Overlander 4x4 April 2025

DRIVEN SUBARU FORESTER: All-new version of Subaru’s legendary crossover

ZOMBIES BEWARE

MEGA CRUISER

Arctic Trucks puts 37x12.50R17 tyres under the latest version of the Toyota Land Cruiser to create a rugged 4x4 like no other

BALLS TO HITLER

Heritage Leather Rim Steering Wheel

Product Code: HER-WH-04

6061 Billet Aluminium

Black Leather Rim

Black Anodised Body 48 & 36 Spine Boss’s Kits

Heritage Wood Rim Steering Wheel

Product Code: HER-WH-01

6061 Billet Aluminium

Beech Wood Rim

+P&P

(Including Boss Kit)

Heritage 1948 is dedicated to producing a range of outstanding quality canvas hoods for Series Land Rovers. Unlike some of our competitors, all of our Land Rover hoods are handmade in our Somerset factory from superior quality ‘Moorland’ canvas

Bikini Hoods o er a stylish alternative to the full hood providing protection from the elements whilst o ering an almost open top driving experience. The Bikini hood can be removed and put on in under a minute, a fuss free alternative so you can enjoy driving your Land Rover ‘Hood Free’ but still having the reassurance of adequate protection from showers and sun.

Our handmade hoods are inherently more accurate than machine produced counterparts allowing for an enhanced t and exceptional quality control.

Heritage 1948 has taken great care to ensure all our Land Rover hoods have an enhanced life span and are all nished with period correct solid brass ttings.

Mirror nished Body

48 & 36 Spine Boss’s Kits

+P&P

(Including Boss Kit)

Heritage 1948 supply a Superior Quality Range of British Made Hood Sticks Sets and Component Parts to t many variations of Land Rover Hoods.

Hood Stick

Shown: Superior Quality Hood Sticks Made in Somerset

CAMPING ACCESSORIES

TF1722

Whether you’re embarking on an off-road expedition or packing up the kids for a summer camping trip in your Land Rover, having the right gear makes all the difference.

Prepare for your next camping adventure with high-quality, purpose-built gear that ensures a smooth and stress-free experience—wherever the road takes you!

Share Your Adventure With Us!

We love seeing Terrafirma-equipped vehicles in action! Send us pictures of your off-road adventures, camping set-ups, and expedition builds for a chance to have your vehicle featured in the next Terrafirma Catalogue.

TF1720

TF1730

TF1722

TF1740 & TF1741

AWNINGS TERRAFIRMA AWNINGS

AWNING EXTENSIONS & ACCESSORIES AVAILABLE

TF1704 Terrafirma Terradactyl Awning 2.5m / 270 degrees

TF1714 Terrafirma Terradactyl Awning 2.0m / 270 degrees

TF1700 Terrafirma Expedition Awning 2.5 x 2.1m

TF1701 Terrafirma Expedition Awning 2.0 x 2.1m

TF1702 Terrafirma Expedition Awning 1.4 x 2.1m

TF1703 Terrafirma Expedition Awning 1.2 x 2.1m

TF1707 Terrafirma Hard Case LED Awning 2.5 x 2.5m

TF1708 Terrafirma Hard Case LED Awning 2.0 x 2.0m

TF1731 Terrafirma LED Shower Awning 1.0 x 1.0m

- Twist & Lock Legs, sturdy guy ropes

- 400D Ripstop Fabric

- Built in heavy duty PVC coated nylon cover

- Mounts to roof rack or any solid structure

- Integral T Slot Extrusion Panel

Expedition Awning

Terradactyl Awning

> Expedition Power Solutions

> Awnings & Accessories

> Expedition Essentials

> Much More...

Tel: 01283 742969

Email: enquiries@assignment-media.co.uk

Web: www.totaloffroad.co.uk www.4x4i.com

Online Shop: www.toronline.co.uk

Facebook: www.facebook.com/totaloffroad www.facebook.com/4x4Mag

Editor Alan Kidd

Design Ian Denby-Jones

Contributors

Mike Trott, Gary Martin, Olly Sack, Gary Noskill, Dan Fenn, Paul Looe, Tom Alderney, Michael Troup

Photographers

Steve Taylor, Richard Hair, Vic Peel, Harry Hamm

Advertising Sales

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To subscribe to 4x4, or renew a subscription, call 01283 742970. Prices for 12 issues: UK £42 (24 issues £76); Europe Airmail/ROW Surface £54; ROW Airmail £78

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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

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Overlander 4x4 is published by Assignment Media Ltd, PO Box 8632, Burton on Trent DE14 9PR © Assignment Media Ltd, 2025

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4x4 Scene

4 News

A portal-axled extreme off-road SUV from Audi, prices announced for the ultra-cool Hyundai Inster Cross and a new high-performance model at the top of the Skodia Kodiaq range

14 Products

Send your Defender in the right direction with style, and give its side windows a classy upgrade at clearance money

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A team of Jeep owners in America set out to trace the route of the pioneering emigrants who risked everything to open up the Wild West

Driven

16 Subaru Forester

It’s the SUV you buy because you live in the country and four-wheel drive is something you need. And the new model has finally arrived in Britain

22 Jeep Avenger

Jeep’s smallest vehicle was originally launched in all-electric form – and we loved it. But what’s it like with a 1.2-litre petrol engine doing the work?

Vehicles

28 Land Cruiser AT37

Toyota’s new hero is set to become one of the hardest ever 4x4s to get hold of. What better way to flaunt your success than putting it on 37” tyres?

36 Zombie Rover

Take a classic Land Rover, put mad wheelarches on it and fit the engine from a Hummer. You might survive the zombie apocalypse, but would you emerge unscathed from the ALRC National?

42 VW Syncro at 40

Four decades on from the launch of the first Syncro, a look back at the history of Volkswagen’s all-wheel drive commercial vehicles

Adventure

52

Red Ball Express

The race to keep the army supplied as the Allies advanced across Europe after D-Day – a non-stop green lane run on a vast scale

Our 4x4s

62 Isuzu D-Max GO2

Will we succeed in our bid to beat 25mpg?

PORTAL AXLES HELP MAKE AUDI Q6 E-TRON OFFROAD CONCEPT THE REAL THING

You’re probably quite well used to concept vehicles that look like off-road dream machines but turn out to be all mouth and no trousers. Especially when they come from manufacturers whose showroom selection suggests they wouldn’t know off-roading if it hit them in the face. So you might be surprised to learn that the Audi Q6 e-tron offroad concept is no pretender. In fact with portal axles and the ability to climb gradients of up to 45 degrees, you’d dismiss it at your peril.

The portals deliver a very significant increase of 160mm (6.3”) in ride height and a 250mm (9.8”) wider track. They’re also geared down to increase torque at the wheels by 50% – bringing down the

top speed of the Q6 e-tron to 108mph but enabling it to achieve its headline gradient scaling ability.

‘Innovations always begin with asking the right question,’ says Audi. ‘For the Q6 it was: How can we create a highly emotive electric vehicle?

‘The car spawned by this question boasts four portal axles that were developed from scratch and are integrated into the wheel hub assemblies at the front and rear axles. This necessitated partial changes to the suspension links. The

portal axles increase the combined torque at all wheels to 9883lbf.ft, a total increase of 3245lbf.ft. These peak figures are only available in 10-second bursts, but potential in such a huge output is clear.

The torque comes all the way from zero revs per minute, which of course means the vehicle is all-electric. It has two motors which between them deliver a combined power output of 380kW – that’s 510bhp.

The vehicle is based on the current Audi Q6 e-tron, which is the first production model built on the company’s

PPE platform. ‘The Audi Q6 model series not only excels with impressive driving and charging performance but also sets standards in range and efficiency,’ it

says. Nothing specific to off-roading in there, but if they were to put this bad boy into production that would be certain to change – and with Mercedes currently

developing an all-electric little brother for the G-Wagen, it’s a market the German giants clearly want to be part of..

£28,745 STARTING PRICE FOR INSTER

Hyundai’s new all-electric Inster Cross is on sale now, bringing off-road inspired styling back to the small SUV segment. The coolest thing we’ve seen since the old Fiat Panda Cross, this has a 49kWh battery and a max range of 223 miles and costs from £28,745.

You get a strong list of equipment, with all the latest connectivity stuff and a 10.25” media screen to show it off. The vehicle doesn’t want for safety kit, either –though you can also opt for a Tech Pack on top, giving it vehicle-to-load capability by adding a mains plug inside the cabin.

This only adds £500 to the list price, which is impressive – as is the fact that

you can get the Inster Cross in five different colours with no less than four different prices between them. The main thing here is that however generous you are to yourself when speccing one, you’ll barely scrape it into the thirties – great value for an electric vehicle of any kind, especially when it will instantly

become one of the most eye-catching SUVs on the road.

Got a yellow 4x4? Then the Big Yellow

the Big Yellow Car Show advertised in these pages over the last couple of months. It’s on page 26 of this issue, too – and if you’ve got a cool truck in the appropriate colour, the organisers would love to have you along. The 4x4 section of the show, which covers all 4x4s, SUVs, off-roaders and Land Rovers, is being supported by Overlander

It’s not every day you get the chance to attend a show that’s literally like no other. It’s on 5-6 July at the Cheshire Showground, so bring along your yellow . You can find out more, and enter your

DA3856

Heavy-Duty CV Joint Kit

Defender - 1987 - 1993

RTC6862HD CV Joint x 2

DA3858

To fit this CV joint to a late axle you would need to change to early hubs, stub axles and drive flanges.

