascinating story to hear about its life and its journeys from one side of the Atlantic to the other. Perhaps that’s another one for the Urban History Association.

4x4 27/09/2022 17:22

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09/11/2021 19:15:17

Show me the way to

T

he moment you start talking about electric vehicles to a group of car fans (any group of car fans, from boy racers to off-roaders and everything else in between), you can be sure the subject will be met with a whole lot

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of negativity. Call it fear, call it wilful, call it narrow-mindedness, call it outright hate… whatever you call it, EVs still come up against a whole lot of resistance.

You may well be feeling it yourself right now. A story about green laning in a Skoda Enyaq iV, seriously? Yes,

seriously. Electric propulsion is not just coming: it’s here. And though it might not yet have wrapped its arms around your own corner of the new car market, it will. The Defender is already a PHEV. The Wrangler is about to follow suit. More and more aftermarket EV conversions for old-

shape Land Rovers are coming on stream. Get used to it.

We haven’t yet had a fully electric hardcore off-roader. It’s only a matter of time, though. But for now, let’s focus on the Enyaq iV. It’s our reigning Electric SUV of the Year.

It’s very, very good. And unlike most

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go ohm

The resistance people still feel towards electric vehicles may be shocking, but when we went green laning in a Skoda Enyaq iV we found it was more positive than terminal.

In fact, this could be a whole new way to conduct yourself upon the surface of the earth…

Words: Olly Sack Pictures: Richard Hair of its kind, it does actually have all-wheel drive. At least it does in the 80x SportLine form driven here.

You’re looking at a 265bhp, 313lbf.ft motor and a 77kWh battery pack, meaning 99mph up top, 6.9 seconds to 62 and a quoted range of 303 miles. You’re also looking

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at a ticket for £46,610, or £50,370 as tested.

A £50,370 Skoda. If you’re old enough, you’ll remember the jokes.

Q: What do you call a fifty grand Skoda? A: The company. And so on.

Obviously, those jokes are about as relevant to modern life as prog

rock is to modern music. And in today’s new car market, fifty large is not actually all that much to pay for an SUV any more. You can spend a whole lot more to get less, at any rate. But the point is that Skoda makes high-quality, cutting-edge vehicles these days. And in the

Enyaq iV 80x, it makes a vehicle that can hack it on the lanes.

Of course, this is not a death-andhell off-roader. We’re not talking about the sort of laning that trashes your paintwork or batters your sills, far less the kind that needs tyres and ground clearance tall enough

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The Red Lion in Stathern hasn’t been turned into expensive houses yet, and if the villagers have their way it won’t be.

There’s a Red Lion Community Group dedicated to saving the 17th Century hostelry – though last time it was actually open was more than half a decade ago, when electric cars were still a novelty

to cope with ruts made by a tractor.

But a week or so before our Enyaq was due in on test, we set out a roadbook in East Leicestershire… and while the lanes were wet and muddy, they weren’t tight, rutted or overly rough. Exactly the sort of trails that make for a few hours’ quiet trundle, whether alone with your thoughts or on a family adventure with a difference. For most people, that’s what green laning is.

So we decided to go back to our roadbook and follow as much of it as possible in our Enyaq iV. There were one or two bits we knew we’d need to skip, to avoid scratching and miss out one deep ford, but by and large we reckoned the vehicle would be up to the challenge.

Obviously, the Enyaq iV is a symbol of the modern age – and

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one which, as we’ve noted above, some people want to resist. We don’t think those people have anything to worry about really, but the opposite may be the case with another symbol of the modern age.

Our roadbook in East Leicestershire starts in the village of Stathern, outside the Red Lion Inn – which closed five years ago and since then has been the subject of a battle between developers wanting to cash in on the site for housing and local residents desperate to save part of their village that had been there since the 17th Century. There’s even a Red Lion Community Group campaigning to rescue it.

The irony is that it’s not even the only pub in the village. But we love the fact that the people of Stathern don’t want to lose it – and we’re also quite partial to the fact that it’s

situated a few yards from the entry point to Toft’s Lane, which climbs a sharp escarpment before flattening out into the sort of firm, wide lane which, at the right time of the year, is a magnet for surface water.

Truth to tell, this is perhaps the toughest lane on the entire route.

The ground gets quite rugged at the top of the climb, needing some very cautious line-planning to prevent it from catching the Enyaq underneath. It rides well over undulating terrain, but obviously there’s only so much ground clearance there and 235/50R20 tyres aren’t ever going to be at home in the rough.

Nonetheless, we’re not far into the roadbook before the Enyaq has shown its appetite for romping through the sort of peaks and troughs you get on a typical

farmland lane. Not jagged crests or sheer-sided holes, but smoothedover ups and downs created by a regular pattern of agricultural use – which had filled up nicely with water in the weeks prior to our visit, something that’s always good for entertainment value.

If you’re used to green laning in a Jimny or a lifted 90, you’ll be used to the feeling of endless pitching that comes with terrain like this. It can be quite fun, but if a short wheelbase gets too much into phase with the crests and troughs you can find yourself being thrown up and down like a rider on a mechanical rodeo. Obviously, you’re no longer really in control of what’s going on by this point – meaning a vehicle with ground clearance to spare can actually be at risk on what should be very simple terrain.

There’s no threat of this kind to the Enyaq iV. Its wheelbase is nice and long, its centre of gravity is nice and low and it flows beautifully over the ground. It feels supple and well controlled. Naturally, going too fast would delete all the fun from the equation in an instant – but if you have any sympathy for your vehicle’s bodywork, that will never become an issue. Drive within the limits of common sense and it’s actually a very steady, very tractable ally on lanes like these.

Of course, you need to know the ground first. Taking a vehicle like this to go exploring would be inviting disaster. That’s why following this roadbook was ideal, not only because we had just set it out but because having recced it so recently in our up-for-anything Isuzu D-Max, not enough time had passed for the ground to change significantly. Of course, there’s always the danger of a lane being trashed by a tractor or forestry wagon, or for the local neds to turn up one night and wreak havoc in their MOT failures, but there’s only so much you can legislate for.

From Toft’s Lane, a long, well surfaced byway leads you across a

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magnificently rich looking landscape of deep red soil and on towards Branston. This is one of those wonderfully bucolic villages full of stone built cottages, a traditional pub and a church with a steeple and a well kept graveyard adjoining the only street; there are many such places, and we shudder to think of how many swinger parties must have gone on behind those immaculately painted front doors and wisteria-clad walls, but each has its own quintessentially olde Englishe charm.

The unsurfaced road from here to Croxton Kerrial is quite charming, too. Not because it leads you past an olde English sewage

works, but because it drops into a gentle valley whose bottom is a magnet for surface water. We’d have thought twice about risking it had the previous week’s recce not shown that it was shallow and firm underneath, but we needn’t have worried – again, the Enyaq sloshed through without a fuss, chucking up a bit of mud for good measure. Obviously, electricity and water don’t mix well, and that’s one reason why the deep ford further on in the roadbook was off limits, but no manufacturer is going to put out an electric 4x4 that’s not very well sealed indeed. With Skoda’s reputation for build quality, we were confident in what we were doing.