STC3435S Swivel Housing Grease x 2

DA3919

Heavy-Duty CV Joint Kit

Defender - 1993 - 2016 / Discovery 1 - 1994 - 1998 Range Rover Classic - 1992 onwards

TDJ000010HD CV Joint x 2

STC3435S Swivel Housing Grease x 2

DA3857

Heavy-Duty Axle Shaft Kit - Front

Defender - 1994 - 2016 / Discovery 1 - 1994 - 1998

Range Rover Classic - 1992 -1994

TDC000020HD Axle Shaft - right hand side x 1

TDC000030HD Axle Shaft - left hand side x 1

STC3435S Swivel Housing Grease x 2

XS Heavy-Duty CV Joints & Half Shafts

The combination of intense tyre patterns, increased engine power, and axle di erential locks, not to mention the healthy dose of competitive spirit often leads to wear and tear of standard driveline components. Upgrade today to robust shafts and CV joints to help tackle challenging terrain and outperforming the competition.

Due to limitations in space with standard axles, simply increasing the size of half shafts and CV joints is not always possible.

TDC000020HD

XS Heavy-Duty CV Joints & Half Shafts

Heavy-Duty Axle Shaft Kit - Rear

Defender 110 & 130 - 1994 - 2002

FTC1724HD Axle Shaft - right hand side x 1

FTC1725HD Axle Shaft - left hand side x 1

DA3859

Heavy-Duty Axle Shaft Kit - Rear

Defender 90 - 2004 - 2016

Can be fitted to 1994 - 2004 models if outer drive flanges are changed to later type.

Defender 110 & 130 - 2002 - 2016

Can be fitted to Discovery 1 - 1994 - 1998 & Range Rover Classic - 1992 - 1994 if outer drive flanges are changed to late Defender type.

TOB500020HD Axle Shaft - right hand side x 1

TOB500030HD Axle Shaft - left hand side x 1

RTC6862HD

Heavy-Duty CV Joint

Defender - 1987 - 1993

To fit this CV joint to a late axle you would need to change to early hubs, stub axles and drive flanges.

TDJ000010HD | Heavy-Duty CV Joint

Defender - 1993 - 2016 / Discovery 1 - 1994 - 1998 Range Rover Classic - 1992 onwards

As a result, the focus shifts to enhancing material specifications and advanced heat treatment processes to ensure resilience and performance.

Both front and rear half shafts are constructed from steel alloy with a high percentage of nickel - chromoly - molybdenum specifically SAE4340. After passing through a 3-stage heat treatment process, these components acquire the necessary properties to withstand o -roading adventures whilst minimising stress on other driveline elements including di erentials and transfer boxes.

CV Joints are one of the most critical components in the entire drivetrain. Machined from SAE4340 chromoly material, they have enhanced toughness and resistance to shock loads and are designed to complement the heavy-duty shafts. Ensuring optimal performance, developed to incorporate 30mm centre with 23 splines.

Britpart XS heavy-duty shafts and CV joints serve as direct replacements for original components, allowing drivers to upgrade individual or multiple driveline parts.

All heavy-duty shafts are compatible with 24 splines di erentials.

Backed by a 5 year limited warranty, subject to authorisation and a maximum tyre diameter of 35’’ these HD half shafts and CV Joints o er peace of mind to all o -road enthusiasts.

TOB500020HD

TOB500030HD

Britpart XS heavy-duty shafts and CV joints serve as direct replacements for original components

DA3856

DA3857

DA3858

BOOK REVIEW

Three Men in a Land Rover

Chris Wall, Mike Palmer, Waxy Wainwright | Published by Porter Press, £35.00

In September 1969, Chris Wall, Mike Palmer and Andrew ‘Waxy’ Wainwright set out aboard a 109” Series IIA HardTop in a bid to explore far-off lands. Over the course of nine months, they went on to cover some 40,000 miles, visiting 40 countries along the way.

Called UNAtrek, the expedition was supported by the United Nations Association and helped spread knowledge of work the UN was doing at the time through agencies such as UNICEF. Within the team, Palmer was a youthful journalist and Wall a graphic designer with a talent for photography – skills which allowed them to record the story of their travels in unusual depth.

That story is told in Three Men in a Land Rover, a 208-page hardback book by Porter Press International whose 270-plus images include bountiful photographs as well as assorted memorabilia – tickets, telegrams, hard-written diary entries, local banknotes and press cuttings from articles published about the trio and their experiences.

There are letters from sponsors, too. While this was very much an independently conceived undertaking aboard an ex-utility Land Rover prepared by a local garage, the vehicle was heavily signwritten in support of the many businesses which lent a hand in getting it off the ground.

Authored by all three of the team, Three Men in a Land Rover is an affectionate memoir of what started as an attempt to set a record for the longest land journey of all time. Jointly created from their daily diaries and the articles they wrote at the time for a curious audience back home, it is more than just an exercise in sentiment – it is, they stress in their preface, ‘as accurate an account as possible.’

Their story is at times heart-warming, at times hair-raising. Along the way, they were held at gunpoint, accused of spying and arrested on suspicion of murder.

As always, any tale of an expedition undertaken more than half a century ago must come with the caveat that it wouldn’t be possible now. The team’s original plan was to travel east through the USSR, as it then was, via what’s now Ukraine. They ultimately changed tack and travelled through Turkey instead, however something else that wouldn’t be possible now was to skirt the shores of the Aral Sea. Its loss, which had just started to happen in 1969, was an environmental calamity at a time when the environment was barely understood.

Instead, the trio endured a torrid night under a hail of stones in a mountain village on the Iranian border, where they found themselves nearly stranded by difficulties with the Land Rover’s distributor. Whether helping themselves to some apples and a hapless chicken that wandered into their camp had anything to do with it is unclear…

These are the kind of memories that makes this book so engrossing. Chris and Mike tell the story of an exhausting stint across the desert north of Afghanistan in which they somehow managed to leave Waxy behind at a toilet stop. He caught up later after hitching a ride with an Uzbek trucker who, while certainly a lifesaver, kept trying to grope him.

As always with publications of this nature, the pictures are lavish and given generous space. It’s not unheard of for coffee-table books to be strong on illustrations and painfully weak on content, however this is, if anything, the opposite. The photos are good, sometimes great but

the story woven among them is superb – gently told, reflective and warm in its tone, with a sense of wonder on the authors’ part at what they were lucky enough to do at the start of their adult lives. The emotion of seeing the White Cliffs from their ferry home as it approaches Dover is tangible in their words. If, to you, a coffee table book is a thing to impress your visitors, there are probably more obvious ways of doing it than with Three Men in a Land Rover. However if you want a story you will struggle to put down, however, and which happens to be presented in a generously illustrated hardback style, it cannot be recommended highly enough.

Rights of Way

Green Lane Association joins the pros at IPROW summit on Managing Off Road Activities

THE INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC RIGHTS OF WAY recently held a ‘Regional Development Day on Managing Off Road Activities.’ This rang alarm bells within the Green Lane Association (GLASS); the term ‘off road’ is often used incorrectly (on purpose in some cases), encouraging people to view responsible rights of way use as being no different to illegal offroading on private or public land.

Within GLASS, it was felt that the association should seek the opportunity to be represented. While fighting battles is one part of defending people’s legal access to public rights of way, building bridges is by far the most effective strategy. With the help of a friend, Wiltshire rep John Lipiatt was offered an invitation to attend from the Defence Infrastructire Organisation (DIO), which was hosting the event at the MOD’s Westdown Camp premises.

‘Although grateful for the invite,’ reports John in the June issue of GLASS’ Green Lanes Bulletin, ‘I must admit to feeling a little trepidatious at the thought of being the only user representative among officers from nine Local Authorities. But they were all friendly and I think it fair to say that they were as surprised to see me as I was to be there.

‘The meeting started with an introduction from the Chairman and a welcome from the Senior Public Access and Recreation Advisor for the DIO. There followed a presentation explaining the unique environment of Salisbury Plain, its areas of SSSI and some of the creatures that inhabit it such as the Marsh Fritillary butterfly and the Fairy Shrimp.

‘It was explained the military have to use some areas of the Plain in a preagreed rotation to ensure that their training activities do not cause damage beyond its capacity to naturally recover – much like one of our code of conduct requirements.

‘After a quick question and answer session, we all went out on a field visit. The first location was at the south east corner of Chitterne Down, to a BOAT known as CHIT21 on the definitive map (TrailWise SU0243-03).

‘This lane was diverted by a DMMO some eight years ago. The old route was presented as an example of damage through misuse. From a vantage point on the new route, it could be seen where parallel tracking had taken place and some of those present commented that the ground might not recover within any of our lifetimes.

‘Turning to the new route, there was evidence of minor parallel tracking around what I know to be an easily driven puddle. I made the point that with local knowledge, signage and the use of navigation systems such as TrailWise 2 and Memory Map, one would know that the defined route could be kept to.

‘Many present were trying to confirm their location using mobile phones running mapping that showed them in the middle of nowhere. My being able to locate us accurately seemed of great interest. I also pointed out that with many tracks that were not rights of way, good navigation and signage were key to keeping people where they should be and to that end the Green Lane Association is heavily involved in the voluntary signage group.

‘The second location, more or less central within Chitterne Down, is a BOAT known as CHIT1 on the definitive map (TrailWise SU0243-02), and it was presented as what could be achieved by collaborative working between landowners and the local authority. This is the lane south of Copehill Down (German Village) and is a good example of how a well maintained route is of no interest to the illegal user.

The byway south-west of the ‘German Village’ on Copehill Down (CHIT1 on the definitive map), runs through low-lying ground and used to be very sensitive to wet conditions – meaning it attracted 4x4 drivers looking to play in the mud. The local environment remains as fragile as ever, but the right of way has been repaired since this picture was taken – meaning the wrong sort of 4x4 driver no longer goes there to damage the land. The lane was used as an example of what can be achieved by collaborative working between landowners and the local authority – and of how a well maintained route is of no interest to the illegal user

‘We stood around for a while trying to see Fairy Shrimp in some of the transient puddles, but there were none. Discussion of the use of road planings for lane repair took place, with many approving of their use, liking the fact that the grass soon starts to grow up through the middle. It was lucky that, in the case of this lane, it was just outside of the SSSI area, otherwise it could not have been used.

‘Apparently, road planings must be washed before being used... something which I did not know. Also, newer surfaces do not use tar as the aggregate binder which makes it easier to reuse them.

‘We had a brief demonstration of a Mexe Probe Penetrometer by the Kent rights of way team. This tests the resistance of a surface to penetration, the results of which can be applied using the California Bearing Ratio to calculate the ability of a road to support weight. The discussion was cut short as we had to

return to Westdown Camp for lunch kindly provided by our hosts.

‘The lunch break gave the opportunity for more casual conversation and I was pleased that many knew and thought well of their respective Association reps: Rob (Essex), Jim (Cornwall) and

Charlie (Somerset and BANES) all being mentioned by name.

‘After lunch, there was a presentation by the current commandant for Salisbury Plain Training Area, which was very interesting and carefully prepared. It cited various illegal gatherings, notably with

Parallel tracking occurs when the correct right of way looks daunting and drivers create alternative routes next to it. These quickly become at least as bad, attracting playday-style users – while we were taking these pictures, another group of vehicles arrived and starting looping round to drive each track in turn. This right of way is to the south-east of Chitterne Down (CHIT21); the picture was taken in December around a decade ago, but since then the lane has come under voluntary restraint encouraging drivers to avoid it in the winter months

pictures of a day out organised by a tour company a couple of years ago where 100-plus 4x4s turned up after they lost control of the event due to posting the start/meeting point on social media. Many concerned users, myself included, tried to stop this to no avail.

‘He also had drone footage of illegal use of military driver training areas and recounted stories of vehicles still registered to previous owners, making it difficult to prosecute offenders. The video of a tank crushing a quad bike was shown, having caused him a lot of grief from the public as they did not understand that the vehicle had been abandoned after being broken and held in a compound for the prescribed time while the police tried to identify the true owner, before finally being crushed for effect.

‘He then moved on to explain the issues that the MOD have with all classes of user including dog walkers, who are obviously operating a business and don’t clear up their mess, equestrians in the wrong place, cyclists who ride in wood blocks,

motorcyclists who turn up with van loads of illegal bikes and then don’t stop when requested, and then back to the 4x4’s.

Through all of this, he was very careful to acknowledge the rights of legitimate users and ended by asking what he can do to control things.

‘The Salisbury Plain Rights of Way Volunteer group coordinator then gave a presentation showing the work we have done (the Association are members of this group) over the last 15 years to improve signage and waymarking of the Plain, there now being over 500 posts with approximately 1800 fingers enabling the

public and the military ‘Certainty, Clarity and Consistency’ over access rights.’

The event concluded with an informal discussion of the problems faced by rights of way officers – with many voicing their frustration at measures taken to try and control illegal off road activities with very limited success.

‘I was pleased that this part of the meeting seemed centred on all forms of illegal usage, not just 4x4s,’ reflects John. ‘I hope that my input into the discussions will have reinforced belief that responsible users and user groups can and will help to maintain access for all.’

• Escape Gear

• ...and many more!

• Aluminium canopies

• Roof tents and roof racks

• Off-road fridges and 12v gear

• Drawer systems and slides

• Bumpers, side steps and vehicle protection

• Campsite essentials, tables and chairs

PRODUCTS

Heritage 1948 adds gunmetal option for 15” Culbone steering wheel

£308.50 (wheel only) | www.expedition-equipment.com

Heritage 1948 has introduced a pair of new additions to its collection of Land Rover steering wheels. Called the Dunkery Dusk and Culbone Dusk, these are based on the company’s existing Dunkery and Culbone designs but add a gunmetal grey finish to provide a classy complement to the vehicle’s interior.

‘Experience the perfect blend of heritage and innovation with the Culbone Dusk,’ says the company. ‘Upgrade your Land Rover Defender’s interior with a timeless, functional and stylish gunmetal grey leather steering wheel, crafted to the highest standards.’

The Culbone Dusk is a premium 15-inch hand-stitched leather steering wheel crafted for durability and comfort, with a thick, robust rim to ensure a secure grip whether you’re working it hard off-road or slicking your way around town. It features a black leather rim with precision-stitched black thread, set off against a classic threespoke design with crisp, clean slots.

‘Meticulously designed and built with the craftsmanship synonymous with Heritage 1948, the Culbone Dusk wheel adds a timeless touch to your Defender’s interior,’ says Heritage 1948. ‘Finished in our exclusive Gunmetal Grey, every part of this steering wheel has been carefully selected to elevate your Land Rover’s cabin.’ The wheel has a 9-hole, 101mm PCD boss fitment and is constructed from rigid T6082 aluminium.

On top of all this, the Culbone Dusk is the first steering wheel you can opt to have engraved with the Heritage 1948 logo. Adding a mark of authenticity to highlight the quality for which the company is known, this comes at no extra cost – or if you want something bespoke, it also now offers custom text engraving. This service includes design consultation and proofing to ensure the wheel meets your vision before the engraving work is done.

If you’re buying one of these wheels, Heritage 1948 also recommends pairing it with its own Elite Streamline Boss. Designed and manufactured in Somerset, this compatible with Defenders and pre-Defenders from 1983 to 2016 and is the thinnest it has available, with a boss depth

of just 20mm. The Streamline Boss adds £120 to the price, while the company’s Standard Boss adds £40.

With its ultra-slim design, in Heritage 1948’s own words this boss ‘significantly improves the Defender’s driving position when used with our range of steering wheels.’ It’s available in 36-spline and 48-spline options and can be added to the cart when configuring your wheel.

• £231 (back) | www.rimmerbros.com

MASAI’S PANORAMIC SIDE WINDOWS ARE CURRENTLY ON CLEARANCE AT RIMMER BROS, a company whose range of parts for older Land Rovers is well known. Though these aren’t standard items for the factory look, they’re a very popular way of enhancing a Defender’s looks – as well as adding security, increasing the rigidity of the vehicle’s body and, according to the company itself, improving its resale value.

Masai describes its bonded, tinted side windows as ‘stylish, minimalist and durable.’ Fitting in an aperture of 1057mm x 427mm – Land Rover’s standard size for Defender rear side windows – they can be used as a replacement for factory original windows or when converting a Hard-Top into a leisure van or a form of station wagon.

The windows are made from 4mm toughened safety glass and come treated with a 70% no-light transmission factory prepared privacy tint – which also helps them reflect heat and reduce glare. Masai says they’re leak and draft-proof, too, which is one way of telling them apart from anything original on a Defender.

The windows come as a pair but don’t include Masai’s rear quarter lights. These are of course also available from Rimmer Bros, albeit not currently as part of the same clearance offer.

Cynghordy Llandovery Carmarthenshire, SA20 0NB

Tel: 01550 750274

e-mail: info@cambrianway.com

www.cambrianway.com

Green Lane Holidays in Mid Wales

Family run guest house and self catering cottages with spectacular views, en-suite bedrooms, comfortable lounge bar and excellent home cooked food.

Pressure washer, drying room, map room with local lanes marked, on-site 4x4 course, guides and GPS hire available.

A very popular venue for both individuals and groups of 4x4 enthusiasts

SUBARU FORESTER

What’s the first Subaru that comes to mind? The Outback, possibly, or the Legacy if you’re showing off. The Brat, if you’re trying to be all down with the kids and you don’t need to guess the colour of Charli XCX’s underwear, or the Tribeca if you’re really showing off. The Sumo if what you’re actually showing off is your age, or the SVX if you’re even older and still haven’t got over all the sex you never had in your twenties.

Obviously, cos Colin McRae it’s the Impreza for everyone else. Subaru did a load of research and that’s the model that came out on top. But right behind it was the Forester – and since Subaru is to all intents and purposes an SUV and crossover

specialist these days, that’s very relevant.

The Outback is the one that inherited its DNA from the original Legacy, which had low range and height-adjustable air suspension, so here in the off-road world it might be the first you name – but for a vast number of people to whom off-tarmac driving is just a thing they do every day because of what they do and where they live, the Forester is pretty much a tool of everyday life.

And it’s a good one, too. Subaru is always near the top of those customer satisfaction surveys you see everywhere and its brand retention rate is sky-high. To put it another way, once you own a Subaru you’ll always want to own a Subaru.

And now there’s a new Subaru for you to own, because the sixth-generation Forester is here. It’s been around since 1997, when it started life as a kind of jacked-up Impreza estate, and in that time more than five million of them have found homes.

Around halfway through its life, the Forester morphed from being a crossover into an SUV, and these days Subaru sees vehicles like the Toyota RAV4 as competition. Unlike the earliest couple of models, it’s not available with low range, however an auto box is standard now and the latest version of Subaru’s X-Mode all-terrain traction system is there to help it negotiate a path over rough or slippy ground. As we know of old, Subaru is

incredibly good at making cars that can do things you’d think only a hardcore off-roader could manage.

We’ll have to come to that another time, as the UK launch didn’t include any off-tarmac stuff. But for now, we’ve had a couple of hours aboard a Forester in range-topping Touring form and our first impressions are very much that if you loved it before, you’ll love it again. It’s reassuringly familiar – but also significantly improved in a number of quite tangible ways.

These include a new 11.6” infotainment screen. Of course, there’s always a new infotainment screen. But there’s more. The waistline has been dropped by 1.6cm to provide more direct vision from the cabin,

and Subaru says it worked with medical professionals to develop seats which prevent the lower back movements that cause head sway and fatigue. These are not just details – and you really notice the difference when you climb on board.