Talking of water, Croxton Water Spout is an odd sort of landmark.

Croxton Kerrial is an ancient village with a slightly unfortunate twist, in that the main road running through the middle of it is the A607, so in addition to some quietly rural corners it has an ever-present stream of cars and trucks rumbling through it – and something they all pass, just to the west of the village, is an overhead pipe bringing water from the local spring. Part of a relict irrigation system, this was refurbished in 2003 – though you wouldn’t know to look at it, because since then the steady stream that used to flow from it seems to have dried to an algae-ridden drip. ‘Not

drinking water,’ a sign says urgently, and you’d need to be very thirsty indeed to ignore it.

Just to the east of here, several sections of unsurfaced road make up a section of the Viking Way which used to be popular with green lane users. Sadly, these now have the almost inevitable blanket ban on them; we wouldn’t have gone near them in the Enyaq, as they were pretty rough underneath and potentially scratchy, but it’s never nice to see people having their rights taken away simply for wanting to use them.

Anyway, we pointed the Enyaq south towards Sproxton, another of those wonderfully English villages

Top: The trail from Branston to Croxton Kerrial is wide and well surfaced, though it’s very good at collecting surface water a little downhill from a sewage works. Nice…

The stuff that comes out of Croxton Water Spout isn’t very pleasant either. Part of an ancient irrigation system, it’s fed by a local spring… but not a very active one anymore, it would appear

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(this part of Leicestershire almost rivals the Cotswolds for the colour of its building stone). Sproxton rhymes with Croxton, by the way – though in each case, the ‘XT’ is pronounced like an ’S’.

Elsewhere in this part of the world, Groby is pronounced ‘Grooby.’ But Shoby is just Shoby.

Pity, because we’d have gone out ourselves and built a village next to it called Doby.

There’s a network of lanes south-west of Sproxton which are, mainly, ideal for 4x4s with lower ground clearance, and once again the Enyaq gobbled them up with relish. It splashed through the

shallow little ford in nearby Coston, too, without losing its footing on the slippery surface beneath the water – something we relate with feeling, because first time we ever drove it we were in an Isuzu Trooper whose part-time four-wheel drive led to it going completely sideways here.

Having ploughed through yet more surface water, we followed the bumpy King Street Lane uphill towards Sproxton Thorns then turned left on a byway through Strifts Plantation. This has been completely remade in recent years and is now entirely SUVfriendly, but it used to be a bit of a morass – inevitably, attracting

the aforementioned headbangers who soon rendered it more or less impassable. You can still see deep, vehicle-wide troughs in the woodland adjoining the lane, which has now been blocked off to prevent a repeat, and this is a sobering reminder of how long our impact on the ground can last.

Not something that was lost on us as we glided silently past with the Enyaq’s electric motor taking the strain. Actually, it’s not as quiet as you might expect inside, as there’s plenty of tyre noise from those low-profile 20-inchers when you’re driving off-road, but from a bystander’s perspective you’d hardly

notice it at all. Not that you’d notice a Defender going by with its Tdi engine turning over at barely above tickover, but this is an altogether different kind of quiet. And of course, while you expect to see things like Defenders on the lanes, a bright red electric Skoda is an altogether less common sight.

And we certainly did get a few looks, both around here (we’d been challenged the previous week in our D-Max by a farm worker who, mainly, wanted us to know he knew we were there, but in the Enyaq the same bloke just stared) and further on as we headed towards Burton Lazars on the wonderfully named Lag Lane.

To be honest, this should long ago have been renamed Fly Tippers Lane, because every time we’ve been there there’s been another lot of industrial junk dumped alongside it. Shame, because it’s a lane with beautiful views both east over Melton Mowbray and south over the rolling hills of rural Leicestershire.

Burton Lazars is another village with an odd name, but this one comes from a historical association with the Order of St Lazarus.

The knightly order established a

No, it doesn’t have much in the way of axle articulation. Well, what were you expecting? The Enyaq iV does, in the other hand, deliver good traction in all sorts of grotty, grubby off-road conditions, and we chucked it at no end of water without it ever missing a beat

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leprosy hospital here in the 12th Century, after which Burton became Burton St Lazarus; the natural sulphur spring in the village which attracted the knights also led to the establishment of an 18th Century bath house, but these days you see no evidence of such a storied history – save perhaps from the unsurfaced roads all around it, which would once have carried horse-drawn traffic to and from the mediaeval hospital.

Another little reminder there of how the ancient and the modern are blending so seamlessly in this story of green roads from centuries past and a vehicle brought from the future and into the present day. The Enyaq iV doesn’t have a lot in common with a horse-drawn cart, however – except, of course, that neither of them produces any tailpipe emissions.

And however different they might be, the joy of exploring the lanes and byways of the English countryside is very real, however you do it. Our D-Max made short work of these

lanes the week previously on a diet of diesel: in the Enyaq, more circumspection may have been required but, when push comes to shove, it was every bit as enjoyable.

And rather than filling up at a pump on the way home, we plugged in to a rapid charger at a local supermarket and brimmed its battery while doing our shopping.

You may well have a ‘yeah, but’ reaction to these words, and it may well be justified. You can point out (correctly) that running an old Defender is the ultimate in recycling, or you may wonder what the point is in trying to be gentle on the planet when they’re still digging new coal mines in China and everything we buy seems to be transported around the world on ships burning heavy oil.

Clearly, much has to change about these matters, and whether humankind has the intelligence to save itself from the consequences of its greed-fuelled madness is open to question. But by a strange coincidence, these words are issuing forth from the editorial

fingertips on the day when Britain recorded its first ever 40-degree temperatures – and was there ever as clear a signal that we need to do something about the path we’re on?

For car drivers, the Enyaq is that something. It may not be the final answer to every off-roader’s needs – but every off-roader needs to be saved from what we’re doing to the planet, and it’s at least part of the answer to that.

And, if you love exploring the countryside but don’t always need

to be finding a challenge in it to your sense of off-road machismo, it can provide an answer there, too. Electric vehicles do still come up against a lot of resistance, and few groups resist them more than off-roaders – but the Enyaq made it plain to us that we should have nothing to fear. It did everything we asked of it, and it did it all very well indeed – and for the first time ever, we went green laning without burning a scrap of fossil fuel. It won’t be the last.

Electric vehicles do still come up against a lot of resistance, and few groups resist them more than off-roaders – but the Enyaq made it plain to us that we should have nothing to fear

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ARCHIVE STORIES FROM THE FIRST YEAR OF OVERLANDER 4X4

Argocat + Supacat = Cheshire Cat!

by Brian Hartley

The Argocat (on the right) with its bigger team-mate the Supacat

One of the main assets of any ATVs, its tyres. The Goodyear “Terra” type fitted to the Supacat

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‘All Terrain Vehicle’ is a much abused phrase in my humble opinion. It’s nearly as misunderstood as ‘diff-lock’ when applied to a Range Rover!

To my simple mind, there are four categories of ‘off-road’ vehicles: 4wd cars; cross-country vehicles such as Land Rovers and Jeeps; ATVs, usually with several axles, large tyres or track systems, which are normally very specialised vehicles unsuitable for road work; and ATVs with amphibious capability.