A more subtle improvement comes from the new welding techniques which contribute to a three-fold increase in torsional rigidity. This in turn should mean better ride and handling, lower NVH and potentially better crash performance – on the subject of which, every model in the range gets the same high level of safety kit.

Subaru’s EyeSight system has evolved too. It still uses dual cameras to scan ahead but now offers 15 different forms of driver assist, of which five are completely new and seven have been improved over the last generation. Mainly, what you need to know here is that yes, it will whinge at you for going 1mph over the speed limit – but yes, you can flick through a few menus and make it shut up. You need to do this every

time you start up but once you’re used to the process it only takes a few seconds.

Boxer revolution

One thing that hasn’t changed is the engine, which remains a 2.0-litre boxer. Well it has changed, in that there have been updates to the hardware and software alike, but deep down it’s the same engine as before. Which is no bad thing – though under very hard acceleration, the noise from it verges on alarming. It does settle down very nicely once you back off, however – and there’s little else in the way of disturbances, with no more than a gentle swoosh of wind noise from the A-posts and a beautifully composed ride which doesn’t hide bumps but dismisses them with ease. You feel that it’s a vehicle with bigger fish to fry than anything a mere road can throw at it.

Subaru says it has worked on lowering the amount of noise transmitted into the cabin from the vehicle’s body and when you drive the new Forester back to back with the previous model this really shows. It’s not that the old one was in any way rowdy, but the new model clearly does move the game forward. It’s more refined in every sense; maybe at the expense of the sleevesrolled-up ruggedness that’s always been a hallmark of the vehicle’s character, however Subaru insists the actual built-in ruggedness is still there and we look forward to seeing it in action when we take one off-tarmac.

We mentioned the posture-enhancing seats, lower waistline and new media screen above, and all these things go together to make the new Forester feel like a step change for the better. Quite an achievement when the old one already felt so good in every area. The seats in particular are sensational – you feel them around you when you first get on board, with tremendous support all around your lower back, and though our time on board wasn’t enormous we certainly didn’t get any fatigue coming on.

An unhindered view of the world around you does no harm here, and as well as a lower waistline the Forester has smartly shaped A-posts to let you see into corners and a good, big glassed area between the C and D posts to allow an unusually free line of sight over your shoulder. You probably won’t use it much, because a small army of reversing assists will fire up the moment you move the shifter to R, however it lets you check your blind spots properly on dual carriageways – and all adds to the amount of light coming in to the cabin.

This is no bad thing as the seats, dash, door trims and everything else in the cabin is finished in varying shades of grey, most of it dark. Where it’s not grey, mainly it’s black. The overall effect isn’t sombre but it’s not very exciting either, so filling it with as much light as possible helps it feel solid and purposeful, not dull and funereal. The

The rear seats fold closer to flat than it looks here, and the rear aperture is well shaped for loading big, bulky items. There’s not a lot it won’t sensibly take in this configuration – and when the seats are up, there’s still a big enough boot to swallow all the family’s clutter

materials look and feel like good quality stuff and, while there is a small amount of groaning when you prod them, the overall standard of build is as good as we’ve come to expect from Subaru. The switchgear is well laid out, the screen display is crisp and the media system does its thing clearly and quickly. We did find the in-built sat-nav quite annoying, though – time after time, it would tell us we were turning at a junction when it was just a bend in the road.

Space race

There’s plenty of space up front – indeed, this is one of the few vehicles we’ve driven in which we didn’t need to take the front seat as far back as it can go. You’ll fit one six-footer in behind another with neither feeling cramped, though the one in the back will struggle for headroom if you choose the top-of-the-range Touring model with its full length panoramic sunroof.

On that subject, there’s a range of three Foresters to choose from. These are named

Left: The latest version of Subaru’s EyeSight safety system uses three cameras to scan ahead and offers 15 different driver assist functions – five of them new and seven improved over the last generation

Right: Every generation of Forester has had a 2.0-litre boxer engine. This is the latest, with various hardware and software improvements from the previous model

Limited, Field and Touring; they’re priced at £38,995, £40,440 and £42,995 on the road respectively. Each is generously equipped, with the Field adding a wipe-clean theme for vehicles whose owners will put them to work and the Touring taking it in a more luxurious direction.

The Touring model has larger alloys and lower sidewall profiles than the other two. Whether this is the reason for the very slight fussy edge we felt in its suspension at times, we don’t know. As we’ve already said, the Forester drives very smoothly overall, but we felt the occasional fidget on out initial test which we hope won’t be there in the Field and Limited models.

Those 235/50R19s can have done no harm to the Forester’s handling, on the other hand, and on the rare moments when we were able to cut loose it certainly did feel like something with the Impreza in its bloodline. Its steering could perhaps do with a touch more feel on the way into corners but it’s positive, predictable and incredibly

grippy, squatting down and steadfastly refusing to rebound back until you straighten up. It’s not hold-on-tight fast the way turbocharged versions of the Forester used to be but it has the handling to make it a quick cross-country companion.

And of course it promises to have the other kind of cross-country skills, too.

The updated X-Mode programme has two options now, for different kinds of conditions, and even without it Subarus have a level of natural ability that displays the company’s long-standing position as a specialist in making this kind of car.

As we always say, Subaru invented the crossover. And though the Forester no longer really is one, all its know-how has been brought to bear on making it more of an all-rounder than ever. We have no doubt that taking it off-road will confirm our expectations – and that this sixth-generation version of the vehicle will continue to be a standard-bearer for what the company is best at.

JEEP AVENGER 1.2

We like Jeep. We like the vehicles it has been making for decades. We like the way it makes them fun. We like that it’s not pretentious. We like what it does at Moab every Easter. We like the way it has protected the Wrangler and kept it real. Jeep stands for off-roading with a smile on your face.

Of course, in recent times Jeep in Europe has come more to stand for platform-shared Fiat derivatives, entertainingly packaged and, at their best, thoroughly likeable – but very different in nature to the vehicles that made Jeep a legend. The Renegade and Compass are related to the Fiat 500X, and the Avenger points to the future by sharing its DNA with cars from Fiat, Alfa, Peugeot, Vauxhall and DS.

That’s not the end of the world if it’s done well, though. The Renegade and Compass have until recently both been made in Trailhawk form, supplementing their familyfriendly attributes with a level of off-road ability that was more than just a token effort. Jeep know what it must do to make sales, but it also knows what it must do to prevent that from tarnishing its brand.

The Avenger is the biggest ask yet. With so many everyday cars sharing its technology, it has to keep its Jeep-ness intact without really being a Jeep; coming on for two years since we first drove it in all-electric form, a 4x4 PHEV drivetrain has arrived and you can get it with butch looking trim and off-road stickers (stickers, honestly), but there’s still no sign of a Trailhawk version.

If this does happen, it won’t have the drivetrain tested here. The 1.2-litre petrol

There’s little in the Avenger’s cabin that you’d call bad, but rather too much of it is no more than merely adequate. There’s an awful lot of plastic all around you and it doesn’t feel the best, though everything is well screwed together and promises to last. The media system does its job without a fuss and the seats are comfortable enough without being quite as supportive as they might be; their fabric covering is okay, too, but again could be better without too much extra investment. The same could be said of the rubber mat in the fullwidth tray beneath the heating vents – it’s a little grippy, but not enough to prevent things from sliding around and making the tray actually useful. There’s a good big bin at the front of the centre console, however, so you won’t struggle for stowage space

engine is at the bottom of a range which also includes a hybrid option as well as the aforementioned plug-in and full electric versions; it’s mated to a manual gearbox, which is something of a novelty these days, and turns the front wheels only.

Despite this, its drive mode palette includes Mud and Sand options. There’s also a Sport mode, though as far as we could tell all this does is make the dashboard go red. Nonetheless, despite only having 100bhp and 151lbf.ft, the little engine whisks the Avenger around quite briskly. You don’t need to thrash it (which is good, because

doing so provokes an anaemic whine rather than any nice rasps or bellows), but you do need to work the gearbox to keep the turbocharger on song; do that and it will shift you around on a steady wave of torque.

Generally nimble

This makes for a relaxing time around town, which is aided by a nice, precise steering set-up and the generally nimble dynamics of a small vehicle. If only it rode as well as it handles; it only ever settles on completely smooth roads and on rough or pot-holed ones it’s harsh, bumpy and noisy.

The boot is bigger than you might expect in a vehicle whose platform is also that of, among others, the Vauxhall Corsa. It gets bigger still with the rear seats down, even if they don’t lie flat – we got a full photography rig, a big stepladder and an off-to-university house move on board together. Knee room in the rear seats is really short, however – no way is one tall adult fitting in behind another, and even a medium sized child will struggle to fit with the front seat far enough back for a six-foot driver

The same goes for the open road, where it handles well enough to be enjoyable. Again, though, it’ll find any imperfections in the road surface and let you know all about them, jogging you around in your seat amid a seemingly constant chatter of vibrations coming up through the floor. The gearbox is lovely and precise, and it stays flat in corners, but road refinement lets it down. In particular, we were taken by how much less we enjoyed the petrol model compared to the EV we drove a couple of summers back. Something else we didn’t enjoy as much as we expected was the cabin. It’s not

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offensive to look at but the plastics feel cheap and there’s an awful lot of them. Everything does get the job done but all too often it’s merely adequate rather than being at all pleasing.

The seats are a case in point, with support that’s fine for what it is and fabrics that feel neither lavish nor terrible. Better lumbar support and upholstery that feels like it was made to last would add to the build cost, of course, but to us a few little touches like that would go a long way to making it feel like the customer matters. This isn’t the entry-level Avenger we’re testing here, either.

There’s little to suggest it’s not put together properly, however, with no major creaks or groans from the facia and a rock solid centre console. The latter contains a huge stowage bin and a cubby box box that’s adequate (that word again) as are the door pockets. In lieu of a glovebox, there’s a big tray running all the way from the steering column to the passenger’s door; this has a lift-out pad which is rubberised enough to be a little grippy but not to prevent most of the things you might put in it from flying away the moment you go round a corner.

The views out over the bonnet, through both side windows and over your shoulder are all fine, and there’s a reversing camera to help you if you need it. Head and elbow room are adequate too, though legroom is very limited if you want to carry passengers

in the back – to fit a six-foot passenger in the back, however uncomfortably, the seat in front has to be so far forward that a similarly sized driver simply wouldn’t be able to operate. Our notes even refer to it as being more like a 2+2 than a four-seater – harsh, perhaps, but this is the first vehicle we’ve ever had on test in which the editor’s 12-year-old son couldn’t even fit in the seat behind him.

Usefully big

There’s a better size of boot than we were expecting with the seats up, however, and they drop down to leave something of a slope but, inarguably, a usefully big space. We managed to get a full set of camera gear, a four-way stepladder and an entire university-here-she-comes mission on board at the same time, which says something about the amount of room available.

Thus there’s very little about the Avenger that’s actively bad – we just wish there was more to get excited about. A few little touches of surprise and delight would transform the experience inside, and even if the vehicle’s structure can’t be refined we’re sure its suspension could be. As it stands, it seemed to us that more effort has gone into keeping a lid on costs than in making a vehicle which appeals to people.

All the same, we were still thunderstruck to have this impression confirmed when we looked under the Avenger’s bonnet and

found that it hadn’t been painted. There was overspray on the shock towers and the sides of the engine bay, along with the chassis rails, were visibly still body-in-white. It’s not the first new vehicle we’ve seen that’s been painted down to a budget rather than up to a standard, but for a brand like Jeep it does leave a sour taste in the mouth. If we were to buy a car then discover it hadn’t been painted properly, we’d be taking it back to the dealer (expecting to have some small print waved in our faces, naturally).

That’s the kind of experience that turns people against a brand, and doing it to precious customers for the sake of a few saved euros in the cost of building a £27,600 vehicle seems unbelievably short-sighted. If the above happened to us, any ambition to own a Wrangler or Grand Cherokee in the future would immediately switch to another manufacturer instead.

We therefore question whether the Avenger as we have it here is doing Jeep any favours. Simply not being bad doesn’t make it good. We certainly think it’s better as an EV than with the petrol engine – and even without a Trailhawk model, it’s the 4xe plug-in hybrid that would appeal most. Over and above that, though, Jeep has always stood for ruggedness, fitness for purpose and good, honest value. This Avenger may not be expensive – but there are other SUVs at a similar price which, on this showing, give it something of a bloody nose.

AS ICE COOL

Arctic Trucks’ AT37 version of the new Toyota Land Cruiser will appeal to pose-truck punters –but what they’ll get is a vehicle with seriously good engineering at its heart

Words

Getting your hands on the new Toyota Land Cruiser is easier said than done. Much easier, what with the initial UK supply already having been gobbled up. Those that do exist for sale all seem to have been ordered by the trade and put up for some cheerfully offensive amount more than list price.

The upside of this is that if you

The upside of this is that if you do somehow manage to buy one, you can probably afford to buy more or less anything. Like getting it converted by Arctic Trucks, for example. This is never a cheap process, but if you want cheap stuff you know where to look and it’s not Iceland.

That’s where Arctic Trucks comes from, as you probably know. The company was founded in 1990 as part of the country’s Toyota importer and went on to gain fame for turning Hi-Luxes and Land Cruisers into big beasts capable of rolling over the sort of terrain you get in a world of glaciers. The really big AT44 is an icon (the number refers to the diameter of its tyres) but even the AT32 and AT35 conversions can transform a truck’s presence. In particular in the UK, the latter has appeared for several years as trade

beasts capable of rolling over the sort of

Tom Alderney Pictures Arctic Trucks

a factory approved conversion in the Isuzu D-Max range.

The AT37 has previously been a kind of AT35-plus option for Arctic Trucks, based on the same package but with 37” tyres. This one’s a bit different, however.

Arctic Trucks is a global outfit these days and the Land Cruiser was developed as a collaboration between its Icelandic and UK divisions along with its African distributor CFAO. Interestingly, the company says the vehicle ‘combines Iceland’s deep heritage in off-road vehicle development with worldclass expertise from the UK’s Motorsport Valley, the global centre of motorsport design, development and engineering, and a hub of cutting-edge automotive innovation.’

As this suggests, the Land Cruiser has been created with an eye to more than just extreme off-road and expedition users. It’s a ‘completely re-engineered yet perfectly daily drivable high-mobility vehicle that commands attention wherever it goes.’ In other words, it’s cool.

All about the look

That’s not to be sceptical. We know from conversations with senior executives at Isuzu that people who buy the D-Max AT35 tend to have it as a street machine – it’s all about the look. Just as the people who buy

You can decide for yourself whether the 37” BFGoodrich rubber gives the Land Cruiser more presence from the front, the side or the back. Either way, having presence is what it does best – if you want a butch looking SUV, there’s not a lot to beat it

new Astons and Ferraris might want you to think they’re driving gods with stellar lap times on the Nurburgring but so long as you notice them at all that’s the main thing, people who buy these trucks might want you to think they head for the Sahara every few months to tackle the dunes. You know the rest.

As always, it doesn’t matter if your Ferrari never gets to own a racetrack; the point is that it can. And it similarly doesn’t matter if your AT37 never sees a desert. It’s been built to do the job and that gives it the credibility it takes to rock its image on the street, exactly the way a similarly rugged looking vehicle thrown together by a mere styling house doesn’t.

Arctic Trucks likes to lift vehicles using a combination of methods and on this one there’s 40mm in the springs and shocks along with body mods to accommodate the bigger rubber – which of course lifts it still further. For reference, the suspension lift is just over 1.5” while the tyres add a bit more than 2” overall.

The suspension is a bespoke two-way adjustable system developed by R53 Suspension. You might not have heard of the Warwick-based company but it’s a Dakar-winning supplier and knows its way around F1 and WRC cars so safe to say the people there know what they’re on about. It built a set-up using large-diameter monotube remote-reservoir shocks with

high-tensile hard chrome steel shafts, matched springs and hydraulic bump stops, which ought to at least retain the vehicle’s stock handling while minimising the effect of those big 37x12.50 R17 tyres on its ride.

These vary from market to market but for most people will mainly be either BFGoodrich KO3 All-Terrains or KM3 Mud-Terrains. In each case they’re mounted on Arctic Trucks’ latest design of own-brand Heritage dual-valve alloys, which promise a greater strength to weight ratio than previous offerings.

Covering the tyres are Arctic Trucks’ familiar wide-body flares. These started life as a necessary part of its vehicles’ specs and in a manner of speaking they still are,

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though these days that’s because most of their customers just want their 4x4s to be taller and wider. Interestingly, the company says the Land Cruiser ‘shares unique design language with (its) extreme expedition vehicles,’ which seems to suggests it doesn’t think this is one, but while it may be positioned as a top-end lifestyle wagon it will still be a Land Cruiser (and then some) if you do want to put it to the test.

Badge baiting

Toyota’s original side steps are replaced by Arctic Trucks’ own units to match the arches, and there’s a huge array of the company’s badging all around the body and interior. You can have fun trying to find them

all if you want, but safe to say it won’t be a five-minute job.

‘Developing this project in the heart of Motorsport Valley has allowed us to have frequent and direct face-to-face communications with multiple suppliers,’ says Arctic Trucks’ International R&D Manager Freyr Þórsson. ‘The resulting hands-on development has generated greatly improved performance.’

The results will be there for all to see when the Land Cruiser AT37 goes on sale around the world in the next few months. Well, they’ll be there for all who can afford a new Land Cruiser to see, at least in countries where you can actually get

one. So that would mean that in Britain they’ll be there for no-one to see, but they will at least be available either as official showroom models or aftermarket conversions in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa.

‘By combining Toyota’s world-renowned engineering excellence with Arctic Trucks’ expertise in creating extreme off-road vehicles, we aim to deliver a next-level driving experience that will redefine performance and durability in challenging African terrains. Together, we are committed to pushing the boundaries of adventure and reliability, ensuring the Land Cruiser Prado

and AT37 edition continues to lead the way in off-road capability.’

So maybe this is a hardcore off-road machine after all? Fact is, nothing with a Land Cruiser badge on it has ever been a soft-roader – and even if the 250-Series ‘Prado’ model isn’t on the same level as a 70-Series Troopie, it’s still cut from the same cloth as a long line of extremely capable vehicles.

Arctic Trucks is very open about the fact that having started off as a hardcore off-road specialist, much of its business now comes from people wanting their

4x4 to look cool. And this Land Cruiser certainly does – but there’s a lot more to it besides. For sure, the vast majority are destined to be pavement princesses, but they’ll be pavement princesses that can go into battle like Queen Boudica if the opportunity arises. All you need to do now is get your hands on one…

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You see plenty of Defenders done up to look like something out of a zombie apocalypse movie. Not so many Series IIIs, though –but in the case of this 109, that’s just the beginning…

NOW APOCALYPSE

As people are forever saying, a Land Rover is a blank canvas. In the case of older ones, they’re a blank canvas which come with a certain duty of care – but since a lot of them have still never been restored, there remains plenty of potential for a project based on something older and more distinctive than the usual 90s and 110s.