The two vehicles tested here, which were demonstrated by MH Truck Services Ltd, fell into the latter two categories. This gave me the chance to fulfil yet another childhood dream, driving on water!

Supacat MH Truck Distributors are agents for several off-road vehicles including the Mitsubishi 8-wheeled ‘Hill Farmer’, the Crayford Argocat (imported) and the Supacat which is designed and built at Hemyock in Devon. The Supacat, which costs £14,200 as tested, is powered by a Citroen 1300cc flat four, air-cooled engine, driving through a torque converter and 3-speed gearbox. All six wheels are driven and steering is by slewing brakes. There is something intensely satisfying about turning a vehicle in its own length which produces a slightly eccentric desire to go round and round in circles for the sheer hell of it!

The tyres are the vehicle’s greatest asset. Broad Goodyear Terra tyres of 31x15.50-15LT section are fitted and run at a pressure of approximately 6psi, giving exceedingly low ground pressure figures – just right for soft ground or doing minimum damage to grass/crops when passing over.

There is an all welded steel chassis and cab frame with bodywork provided by aluminium panelling, the whole lot weighing in at less than a ton. With its mid-mounted engine, the balance is just about neutral in the unladen condition.

This vehicle has been evaluated by the Parachute Regiment, the Governor of the Falklands and the Civil Aviation Authority. It is also

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Maurice Heather ‘crabbing’ the Argocat along a steep side slope used for a variety of other purposes.

I’m just glad someone told me it wasn’t amphibious before I set off in it, otherwise there could have been a lot of explaining to do!

Argocat Though both ATVs are primarily intended to work for a living, and sold as such, my impression of the Argocat was of a pure ‘fun’ vehicle.

Ever since seeing the Banana Splits careering around in the six-wheel versions I’ve had a soft spot for something that essentially looked such fun to drive.

I wasn’t disappointed! Priced at £4395 as tested here, the eight-wheeled Argocat has a steel chassis, moulded polyethylene body, twin-cylinder Kohler 4-stroke aircooled engine, Goodyear Terra tyres and chain drive. And best of all, it can swim! That is something I have yet to fully master!

Both ‘cats’ can be fitted with rubber tracks over their wheels for extra traction on snow or soft mud. And the Argocat can be fitted with an outboard motor for better amphibious performance than is provided by the paddle action of the tyres.

The list of accessories for both machines is huge in order to equip them for the widest possible range of uses. Crop spraying, pollution control, fire fighting, forestry work, military applications… in fact the real limit to the roles these vehicles can play is provided only by your imagination (or lack of it).

Yorkshire called Lightwater Valley in order to demonstrate the two vehicles’ capabilities. Lightwater Valley is a delightful mixture of park, farm and adventure playground, one of the more popular adventure-type attractions being joyrides up and down the hills in a Mitsubishi “Hill Farmer”. This is just as popular with the adults as it is with the kids!

At the risk of sounding ancient, I must say that there was never anything like that when I was a lad.

(Noah would have enjoyed it too!

Ed). Maurice, quite naturally, made everything look easy, so in a bid to find something tougher we beetled off to the stone quarry.

There was a surprising turn of speed from both models on the road, in the order of 30mph, care having to be exercised with the slewing levers on such a high friction surface. ‘Lightly does it’ was the order of the day!

It would be fair to assume that with eight wheels, all driving, and a very low weight, the Argocat would be unstoppable. This, however, was not the case. Though it will tackle quite impossible-looking hazards such as a large log without turning a hair, a steep bank of loose soil defeated it as all the wheels just paddled the soil backwards like a mole on overtime. A hard surface should cause no problems whatsoever, with a 45-degree slope being decidedly possible.

A real eye opener was the method Maurice used to negotiate the slope sideways by ‘tracking’ the Argocat diagonally across it. Using the slewing levers, he was able to traverse the full width of steep, loose soil banking with an ungainly but effective crab-like movement.

Scared Witless

Like any tracked or multi-axled vehicle, care has to be used when cresting a steep rise. Until the vehicle’s centre of gravity reaches the crest, the front carries on skywards, eventually returning to terra firma with a velocity in direct relation to the speed maintained up the hill.

In the case of a flat landing, the amount of ‘jolt’ is the only factor – but in the case of a razor-back hill or sharp crest, care would have to be taken to ensure that the momentum did not flip the whole lot forward.

The 8-wheeled Argocat did not suffer too badly from this phenomenon but the 6-wheeled Supacat, with its more powerful engine, greater weight and higher centre of gravity, scared me witless on one such hill! I

The simple controls and engine.

Motor cycle twist grip throttle, tillers for steering and braking, key start and lever for reverse gear and low, neutral and forward gear. The air cleaner of the horizontally opposed twin-cylinder Kohler engine can be seen in the bonnet aperture should add that there wasn’t any real danger of going over forward (you would have to be REALLY ham-handed to get that far), but it FELT terrible as you see-sawed up in the air then arched down through perhaps 90 degrees.

Other than their propensity to scare heavy-handed blokes on that particular manoeuvre, both machines gave an impressive feeling of ‘joie de vivre’. Look it up in your old French book, I had to!

From going giddy in 360-degree twirls to breaking the rules of off-

Unstoppable?

Not Quite

Maurice Heather, the owner of MH Truck Services, met me at a beautiful spot near Ripon, North

LOG? What log? A good sense of balance helps

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Like a duck to wter. In reflective mood as we take to the water. Note the forward facing air vents which could cause problems on steeper drops into water. Aldo trhe very hefty “rubbing strip” round the waist road driving by turning sideways along a slope with impressive ease, the Argocat in particular convinced you that it was totally safe and forgiving. However, I would have greatly appreciated somewhere to rest my size nines to brace myself while carrying out these dizzy manoeuvres, other than the square plastic footwell provided.

Deep mud or soft peat were the only conditions I couldn’t try and, to be honest, it is exactly those conditions, plus soft sand, where both these vehicles really come into their own from a working point of view. Particularly in this country where virtually any land, especially in the winter, spends a great deal of its time waterlogged.

The mention of water, of course, brings me to the finale. The duck impersonations. Or should it be DUKW? The Argocat is designed to float with up to six people on board and can propel itself at up to 3mph

with the tyres acting as paddles, steering being effected as on land. I have seen pictures of it in quite rough water, but ideally it is suited to calm stretches.

One of the prime considerations is a fairly level launching point, as too steep an angle of entry could result in water engulfing the engine through the forward facing air intake. However if a suitable launch point cannot be found, there is no real problem – two blokes could simply lift the whole thing and drop it in the water.

Nothing so drastic was needed at Lightwater as there was a gentle shelving bank. The Argocat bobbed

away, all eight wheels thrashing away at the water. A majestic turn, then a call of ‘come in number nine, your time is up’ and it was back out on to dry land again as easy as you please.

The moment of truth came when I asked to look into the chain compartments (I had noted a bilge pump as part of the optional accessories) and there was not a drop of water to

be seen. Particularly pleasing to a poor swimmer.