Something like this 1963 Series IIA 109” Safari, for example. It’s been restored – but

not taken back to factory original. This description usually applies to vehicles whose patina hasn’t been painted over, but this one has something else instead. What it lacks in patina it makes up for with presence. You know those Spectre-look 110s every hopeful spanner jockey built in the hope of getting a starry-eyed buyer to part with four times what it was worth? Well, they have pictures of this 109 on their bedroom wall.

It looks mental, with custom aluminium wheelarch extensions riveted into place in true boy racer style. They cover a set of 285/75R16 General Grabbers on widened Wolf rims, giving the truck a definite hint of the zombie apocalypse wagon… which isn’t hindered in any way by a twin-height galvanised bumper. This in turn is cunningly placed to hide the gap left by a 2” body lift. This works in tandem with a set of parabolic springs at the back, along with

1-tonne rear springs at the front, to give the vehicle its mighty stance. The axles are both Salisburys, with 3.54:1 diffs to let it pull properly on those tall tyres. Though talking of pulling…

The engine. Get ready. Safe to say it’s not a 2.25 any more.

Look under the bonnet and it’s got more silicone than Pornhub. There are bright blue hoses everywhere, most of them leading to and from a pair of sodding great turbochargers. That’s a description rather than a brand name, just to be clear… though if someone did think of starting a company called Sodding Great Turbochargers, you’d expect them to look like these. They’re Isuzu units, from the company’s celebrated 3.1 TD engine (the one that didn’t blow up, in case you’re wondering), and they’re mated to Land Rover’s own Td5 intercoolers.

The good ol’ Hummer time

And the charge of air, what’s that going into? Only a General Motors 6.5-litre V8, that’s what. It’s the later low-compression version of the engine which is still in production today for use in the Humvee (civvy Hummers are long gone, but Uncle Sam’s are still going strong today and, God forbid, coming soon to a peace-loving nation near you). In its original form, the engine never made more than 215bhp, but with those big spinners chucking air into it and a full twin 3” stainless exhaust purging it out the other end you can safely say it’s doing more

than that. The engine was always more about grunt, and in standard form those 215 horses were backed up by 440lbf.ft of the good stuff, so you’d expect the 109 to be able to pull up trees.

Obviously, what you’d really expect is for it to sit there lashed to said tree until some combination of the gearbox, transfer case, props, diffs and halfshafts went off like a grenade in a tin brazier. Safe to say these items will all put up far more of a fight than the standard ones they replaced, however.

The box is a New Venture 4500 5-speed manual (think Dodge Ram and Chevy Silverado) and it’s paired with a remote 1:1.003 LT230 built to do the job by Ashcroft Transmissions. Both props are doublecardon units, and then those Salisbury axles keep up the theme of sheer brutal strength. Lash it to that tree and put your foot down, and it’ll spin wheels rather than going bang.

The engine is kept cool by a new aluminium radiator with an electric fan pulling air through it. There’s a separate oil

The cabin hasn’t been blinged up to match the body, thankfully. But there’s a carpet shop somewhere with a bit less sitting in its offcuts bin, the doors are trimmed with ali chequer plate and the dash fittings look positively space-age compared to the average Series III, so no way is it standard either. The seats are covered in vinyl (with wool rugs up front) and the roof has the classic Safari vents, all of which helps make it look entertainingly rakish, but there’s little in here to suggest how radical things are elsewhere

General Motors’ 6.5-litre V8 diesel is a bit of a legend in its own lifetime. It’s boosted by a pair of Isuzu Trooper 3.1TD turbos and Land Rover Td5 intercoolers and behind it are a New Venture 4500 5-speed manual box and Ashcroft-built remote 1:1.003 LT230 transfer case. Cooling is by an aluminium radiator and electric fan, as well as a heavily louvred bonnet, and there’s also a separate oil cooler. Air is sucked in through a pair of stainless steel snorkels and a trio of oil-bath air cleaners, and wherever the cooling and induction systems can shift stuff from place to place via blue silicone hoses that’s exactly what they do

cooler, too, and the bonnet is heavily louvred to let more air pass through the engine bay beneath. Oh yes, and it breathes through not one but two stainless steel snorkels whose intake air is routed through a trio of oil-bath air cleaners behind the bumper.

None of this is going to please you if you like your Series trucks to be standard and look original. But everything points to this one having got to the stage where it was a bit of a moot point anyway, because what you’re looking at here is a 109 that’s been

rebuilt on a galvanised chassis. People tend not to do that unless their truck has got to the stage where it’s pretty much hanging, whatever the self-satisfied torrents of answers to every what’s-my-Land-Roverworth post on social media say, so safe to assume no hale and hearty Series IIAs were harmed in the making of this story.

Large donor

Said chassis has the PAS box from a P38 Range Rover bolted to the front end of it. This is turned by the original wheel, but via a custom column. And to keep the list of varied donor trucks turning over, the brakes are from a Stage 1 V8 at one and and a 1-tonne 109 at the other – and the effort required on the pedal is reduced by a Santana servo.

Something that certainly didn’t come from another classic Land Rover are rosejointed throttle linkages, and another is an ATG conversion which allows the big diesel engine to chug away happily on vegetable

Here at FreelanderSpecialist.com, not only will we fix the problem but we will look to determine why the problem occurred and discuss with you how you can avoid it happening again in the future.

Our di erential units are uprated, making them stronger than the originals.

oil. This operates using custom wiring, a heat exchanger and a heated fuel filter, with a rear tank for vegetable oil and separate diesel tank under the driver’s seat. So not only is the vehicle ready to survive the zombie apocalypse, it’s doing its bit with lower CO2 and smog emissions to make sure it doesn’t happen in the first place. (I’m fairly sure there was something about global warming being behind it in The Last Of Us, at least…)

Inside, the 109 has a custom dashboard featuring something very hot rod indeed in the shape of two boost gauges from a Spitfire. The front seats are from a Defender, which makes a huge difference, as does the combination of Smiths heater and headed windscreens. Yes, windscreens plural – although the bulkhead is also from a Defender, it’s been modified to mount the split screens and a dash shelf from a Series truck. It’s also home to a hand throttle, which is no bad thing when you’ve got all that torque waiting to jump the truck out of its skin first time you hit a bump in the trail. The wiper motors, meanwhile, are pre-war variable-speed vacuum jobs with speed adjustment valves.

It’s a wonderfully enigmatic Land Rover, this one. The big tyres and huge arches paint a distinctly shouty picture, and nobody ever put a 6.5-litre engine in anything because they wanted to blend in. That bumper looks handy in a fight and all those exposed rivet heads give it the patchedtogether look of Frankenstein’s monster. An access panel from a Kenyan Air Force F-5 Tiger jet is definitely getting back into hot rod territory, too.

But then there’s the safari roof up top, with the correct vents underneath. And though the bulkhead and dash fittings are non-standard, the interior as a whole paints a familiar picture with vinyl-clad seats and hand-cut domestic carpet lining the floor. Most of all, though, it looks cheerfully over the top. We’re not huge fans of the early IIA and III headlamp combo but with everything else that’s going on they actually look pretty right here.

Is it telling that the 109 is based in London? Maybe, because of course the zombie apocalypse has been going on for a while there now, but there aren’t many green lanes in the city. Plenty of ULEZ cameras, though, not that it’s troubled by any of that.

As the photos show, anyway, it’s no stranger to venturing out beyond the M25 in search of fun – which is of course exactly how any Land Rover should be. It may not be everyone’s idea of how to restore a classic – but it’s living proof that even on an old ‘un, the Blank Canvas spirit is still alive and well.

At the time of writing, the 109 was for sale with an asking price of £23,000. If you’re interested, contact alan.kidd@assignmentmedia.co.uk and we’ll pass it on.

4 x 40

Volkswagen put its first 4x4 van into production 40 years ago. A lot of time has passed since the original Syncro earned its stripes off-road – but now a new era is just beginning

Words Olly Sack Pictures Steve Taylor, Harry Hamm and Volkswagen

Alot happened in 1985. Yeah, it was a long time ago, but… Michael Gorbachov became the Soviet leader. Live Aid took place. The wreck of the Titanic was located, the ozone hole was discovered and Route 66 was officially decommissioned.

It was a year of firsts, too. The first episode of Neighbours was broadcast and the first WrestleMania took place. DNA was first used in a criminal case. Microsoft Windows was unleashed on an unsuspecting world and the internet’s domain name system was created. As was Hezbollah. And in off-roading news, the Volkswagen Transporter became available for the first time with all-wheel drive.

Called the T3 Syncro, the new model was launched in January 1985 at the Brussels Commercial Vehicle Show. It was powered by a 1.9-litre petrol engine, the 78bhp Wasserboxer flat four (Volkswagen had finally given up on air-cooled engines two years previously), mated to a four-speed manual gearbox with an additional ultra-low gear for off-roading. This was marked as “G” for Gelände; hard as it is to believe, Mercedes had already been using the word in the name of its G-Wagen for six years by this point.

The Syncro was made in Graz by 4x4 specialist Steyr-Daimler-Puch, which had played a leading role in developing the vehicle. It was available in a wide range of

Volkswagen originally tested four-wheel drive on its iconic T2. Those first systems were selectable, however; when the T3 Syncro finally went into production, it was with a Steyr-Daimler-Puch transmission using a viscous central coupling

The original T3 gearbox had four forward speeds plus a ‘Gelände’ ratio for off-road work. Locking front and rear diffs were available as an option from early on. Some models gained a rear locker as standard; it was to remain on offer until the end of T6 production. In truth, its short-stroke independent suspension meant the Syncro was very prone to lifting wheels, so the lockers were essential for maintaining progress over uneven ground

Main picture: In 1999, a T4 Multivan Syncro driven by Andreas Renz and Matthias Göttenauer set a new world record of 15 days, 14 hours and 6 minutes for completing the 22,880-kilometre length of the Pan American Highway, battling through storms, civil unrest and natural disasters along the way

The T3 had been introduced in 1979 (the same year as the G-Wagen, coincidentally), initially with rear-wheel drive only. It was designed from scratch with space for a front propshaft and differential to be added, however Volkswagen was unwilling to bring the Syncro to market until its development programme had achieved what it calls ‘the body styles, including the classic pick-up and panel van format as well as in peoplecarrying Caravelle form. ‘From the very beginning,’ says Volkswagen, ‘the T3 was not only intended as a commercial vehicle but also as a vehicle for travelling the world. There was simply no other vehicle that offered the same level of spaciousness.’

desired level of perfection and apparently ever-lasting durability.’

Volkswagen had previously tested a selectable 4x4 system on the older T2 van, however the system developed by Steyr-Daimler-Puch adopted more modern technology by using a silicone oil-filled viscous coupling to keep the front

axle permanently engaged. This was a widespread solution in the days before electronic control took over – four years after the Syncro was launched, for example, no less of an off-road legend than the Range Rover adopted the same technology when the Borg-Warner transfer case replaced Land Rover’s own LT230. Volkswagen’s unit

worked well and, protected by a heavy-duty bash plate, proved extremely robust.

Great adventures

Talking of robustness, the Syncro had longer springs and firmer shocks than the standard T3, lifting its ride height by just under two and a half inches to give it 215mm of

ground clearance at the front, a breakover angle of 24 degrees and a ramp angle of 22 degrees. It was available with optional front and rear locking diffs as well as a rough terrain package – on modern SUVs, the latter can describe a plastic splash guard and some cladding on the lower edges of the doors, but here it included true body reinforcements, a drivetrain vibration damper and heavier-duty driveshafts in the axles. ‘In terms of drive technology,’ says VW, ‘it had reached the level of an off-road vehicle – but with much more space and comfort on board for life’s great adventures.’ Volkswagen still wasn’t content, however, and in 1987 it introduced an even heavier-duty package including 16” wheels, larger brakes, a locking rear diff and extensive chassis and body modifications to the chassis and body as standard. This increased the vehicle’s payload to 1000kg and its ground clearance to 245mm. Despite costing some 50% more than the standard T3, a total of 2138 Syncros were built in this form, ‘becoming companions to adventurers, world travellers, forestry workers and tradespeople.’ This was to be the ultimate version of VW’s original 4x4 truck, and one which helped cement its

reputation as a hugely credible alternative to the off-road leisure wagons that were just starting to gain a foothold in the new car market at the time.

The T3 kept going well into the nineties, but the start of that decade saw a revolutionary new Volkswagen van go on sale. The T4 was front-engined, bringing an end to the rear-engined tradition that had started with the original split-screen T1 in 1950, and from the word go every engine option was water-cooled. The Syncro model came along more quickly this time, too, arriving in 1993 with the viscous coupling now sending power from the front to the rear rather than vice-versa.

If viscous couplings remind you of the original Range Rover, so too might the Pan-American Highway. The Darien Gap expedition has gone down in the annals of that vehicle’s history, but the entire length of the route from Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of the Americas had never been covered as quickly

as it was by a T4 Multivan Syncro in 1999. To this day, the Darien Gap remains the missing link in the highway, with logistical hurdles and, more recently, environmental concerns meaning no road has ever been built through the impenetrable rainforest between Panama and Colombia; using the ferry service that takes vehicles around it, a team of two T4 Syncros completed the 22,880-kilometre journey with one of them posting a record time of 15 days, 14 hours and 6 minutes.

Real challenges

These vehicles were remarkably close to standard, with a larger fuel tank, additional roof-mounted spotlights and plexiglass headlamp protectors the only modifications to factory spec. They faced real challenges along the way, including civil unrest in parts of South America and the aftermath of an earthquake in Mexico. The second vehicle was also caught in severe storms, holding it up for several days – but the leader,

The T4 Syncro from the record-setting run on the Pan American Highway remains in Volkswagen’s collection of historic vehicles today. It was brought out, along with a rare T3 Syncro flatbed, for the Bremen Classic Motorshow in February to mark 40 years of Volkswagen’s 4x4s

driven by Andreas Renz and Matthias Göttenauer, took its place in the Guinness Book of Records.

The record was to be broken again, 12 years later, by a very different kind of Volkswagen – a Touareg 3.0 TDI, whose 225bhp, 406lbf.ft and modern luxuries no doubt helped make the journey pass even more quickly. First launched in 2003, the Touareg was VW’s original SUV; it used the new 4Motion all-wheel drive system, which also came to the T4’s successor, the T5, when it went on sale in 2004.

Unlike the viscous coupling in the older Syncro models, 4Motion used a multi-plate clutch to engage the rear axle if it detected slip in one of the front wheels. Thus in normal conditions, the T5 would be driven only by its front wheels – a fuel-saving measure at a time when this was becoming ever more significant. The Transporter, Caravelle and Multivan were all available in 4Motion form – as was the California, a purpose-built camper van based on the

same platform and sold by Volkswagen as a showroom model.

The 4Motion system was refined further when the T5 range was facelifted in 2010, at the same time as the older Pumpe Düse diesel engines were replaced by commonrail units. Once again, torque distribution was dealt with by a multi-plate clutch, however this time a high-pressure pump maintained an oil reservoir at a constant

30 bar; controlled by the vehicle’s stability control sensors, this could detect the faintest trace of wheelspin and engage the rear axle within a hundredth of a second, meaning all four wheels would be keeping the vehicle moving forward without the driver ever knowing about it. With an optional locking rear diff, the T5 could be completely cross-axled, with two opposite wheels clear of the ground, and still be able to move away under its own power

All change

This technology was carried over when the T6 was introduced in 2015, allowing

the vehicle to tackle virtually any driving scenario with sure-footed confidence. But it was all-change with the arrival of the new generation in 2021, thanks to the arrival of electrified powertrains.

The T7 is much more complex than the vehicles that went before it – both in terms of the engineering and technology involved and the product line-up under which it’s offered. Previously, all models had the same underpinnings, however the Multivan and California are now based on Volkswagen’s own MQB platform whereas the Transporter and Caravelle share their architecture with the Ford Transit. In addition, a third part of the T7 family is the all-electric ID.Buzz, which is available in commerical and people-carrier formats.

What these vehicles do all have in common is that all-wheel drive remains

The California is a purpose-built camper van which was introduced towards the end of T4 production. Built in-house, it replaced the Westfalia model which VW had offered from way back in the days of the T1. During the T5 and T6 era, it was available in the UK with 4Motion all-wheel drive even when the passenger-carrying Caravelle model wasn’t

The fundamental difference between the T3 and later models is visible under the vehicles’ skin. In the T3 (opposite page), the engine is rear-mounted and a viscous coupling keeps the front axle engaged, locking up to provide four-wheel drive tractability when the wheels start to spin. Volkswagen moved the engine to the front with the arrival of the T4, with the viscous coupling now sending drive to the rear wheels. The T5 then refined this set-up by adopting first a multi-plate clutch and then electronic control, each providing a significant improvement in the system’s reaction times

central to what they offer. Launched in the second half of 2024, the Transporter and Caravelle are both available in TDI 4Motion form with an electronically controlled differential engaging their rear wheels when required. At around the same time, the already established Multivan and California ranges gained a new plug-in hybrid all-wheel drive system called eHybrid 4Motion, in which the front axle is engine-

driven and the rear is turned purely by electric power. In the case of the ID.Buzz, this is available in Cargo Pro 4Motion and GTX form, with an additional electric motor meaning drive is delivered to both ends of the vehicle.

This extraordinary level of sophistication and advanced electronic technology seems a far cry from the resolutely mechanical Syncros with which Volkswagen got its

4x4 journey underway. A lot can change in 40 years – though with the company continuing to champion the mobility offered by all-wheel drive, at least some things continue to stay the same. ‘Nothing will stand in the way of a trip in a VW van to the Sahara in 2025,’ the company concludes. ‘These models don’t need roads either…’ A lot happened in 1985 – but not so much of it is still happening today.

Bringing the story up to date, the latest T7 California has a plug-in hybrid system with an electric motor driving the rear wheels. The ID.Buzz GTX, meanwhile, is 100% electric with all-wheel drive coming from two separate motors, one at each axle

BALLS TO HITLER

Keeping the army supplied in the months following D-Day was a vast logistical operation – and possibly the biggest off-road event of all time. This is the story of the Red Ball Express – and the GMC CCKW 353 ‘Jimmy’ whose 6x6 ability kept the war effort alive

Words: Gary Noskill Pictures: Danny Croall, and as credited

An army marches on its stomach,’ said Napoleon Bonaparte. It’s a famous phrase and one which makes a very good point. In the months following D-Day, however, as the allies pushed relentlessly through France and into Germany, their army marched on its Balls.

Red Balls, to be specific. Behind the countless tales of bravery and fortitude on the front line, the hidden heroes of Europe’s liberation were a team of some 12,000 truck drivers who, over the course of three months from late August to mid-November 1944, shouldered the burden of keeping the troops supplied. The Red Ball Express went down in history and was immortalised in film as one of the most spectacular logistics operations there has ever been.

Its name comes from the practice of using red balls to denote priority transport. It was first used on the railroads of the late

A sticky moment on 2 September, Day 9 of the Red Ball Express, on what’s now the D311 between Mamers and Alençon. The line of Jimmys has been brought to a halt while a Federal tractor and its trailer are helped from a ditch. Above, a military policeman appears to be waving at the trucks to slow down as they pass through Alençon, three days later on 5 September

PhotosNormandie@flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0

It’s not on the Red Ball Highway itself, but various CCKW 353s are seen here among early Jeeps and other military vehicles amid the shattered remains of Isigny sur Mer. This was just under a month after D-Day; the freshly liberated French civilians walking next to the American trucks must have wondered if they were in heaven or hell

PhotosNormandie@flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0

19th Century, where trains carrying priority freight were marked with a red ball – as were express lines set aside for their use. By the time WWII came along, the term was in common use.