Both vehicles are very versatile and the huge lists of assorted equipment that can be supplied and fitted proves how adaptable they are. I’m not qualified to comment on their suitability for any particular role other than to say that both do what the makers’ claim for them – and that, in itself, is quite a feat these days.

Our intrepid reporter getting it up, down and sideways all in one go

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A PEAKY BLINDER A wilderness without end, majestic in its scale and awe-inspiring in its rugged beauty. highest peaks is a network of high-level passes including the self-proclaimed highest Words and pictures: Vivek Sharma

M

any places around the world claim to be the toughest, roughest and remotest places you can go in search of adventure. But once you’ve been exploring in the Himalayas, nowhere

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else will ever seem the same again.

That’s why people travel to India from around the world to seek their thrills in the world’s highest mountain range. And it’s not just traditional mountaineers, either. The world’s highest drivable roads are

up here – and whether you get your adrenaline rush on two wheels or four, how could that not appeal?

What vehicle would you choose for an assault on the soaring Khardung La Pass, which sits at an altitude of 18,380 feet? A chunky De-

fender 110, possibly, or the rock-solid certainty of a Land Cruiser?

Maybe, but if you’re from India you know all about Maruti, in particular its legendary Gypsy off-roader.

This is, to all intents and purposes, a Suzuki Samurai. The 1.0-litre

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The Himalayas are best known as a mountaineer’s paradise, but set among the world’s road in the world. It’s a landscape from a dream – and a blinding place to go driving

MG410 was made between 1986 and 1999, laterally in wide-bodied form only, and the MG413, with a 1.3-litre unit, from 1996-2018.

The 1.3 was known as the Gypsy King, so apologies if you’re now got Bamboleo stuck in your head;

4x4 7pp Himalayas.indd 49

it came first with as a carbed unit with a 8-valve head then, from 2000 onwards, as a 16-valve MPI. Even this might not sound like it would have the heft to carry you into the skies, even in a vehicle tipping the scales at barely over a tonne.

But like the Samurai, the Gypsy is famous for its willingness to keep going, and going, and going, even when all the odds are against it.

Not that I was in the Samurai-based model for my expedition to conquer the Khardung La. Fellow

off-roader Micky Singh and I set out aboard an early one, recognisable by its vertically slatted grille, giving us just 970cc and 45bhp to get us to the top.

Here in the extreme north of India, the mountains are huge and the

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As if the threat of altitude sickness wasn’t enough, travelling by car means you get into the mountains way too quickly for your body to be able to acclimatise. Carrying an oxygen bottle is therefore critical – though when it empies itself while bouncing around in the back of your truck, that’s a whole different kind of critical. A second spare wheel is another very good thing to carry, as the author’s vehicle very ably demonstrated when a mighty one on a rock totalled one of its rims. So too is enough jerry cans to get you to wherever the next filling station is located – no small matter when you’re talking about the distance from London to Brussels, in an environment that sends fuel consumption through the roof. As a rule of thumb, a petrol engine can be expected to lose 3bhp of output per 1000 feet above sea level: the Gypsy’s 970cc unit is rated to 45bhp, and Khardung La Top stands above 18,000 feet, so you can do the maths… roads narrow. There are two ways to reach the area: via the ancient spice route, which is now called the Manali-Leh road, or from Kashmir.

The former is treacherous, while the Kashmir-Leh road is more scenic – though it’s likely you’ll run across armed guards along the way.

And sign after sign warns: ‘You are being closely observed by Pakistani soldiers.’ I prefer to be hit by an avalanche than a mortar, so there were no second thoughts about taking the Manali-Leh approach.

7pp Himalayas.indd 50

July to September is monsoon season in the lower Himalayas, a time when the landscape is awash with thousands of small waterfalls and moss-encrusted rocks. As we started our climb (you don’t drive here, you climb, gaining height with every turn of the tyres), we crossed Jalori pass at 12,100ft. It’s one of the steepest passes, taking you up 450m in just seven kilometres.

Soon we touched the banks of the river Beas, a waterway beloved of rafters. That same day, we sur-

mounted the tricky Rohtang Pass, at 4000m, a popular point for tourists who seldom go beyond. It’s the last destination for the monsoons, too, as the clouds can’t cross over its lofty heights.

After Rohtang, it’s like going into a phantom zone. Up to here the roads are good, the weather fine and the mountains lush green. But now greenery started to vanish, sterile peaks rose before us and roads began to disappear, replaced by rutted dirt tracks.

This phantom zone is accessible only for six months; the rest of the year, a thick, white carpet of snow stops any visitors. When winter’s over, the Border Road Organisation repairs the road – not for the tourists and off-roaders, but for the strategic needs of the Indian army.

India’s northern borders are the world’s highest altitude war zone and there is no approach road in winter. Fuel, rations, groceries and weapons must be stockpiled during the six-month window of summer.

27/09/2022 17:06

This was our first day and we were still fresh, relaxed and full of enthusiasm, despite hours of dodging bad drivers on the Indian roads.

After crossing the pass, we stopped at the only petrol station for the next

500km to fill our two jerry cans and top up the 40-litre tank. By now, the sun was sinking in the sky; time to find an overnight stop.

Pitching our tents wasn’t the most attractive option, especially

after we saw the brand new hotel at Keylong. This would be our last chance of a bit of luxury for the next 300 kilometres.

An early start seemed best as we had a long, tough drive ahead

that would take us into the thin air zone. Here, everything happens in slow-motion because of the high altitude – even the valleys are at 9800ft. The body starts, literally, to shrink, a phenomenon technically known as muscle mass reduction.

The first you know of it is when the watch on your wrist beings sliding up and down and your jeans fall to hip level.

In response, the heart actually expands marginally to increase production of red blood cells. Until you’re fully acclimatised, it makes for scary times.

It’s not just people who suffer, either. Oxygen levels dropped to 50%, making even the Gypsy gasp for air. It stalled in the middle of water crossings – and we’re not talking about the simple sort of foot-deep ford you see on a Sunday afternoon in Kent. No, we were driving through

Right: There can be few more evocative sights than that of massed prayer flags fluttering in the wind on a Himalayan mountainside.

The flags are used to bless the surrounding countryside; their colours represent the five elements and five pure lights in Tibetan religion – the sky (blue), air (white), fire (red), water (green) and earth (yellow) Pic: Prayer flags (lots of them) at the Khardung La, by Fulvio Spada @ flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0

Below: The Himalayan landscape is like nothing else. There are other mountain ranges, but nothing matches its sheer scale Pic: Leh, India by shankii @ flickr.com, CC BY-ND 2.0

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4x4 27/09/2022 17:06

water gushing from underneath glaciers… and there was a 1600ft drop on the other side.

With the Gypsy working at about 50% capacity, and our bodies at roughly 75%, the challenge was immense both physically and mentally and there was no margin for error. Climbing at an average speed of little more than 10mph, you can count each stone and rock you pass, let me tell you.

Two hours later, we reached 16,500ft and the third pass of our journey, Baralacha La. Nobody’s around to welcome you at that height: only prayer flags fluttering in the wind and one solitary signboard hint of human habitation.

4x4 7pp Himalayas.indd 53

It’s hard to admire the majestic scenery when your lungs feel like they’re collapsing. Up here, the fear of altitude sickness, which can be fatal if unchecked, is always at the back of your mind.

A few quick puffs on our oxygen cylinder (one of the must-haves on the kit list) gave us enough strength to stick around awhile and admire the snow-covered landscapes and mountains, striped like zebras where dark, rocky outcrops broke through the white blanket.

After Baralacha La, the phantom zone really began to live up to its name. Like a ghost land, there wasn’t a soul for miles and nothing to show anyone had ever been

here. But suddenly, out of nowhere, a shepherd appeared with a bucket asking for water. You can’t help but wonder how nomads manage to live in these harsh conditions – what do they eat?

Plugging on, we reached the cold desert, where a single straight road leads to infinity. You can fly this road if you want – you don’t even have to take any lessons, but then the consequences of any errors of judgement are pretty obvious. Four-wheelers won’t find any speed limits, either. Despite the Border Roads Organisation signs extolling the virtues of safe driving, it seems that no-one minds how fast you go here.

Driving the endless miles and miles of the Morey Plains, which stretch flat as far as the eye can see, eventually we spotted the winding road once more. It climbs up to Tanglang La, the longest and supposedly the second highest (17,500ft) motorable pass in the world. It’s a strength-sapping journey but nothing equals the feeling of achievement.

After the sunset, bone-chilling cold was the norm as the sky filled up with millions of stars. The Milky Way and distant galaxies seemed just an arm’s length away. A serious stargazer could be tempted to spend his whole life watching the sky here.

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We weren’t in any mood for hanging about, though, not in these sorts of temperatures. Besides, we still had to find a place to sleep for the night. So we headed for Leh, an army area.

Thanks to a recommendation from one of our rallying mates, we became guests of one of the army officers there. It was nice to have a solid roof over our heads for a change – never mind that the accommodation was basic, to us it was like luxury.

We had already crossed six passes in our journey, but still we needed to acclimatise before Khardung La – which, though it’s disputed, claims to be the highest motorable pass on the planet. The area is guarded well by the army, and only citizens of Ladakh are allowed to travel here without what’s called an Inner Line Permit.

While ours was being approved, we took the day off from driving to watch the famous Hemis festival.

It’s an event that only takes place every 12 years, so we felt pretty lucky to witness it. Thousands gathered at the monastery, people who had travelled from faraway places in their traditional attire just for this celebration. The place was a photographer’s paradise.

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The following morning, we were ready to drive the Khardung La pass which, at 18,350ft, was at the top of the world.

We had official permission, were fully acclimatised and the Gypsy was behaving for a change. Oxygen would be in short supply once more, and we’d need to refuel every 200 kilometres as our MPG would drop almost off the scale.

At the top, it was windy and snowy, with clouds the only thing above us. Mountains we’d already climbed seemed so much smaller in a view that can only be described as breathtaking. And up here, the air’s so fresh it almost hurts to breathe it.

Perhaps we ignored the dangers of such high altitudes, but only for a moment. Long enough for Micky to get sick, though. Our oxygen cylinder was empty because we stupidly didn’t tighten it enough to prevent the gas escaping as the canister got knocked about during our climb up Khardung La. Luckily for Micky, there was an army camp nearby, and here he was able to receive the necessary medication as we rested in their warm snow huts. After some chocolate and juice, he began to feel better.

Now we just wanted to get lower as soon as possible, so we picked

up some speed, only to hit a rock.

Hard. The reward for our recklessness with a fully loaded Gypsy was a flat tyre and bent rim. Thankfully, a quick tyre change was all that was needed to send us on our way again.

Returning to Leh, we followed the road south which would ultimately lead us home. First, though, after the small matter of a dozen or so hours behind the wheel, we fetched up in Manali. Here, the Chandertal Hotel is a traditional finishing point for expeditions – a place where climbers, mountaineers and adventurers of all

sorts can relax and recharge their batteries after their exertions in the wild mountains of the Himalayas.

And that’s exactly what we did, indulging ourselves after the hardships of life in this most extreme of environments. Our Gypsy looked almost anonymous in the car park, and no-one looking at it could possibly have known what it had just been through. But its efforts had been little short of heroic – our little Maruti had proved that the smallest 4x4s can still have the right stuff to take on the mightiest of mountains!

4x4 27/09/2022 17:06

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4x4

27/09/2022 17:06 01/12/2020 22:37:48

the way they were The publishers of 4x4 magazine recently acquired Custom Car, one of the longest-running motoring titles left in Britain. These days, it’s all about hot rods and drag racing – so when we started leafing through the first few issues from way back in 1970, we were stunned to discover an article from the very early days of green laning.

We’ve republished it here, complete with some language and references we certainly wouldn’t accept nowadays, as a historical record showing how much things have changed over the last fifty years. Some of what the Custom Car team got up to is very much not the way to do it – but as you’ll see, by the end of a rather anarchic couple of days even they had started to learn the lessons we all take for granted today…

N

ow look, it’s five speeds but you don’t need first unless it’s on a one in three.

And you’ve got five in reverse as well, right?’

‘Yes, Bernard. Five in reverse. That will be useful.’

‘And that lever there changes from two to four wheel drive, okay? But not over 20mph on all four, though.’

‘No, Bernard.’

‘Oh, and when you go airborne, back right off before you hit the ground. Else the back axle will fall apart. Right?’

‘Airborne, back off. Right, Bernard.’

Well we’ve turned up at the office in some oddities in our time, but this time we really hit the jackpot. It’s one thing seeing an Austin Champ ad-

56 | NOVEMBER 2022

Champ Laning.indd 56

vertised in Exchange and Mart: it’s quite another to see it in the flesh, or tin as it were.

It’s not just ugly – it is unbelievably ugly, but with that strange elusive charm that nature awards to its less well endowed. And big with it, as the bishop was overheard to mention about the actress. Land Rovers look suave beside it, Jeeps look positively pert, and you could drive a Moke clean underneath it.

You don’t sneak a Champ into the office car park without anyone noticing. Editors of some of the stuffier magazines in the building retracted further into their Burton suits and felt their worst suspicions had been confirmed. Nervous fellow car park users found excuses to move their vehicles to the protection of the local multi-storey.

A few old stagers tottered down to offer helpful

hints dating back to their days in the mob. Like ’when you go airborne,’ etc.

Why a Champ anyway ? Well the idea was that we’d take a weekend off to try and prove or disprove the theory that you really can get away from it all if you try. The theory went something like this. Stay away from the main tourist routes and areas, arm yourselves with good maps, compass and hot coffee and buy yourself a rugged four wheel drive vehicle which could cope with the conditions you might expect if you tried to go where others fear to tread.

We picked an area – Dartmoor – bought 1” and 2.5” maps from the Ordnance Survey and a compass from the local sports shop and borrowed a Champ from our friend Bernard’s Four Wheel Fun Car Emporium in London. Then we piled on to British Rail’s estimable Motorail service at Paddington and slept the way down to Plymouth ready for an early morning start.

The first day was, er, eventful. Most of Plymouth still slept as we noshed our bacon and egg at the caff near the bus station before heading for the hills. By eight o’clock, photographer Roger was taking trendy shots of Champs rising out of the morning sunrise on the edge of the moors.

By nine o’clock it was snowing and by ten o’clock we were stuck halfway up a snowy cart track and cursing Bernard for omitting the authentic WD shovel from the strap provided.

So much for our first excursion off-road – the trouble with 2.5” maps is that they look too easy.

Roads are marked as ’unclassified, unfenced’ and lead to intriguing ruins, Roman remains and the like. What it doesn’t tell you is that some are only used once a year to bring the lambs in.

By eleven o’clock we had broken the two shovels borrowed from the nearest farm four miles away and art-ed Ridgers had been despatched for a tow vehicle. By half past eleven, by jamming rocks under the spinning wheels we had freed

4x4 27/09/2022 17:04

ourselves and were rushing back into Princetown to intercept Trevor and to buy new shovels for the farmer. Met Trevor on the way and tipped tow man 10 bob to go back to his good lady.

Princetown, of course, was fresh out of shovels – s’pose they’d all been shipped into the large grey hotel there hidden in loaves of bread. So it was a dash into Tavistock, a mere nine miles away, before lunchtime closing. By noon we’d been reported to the Princetown fuzz by an irate farmer who was waiting to muck out his muckers but couldn’t on account of a bunch of hooligans had eloped with his two best mucker-outers.

By now, your heroes were licking their wounds with a pint or three of Guinness in the local boozer to the accompaniment of Canned Heat, a heap of ham sarnies and the local thighs which were on display on the bar stool. It was all of three o’clock by the time we confronted our erstwhile samaritan with a new brace of mucker-outers which by some strange quirk weren’t nearly as good as his old ones – until, that is, they had been

4x4 Champ Laning.indd 57

handed over with that charming age-old country ritual, the rustling of the green paper.

So, back to the map and God Speed, or maybe it was God’s Peed since by then it was bucketing down. We found some tiny lanes over and around the hills, an ancient clapper bridge over the River Dart and some open hilltops where we could four-wheel the Champ around the heather without getting in anyone’s way. We saw shaggy ponies, the first lambs of the year, some Roman ruins, an exquisite derelict quarry, now part filled with a lagoon and looking like the Swiss Alps in miniature. And we decided that maybe this was what getting away from it all was all about. We hardly saw another human being, yet we were still no more than 20 miles away from Plymouth.

We learned to live with the 2.5” scale map and

to know that when it said ’minor roads in towns, drives and untarred roads’, they were likely as not a sheep walk through a bog.

Back to Tavistock to find a B&B (well if you think we’re camping out in February…), where the local populace were heard to remark that it was a pity they ever did away with national service, noticing astutely the by-now tousled aura of our King’s Road haircuts and the sheep’s jaw relics tied to the Champ by photographer Roger as a sort of charm to protect him from the further madnesses of the editorial staff.

Then off to wine and dine at the Horn of Plenty, just outside Tavistock at Gulworthy, where proprietress Mrs Stevenson performs culinary miracles translating specialities of the French Languedoc into dishes from local produce. We

NOVEMBER 2022 | 57

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‘Our spinning wheels coated three members of the pushing party with treacly back mud. Then we broke our third shovel in two days, borrowed from a charming lady in the nearby cottage who also undertook to rinse the beauty mud pack off Trevor’s bird Jill who was beginning to wish she’d stayed at home’ reckon to eat around a bit in London but this dinner left us breathless with admiration – try the mackerel pâté, the langouste and sea food en croute, the hare pâté and the local venison. And all for nearly half the price of equivalent standard in London.

Over coffee, someone remembered a poster in Tavistock which promised the delights of a boxing and wrestling evening at the town hall, open to anyone resident within ten miles of the town. And there was still an hour of it left…

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Champ Laning.indd 58

We watched a 6’ 5” farm hand collapse exhausted over the ropes after chasing a 5’ 3” Scots PT instructor round the ring for two rounds, then we got threatened with a good knuckling by the local partisans for our light-hearted support of the same PT instructor who was wrestling in the next bout. Couldn’t understand why they were taking it so seriously – until we saw the size of their knuckles.

Next day, we were away at the crack of 11.30 and by 12 o’clock we had been reported to the

Princetown police. Again. The Ordnance Survey aren’t very good at indicating rights of way. And some ways are wrong ways, especially when they go over the local farmer’s land. So instead we wound our way through the hills around a remote reservoir and confused some Army manoeuvres which were taking place in the shrubbery. And ruined some lovely friendships which were blossoming in the backs of cars up country lanes.

Over a 1.5lb lunchtime pasty and pint, we discovered some intriguing tracks which wound

4x4 27/09/2022 17:04

steeply up and down the narrow valley sides of the Tavy estuary and even crossed it in places by means of fords. We found the first ford – about 150yds wide, beneath a spectacular weir and with the river in spring flood. We inched the Champ into the swirling current in first gear and four wheel drive. Water lapped over the hubs on the upstream side but the Rolls engine beat on so we continued, congratulating ourselves on the fact that a normal car couldn’t have done that.

Over on the other side, we wondered why we had bothered until we found the narrow cart track which climbed rapidly to about 300ft up above the estuary. We needed four wheel drive for this and the view through the trees to the water would have been worth it had we not had to push the thing to the top.

According to the map, revised allegedly in 1961, there was another ford further downstream.

We found the track to it, right along the banks of the estuary, then it got wilder, over grass, through muddy puddles… and just as we were in sight of the remains of the causeway, which must have been impassable for at least 25 years, there was a smelly slurp and we sank to the axles in a thinly

4x4 Champ Laning.indd 59

disguised bog. And in the distance, the tide was turning in the estuary. Four wheel drive failed to budge us an inch, except downwards, and four spinning wheels coated three members of the pushing party with treacly back mud.

Then we broke our third shovel in two days, borrowed from a charming lady in the nearby cottage who also undertook to rinse the beauty mud pack off Trevor’s bird Jill who was beginning to wish she’d stayed at home.

The incoming tide was beginning to lubricate the churning wheels so, cussing Bernard for not having fitted four new tyres and a winch or two, we called out the local tractor to save us from a watery grave. We’d have given him anything he asked but he refused to lift more than a sheet of green from our muddy wallet.

Chastised, we crept back to Plymouth covered in filth and repaired to a Chinese nosher to compare notes before getting on the Motorail home.

We decided primarily that it is possible to get right away providing you follow a few simple rules: 1) equip yourself

well beforehand for all, but all, eventualities; 2) if the going’s getting dicey, get someone to walk on ahead to check that all’s well; 3) if you aren’t sure about rights of way, ask the nearest farmer or check with the local town hall.

But the whole gig was a whole lot of fun – the Champ is an ideal vehicle for this sort of stunt and will take you where a conventional car just couldn’t operate. It’s fairly cheap to buy – about ninety quid upwards – and handles reasonably around town. It’s not cheap to run – about 12mpg the way we used it – but spares are not too much of a problem. The goodly Bernard does a good trade in the London area in the Battersea Bridge Road, with Champs in good running order from £150. Make sure you get the shovel, though.

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ROADBOOK

MID-WALES

Part 1: Britain’s greatest trail paves the way for a set of sensational lanes USING OUR ROADBOOKS 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

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 stay on the main road or continue straight ahead unless we tell you otherwise.

You’ll find a guide to using grid references on the legend of any OS map. Our aim is for you to be able to do the route without maps, whether paper or online, but you should certainly take a set with you.

SAFETY

The notes on thee pages advise you of how suitable the route 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. We do recommend travelling in tandem wherever possible, however. The risk of getting stuck can be greater than it appears – and even the most capable of vehicles can break down miles from anywhere.

RESPONSIBILITY

Irresponsible driving is a big issue 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.

This kind of illegal off-roading is a key reason why green lanes get closed. If you see others doing this, they are NOT your friends. They’re criminals, and you are their victim.

If it’s safe to do so, film them in the act and pass it to the police.

Elsewhere, let common sense and courtesy prevail. Keep your speed down, be ready to pull over for others and show the world that we are decent people just like them.

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.

DO…

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

• Leave gates as you found them • Scrupulously obey all closure and voluntary restraint notices

• 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 Stick absolutely scrupulously to the right of way Always remember that you are an ambassador for all 4x4 drivers

• • • •

DON’T…

• Go in large convoys: instead, split into smaller groups

• Drop litter. Why not carry a bin bag pick up other people’s instead?

• Go back to drive the fun bits, such as mud or fords, again

• Cause a noise nuisance, particularly after dark

• Get riled up if someone challenges you. Be firm but polite, stay calm and don’t let them turn it into a fight

Insurance for your 4X4 64 | NOVEMBER 2022 Call 0800 085 5000 or visit adrianflux.co.uk 14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 62

4x4

Authorised & regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority

27/09/2022 17:01

ROADBOOK The region surrounding Llandrindod Wells is home to many of the very best rights of way anywhere in Britain. The mixture of glorious scenery and splendid isolation makes for an unforgettable experience – and the driving can be pretty memorable too. This route, which explores some long lanes in the mountains and forests surrounding the Elan Valley is the first of two, which can be run on their own or joined together to make a weekend of it. The second will appear in next month’s issue – but this one is pretty epic all on its own!

WARNING ,

This roadbook includes several water crossings which can get extremely deep and fast-flowing. These are a matter for your own judgement – just because it’s in the route doesn’t mean it’ll be safe for you to drive on the day. Your phone will be out of signal, too, for much of the first couple of hours.

As always, it’s essential to stick to the correct right of way. You’ll see evidence in places of where 4x4s have been used as tools with which to vandalise the countryside next to the lanes; if you see others doing this, act as you would if you witnessed a burglary in progress, because that’s the sort of people you’re looking at.

Green laning is a great way of exploring the UK, but many insurance companies don’t cover off-roading and green laning. That’s why our Isuzu – pictured here – is insured by Adrian Flux, a specialist insurance broker that covers off-roading and green laning. Whether you’ve modified your 4x4 or you own a classic 4WD, they can help. Give them a call on 0800 085 5000 for a quote.

4x4 14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 63

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ROUTE GUIDE

is it suitable?

START FINISH HOW LONG? TERRAIN HAZARDS

TYRES

OS MAPS

Pontrhydfendigaid (SN 731 665) Rhayader (SN 972 680) 87.5 miles / 7-8 hours Mountains and forests Very deep water, potentially fast-flowing; isolation; side slopes; axle-twisters; risk of grounding out on rocks; other users Landranger 146 (Lampeter & Llandovery) Landranger 147 (Elan Valley & Builth Wells)

Step

1

0.0 Step

2

0.1

SN 731 665

Start outside the Red Lion Hotel, on the B4343 Bridge Street in Pontrhydfendigaid, which would make a perfect place to stay the night before your laning adventure.

Zero your trip with the hotel to your right and set off heading more or less south

The village shop, which is on the right immediately before the junction, would be the perfect place to stock up as you head out on to the lanes

Strata Florida Abbey

WEATHER LOW BOX SOFT-ROADERS SCRATCHING DRIVING DAMAGE

Step

3

Tall profile necessary, at least an all-terrain tread strongly advised Avoid when foggy or icy. Potentially lethal after heavy rain Essential Totally unsuitable Only on one lane, but it’ll be heavy General off-roading skills and driving discipine required Possible ground clearance issues.

Potential for water damage

Take the rocky track to the left of the main Cat A track

2.25 Step

4

3.05 Step

5

3.15 Step

6 Step 3: The right of way runs alongside a forestry track – not for the last time in the next few miles, you’re literally taking the road less travelled

64 | NOVEMBER 2022

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Caution – there are sharp rock steps to negotiate as you climb the hillside

3.65 4x4 27/09/2022 17:01

Step

7

More rock steps, followed by a long water trough

3.95 Step

8

9

4.15

4x4 14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 65

10 4.45

Join the Cat A track

4.15 Step

Step

Step

11

There’s a couple of huge water troughs after the junction

4.45 Drop off the main track immediately before the gate and into yet another water trough

Step

12

It’s a steep, sharp climb up and over a bigger track – you can’t see ahead over your bonnet to start with

4.75

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Step 13: You’ll find yourself driving along a river bed for a while, followed at the next step (right) by a sharply washed-out erosion gully Step

13

You may find yourself driving along a river bed for a while…

14 5.05

68 | NOVEMBER 2022

14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 66

15

Head through the ford then fork right to stay on the track rather than following the river bed

5.35

5.0 Step

Step

As you pass through a short gully, the track has been washed out into a set of side slopes, first to the left (a big one) and then the right, with a fairly serious axle-twister in between

Step

16

And now you join the stream bed…

5.45

4x4 27/09/2022 17:01

Step

Step 21: The correct line of the right of way goes directly down this rock face into the legendary Strata Florida bomb hole

17 6.05 Step

18 6.25 Step

19

Caution over a short set of rocky steps as you drop down the hill

6.35 Step

20 6.55

4x4 14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 67

Step

21

This is the infamous Bomb Hole.

There’s a route around it to the left, but the correct line of the right of way takes you straight down what feels like a sheer wall of rock…

6.6 Look out for the waymarker as you cross the ford

Step

22

As you approach what looks like a lake, stay on the main track and look for the waymarker posts ahead to guide you towards the correct route

6.65

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Step

23

This is normally the deepest of the many water crossings on this lane. On the day, it was nothing like as high as we’ve seen it, but don’t make any assumptions – approach with extreme caution!

24

27

Where the track skirts the river, stay on dry land

Step

28

6.8

7.35

Step

Step

6.85

7.35

Step

Step

6.95

7.45

25 26 68 | NOVEMBER 2022

14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 68

Caution – there’s a short side slope on bare rock that leads straight into the river. Take it dead slow – and in icy conditions, just say no

7.05

6.75 Step

Step

Caution over a sharp step downwards

29 30 4x4 27/09/2022 17:01

Step

31 8.05 Step

32 8.65

Step 27: Extreme caution here – if you go sideways off this rock ledge, you’ll be lucky not to end up upside-down in the river

Step

Step

9.55

0.5

35

33 Step

34 9.65

4x4 14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 69

ZERO TRIP

Step

36 4.7

Beulah

6

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Step 38: The junction isn’t signed, and you come upon it quite suddenly, but there’s no mistaking it for anything else Step

37 10.3 Step

38 2.05 Step

39 3.4

There’s a fuel station and shop on the left just after this junction

ZERO TRIP

Llanfair-Ym-Muallt Builth Wells A483

The junction is tricky to identify until you’re on it. It’s not long after a road on the left. Turn right across a track running parallel to the road; the track you’re taking can be identified by the ‘Unsuitable for Motors’ sign as you go through the first of about a dozen gates

The track becomes quite washed out for a short spell as you descend, but you can steer clear of the worst of it. After this, a V-gully joins you from the right and you’re driving along a stream bed… then the vegetation on both sides starts to close in and claw at your bodywork

Step

40 3.5 Step

41 3.55 Step

42 3.9 Step

43

Llanwrtyd

4

SN 920 478

Turn left into Glancamddwr Farm

4.3

72 | NOVEMBER 2022

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4x4 27/09/2022 17:01

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32212 (68) 4x4 (full).indd 1

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4x4 AD Spread.indd 30

4x4 27/09/2022 18:04

Step 46: Having made it through Strata Florida in all its glory, you might be forgiven for thinking that would be all your water crossings for the day. But no: and this one is deeper by far than anything else you’ll have waded through today Step

44

Take it easy through the farmyard after the ford – as the sign says, there are animals about

Step

47

4.6

4.95

Step

Step

4.75

8.2

45 Step

46 4.9

48 This ford is a monster – it’s wide, deep and may be fast-moving.

Approach with great caution

Step

49

SN 881 435

Bear right on the Cat A track into Crychan Forest – look out for the ‘Y Mynegbost’ sign a little way beyond the junction

Cross over a bigger track and strike left ahead into the trees. The going immediately gets rougher

9.15

Step 49: You’ve been following Cat A forestry tracks until now, but as the junction opens out in front of you the right of way is a much smaller trail into the woods. It’s actually nothing like as tight as it first appears

4x4 14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 73

NOVEMBER 2022 | 73

27/09/2022 17:02

Step

50

Join a bigger track then immediately carry on ahead as it swings right

9.75 Step

51 10.0

Step

53

ZERO TRIP

13.6 For the first of several times over the next mile or so, the track splits into a set of detours. In each case, you MUST stick to the main right of way – and if you don’t, you can expect to be picked up by the hidden CCTV cameras which monitor the forest

Step

54

There’s a fuel station on the left just before the junction

11.0

Step

Step

11.2

18.8

52

Caution – this is a main road

Newbridge -on-Wye B4358

55 Llysdinam

1

2

Step

56 20.15 Step

57

SN 998 599

20.4 74 | NOVEMBER 2022

14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 74

4x4 27/09/2022 17:02

Step

Step

21.25

6.25

66

58 Step

59

Ignore what your trip says – this is immediately after step 6

60

There are two gates next to each other in front of you. Both look similar at first, but the one on the right is just a field entrance

21.55 Step

61

67 6.55

21.25 Step

Step

Step

68 8.3 Step

ZERO TRIP

69

23.1

10.45

Step

Step

62 1.5

Elan Village 412

10.55 Step

63

71 Elan Village

4

Step

5.15

11.05

64 65 5.75 4x4 14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 75

72 Take care at the junction just after the cattle grid – it might well be your right of way, but it’s not obvious

Dead slow through the farm buildings, then look for the track to the right which goes to the left of the black corrugated iron shed

11.0

Step

Step

SN 901 616

70

Step

1.85

Dyffryn Claerwen Valley

Step

73

Through the gate then follow the track straight ahead

Follow the main track

11.25 NOVEMBER 2022 | 75

27/09/2022 17:02

Step

77

There are several water troughs coming up. Don’t panic – they’re firm-based and no problem to a suitable 4x4

12.45 Step

78 13.05 Step

74

Prepare yourself for a series of rock steps to climb

11.8 Step

75 76 12.35

79 13.15

More rock steps

Step

80 17.65

12.2 Step

Step

Another sharp rock step, this time going down

Step

81

ZERO TRIP

17.75

Aberystwyth Via mountain road

Step

82 3.55 Step

83 7.8 Step

84

Rhayader

5

SN 921 709

This lane is easy to spot, but hard to describe as there are no landmarks at all at the junction

9.05 76 | NOVEMBER 2022

14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 76

4x4 27/09/2022 17:02

Step

85

Follow the red waymarker

86

Stay to the left when the track splits in two

87

Step

90 12.35

11.75 Step

89 12.2

11.65 Step

Step

Follow the red waymarker – the tracks ahead are not rights of way

Step

91

11.9

12.75

Step

Step

12.2

13.1

88

4x4 14pp Roadbook Nov 22.indd 77

92

Rhayader

Carry on ahead at the crossroads with the war memorial in the middle of it, then arrive in the centre of Rhayader for the end of the route. There are plenty of shops and places to eat – and stay, if you’re making a weekend of it by following next month’s roadbook tomorrow. There’s a fuel station up ahead, too

NOVEMBER 2022 | 77

27/09/2022 17:02

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4x4

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Plus: A modern off-roader built for sustainability… and an old-school Suzuki built for giving it death

ON SALE: 4th November Step 40: Tur n left off the main track, embankment dropping dow then plungi n the ng straight into a water trough (right) are sharp rock Step Caution – there you climb the

71 34

Step

Step

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13.1

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47

Caution over a steps as you short set of rocky drop down the hill

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88 | JAN UARY 2020

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4x4 Newsagent This magazine is available to your wholesaler through Comag Magazine Marketing, Tavistock Rd, West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 7QE. Tel: 01895 444055 Fax: 01895 433602

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4x4 27/09/2022 18:39

www.osram.co.uk/ledriving-lights

Light is Adventure OSRAM LEDriving® Working and Driving Lights The OSRAM range of intense LED lights are built to step up to the challenge when the going gets tough. Leave the tarmac behind and see clearly what lies ahead of you off the beat track. The LEDriving ® range of robust and stylish spotlights, reversing lights and lightbars can improve near- and far-field vision whilst enhancing driving performance, even under the most extreme conditions.

Don’t let the darkness spoil your next adventure.

For more information visit: www.osram.co.uk/ledriving-lights or email: automotive@osram.co.uk

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SMARTER. STRONGER. SAFER. FIND OUT MORE AT ISUZU.CO.UK All fuel consumption and emission values are based on the new WLTP (Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicle Test Procedure) test cycle which uses real-world driving data. Official fuel economy for the standard Isuzu D-Max range in MPG (l/100km): Low 25.1 – 27.6 (10.2 – 11.2). Mid 31.4 – 36.4 (7.8 – 9.0). High 36.0 – 39.4 (7.2 – 7.8). Extra-High 29.0 – 30.8 (9.2 – 9.7). Combined 30.7 – 33.6 (8.4 – 9.2). CO2 emissions 220 – 241g/km.

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