In an advanced nation like France, getting supplies to an advancing army would normally be a simple enough matter of using the railways. However in the runup to D-Day, allied bombers had pounded the French lines into ruins to prevent German forces from using them to bring in reinforcements. A strategy which certainly worked, and played its part in allowing the liberation to move rapidly, but of course this also meant that after the invasion, those same railways were no longer any use for carrying supplies.

Thus the onus fell on road transport. Or more like off-road transport. Conceived

From left to right:

during a breathless three-day planning session, the Red Ball Express brought together just under 6000 trucks, each with a two-man driving crew, and delivered some 12,500 tons of supplies each day.

The majority of those trucks were GMC CCKW 353s – the instantly recognisable ‘Jimmy’, whose 2.5-ton capacity and ready availability made them ideal for large-scale logistics. Most importantly, they had a full set of driven wheels – six of them, both spreading the load and delivering traction on a massive scale.

This was critical to keeping the convoys moving. Led by General Dwight Eisenhower, the planning team behind the Red Ball Express marked out two main highways leading from Cherbourg (where supplies shipped in across the Channel were brought) to a forward distribution hub in

Chartres, a little way south-west of Paris. Each was closed to all other traffic; the northern route would carry vehicles heading to the front, while that running more or less parallel to the south was to be the return road. This was an efficient way of moving vehicles fast (ten years later, Eisenhower was to base his plans for a nationwide Interstate system on similar principles), but these roads were not made to bear thousands of fast-moving, heavily laden trucks day after day. Before long, parts of them resembled swamps.

Again and again

On the surface, long-distance green laning at speed sounds like a pretty entertaining way to fight a war. But a 400-mile round trip, in trucks with a governed top speed

There’s not a lot of engine bays that can make a 4.4-litre engine look small, but that’s what the Jimmy’s does – aided of course by an almost complete lack of ancillaries.

Steering is charmingly simple, with a crank from the column linked to the nearside front wheel. Thus there’s no need for a vulnerable drag link in front of the axle, and the track rod is mounted safely behind it. As was common on trucks of this age, the springs are damped by lever arm shock absorbers

The 6x6 Jimny didn’t use a through-drive diff on the second axle – instead, the transfer case has two rear axles coming off it. The case is driven by a short prop from the back of the primary gearbox, and a part-time front unit drives engages six-wheel drive when required. The prop for the third axle runs over the top of the second, where a centre bearing allows for situations in which the very rear of the vehicle goes to full droop

of 56mph, makes for a long and tiring day – and tomorrow, you’re doing it again. And the day after that, too, ad nauseam. Luftwaffe raids on Red Ball convoys were not unknown, but by far the biggest problem was sheer exhaustion among the drivers.

Rest days were unknown. The army’s need was constant, and finding enough drivers had been a huge challenge for

Colonel Loren Ayers, the man tasked with making it happen. Any soldiers whose duties were not critical became drivers, as did many military port workers. In the event, around 75% of the drivers were AfricanAmerican; a 1952 film titled The Red Ball Express was edited at the insistence of the Defense Department to paint a picture of racially integrated sweetness and light,

though its director Budd Boetticher later claimed ‘the army wouldn’t let us tell the truth about the black troops because the government figured they were expendable. Our government didn’t want to admit they were kamikaze pilots.’

Whether this was the case, or the Red Ball heroes were simply victims of an institutionally racist that saw non-white servicemen as unfit for combat roles, has been widely debated. However it certainly

The roads in France were good enough for their time, but they were never designed to take 6000 trucks and 12,000 tons of cargo day after day as summer turned to autumn. The Jimmy was extremely tractable with its 6x6 drivetrain but while its narrow tyres were excellent at cutting through surface mud there was little they could do to keep it moving in bottomless conditions like this

is the case that the Red Ball Express put a huge strain on its drivers – and indeed on their trucks. The CCKW 353s’ narrow tyres were ideal for cutting down through a sloppy surface to find grip below, but show them deep mud and they would sink straight

in. Getting them unstuck could easily be more than their drivetrains could cope with, resulting in precious vehicles being lost, and even if they made it through the mud would play havoc with their wheel balance and huge but basic drum brakes.

Nonetheless, the Jimmy had been built with heavy use in mind. Prior to joining the war effort in 1941, the American government had nudged its truck manufacturers in search of proposals for a vehicle that would shoulder the burden of

Both rear axles are connected to common mountings beneath a pair of leaf spring packs and controlled at the top by upper links to the chassis. It’s not entirely like the bogie on a train, but the effect is similar as they follow the ground

A Jimmy’s cabin doesn’t make for the most relaxing place to spend endless hours battering your way through the French countryside while hanging on to the tail of the truck in front and hoping the Luftwaffe doesn’t show up. At least drivers got a great view of the route ahead from their lofty perch in the cab – though if all they could see was a cloud of dust billowing into their face from point-blank range, that’s not ever so helpful. At least it must have been good and noisy in there to keep them alert, though…

supporting the Allies’ fighting machine. It was GMC that won the contract – and the Detroit giant began preparing itself for the mass production that would be necessary.

The first Jimmys were built in 1941, and the factory kept churning them out until the end of the war. The vehicle was still going as strong as ever by the beginning of the next decade when the US went into Korea, and indeed these trucks were still in service with some countries’ armed forces into the 1990s. But that is simply credit to how good this thing was.

Being in close proximity to the front line and out in the field, GMC’s creation needed to be easy to repair and simple to use. Versatility was a must, too – during the course of its service, you could it working as a tipper truck, dental operating van, fire engine, fuel or water tanker, pontoon bolster, chemical decontamination unit, bomb disposal wagon, flat-bed or mobile surgery, plus many more roles besides. It was the Ford Transit of its day… but bigger, and heavier, and a lot more cool. Oh, and with more firepower, thanks to the .50 cal

Browning air-cooled heavy machine gun it was capable of carrying.

Storied and distinctive

These days, the Jimmy is as popular with enthusiasts as you’d expect of such a storied and distinctive machine. The example in our photos is part of what must be one of the definitive collections of its kind – it lives in the museum at Armourgeddon, in Leicestershire, which is open from 10am to 4pm between Wednesday and Sunday from April to October.

As is so often the case, not everything is known about the truck’s history. However it did spend at least part of the war in Britain, where it was used by Air Raid Precaution wardens. It may well have been among the 170,000 vehicles which had been unloaded on the Normandy beaches by the end of June 1944, but being a personnel carrier it’s less likely to have plied the Red Ball route.

As we’ve explained, there were many different uses to which the Jimmy could be put. And there was a great deal of variety in the trucks themselves, too. Hence the lengthy codename.

The first ‘C’ in CCKW 353 is for the year it was designed, 1941, and the second is for ‘conventional cab’. The ‘K’ represents all-wheel drive and the ‘W’ denotes dual rear axles. Obvious, really. As for the digits, 353 was the number given to the long-wheelbase version while the shortwheelbase was labelled 352.

You can see why people just called it the Jimmy instead, really, can’t you? How did it get the name? Supposedly, just as ‘Jeep’ is a contraction of GP (which stood for General Purpose), ‘Jim’ is shorthand for GM (General Motors). We’ve been through the company’s

history in the hope of finding someone significant called James, but with no luck, so that’s as good an explanation as we can give you

The trucks were powered by GMC’s 270 4.4-litre straight-six petrol engine, whose 104bhp was never going to shift 5100kg of Jimmy with neck-snapping speed. With selectable six-wheel drive and a more sophisticated suspension set-up than you might expect, however, the truck was able to keep plugging on even when the ground turned against it. The rear axles are located in tandem on leaf springs and lower arms, with pivoting chassis mounts for the spring packs allowing them to achieve extreme articulation. Rather than there being a through-drive diff in the middle axle, the transfer case has three outputs; the third axle is driven by a long propshaft via a centre bearing mounted on top of the second.

‘The Jimmy is a great vehicle; very basic, but reliable,’ says Armourgeddon’s Nick Simons. ‘The gearbox is non-synchro so it’s easy to change and the engine bay has loads of good room to work in. It’s a cracking engine – you could leave it for two

years, come back to it and it would still fire up first time!’

Its transmission is a five-speed Warner T 93 box (fifth being an overdrive) connected to a two-speed transfer case which, when shifting into low range, also engages drive to the front axle. This is what separates the CCKW 353 from the CCW 353; the latter has its low range blocked out and the front axle remains non-driven.

Big pussycat

You’d expect such a big beast to be, well, a big beast to drive, but according to Nick it’s actually a bit of a pussycat. ‘It’s actually got really light steering,’ he says. ‘Using one hand isn’t a problem and you could almost use your fingertips! It almost feels like power steering.

‘The Jimmy is beautiful to drive. I love them, personally – they look nice and are extremely reliable.’

There’s no such thing as absolute reliability, however, so a number of trucks on the Red Ball Express were fitted with 10,000lb winches in case another member of the convoy got stuck or blocked the route after breaking down. A few would have just headed straight into a ditch because of the sheer exhaustion drivers faced, too.

Although it only lasted a few months, the trucks on the Red Ball went through a barely believable 50,000 tyres during the of the operation. They used thousands of gallons of fuel, too – in the course of delivering more yet for the trucks and tanks fighting at the front. It was hard going for the vehicles as well as their drivers, whose orders were to maintain an almost flat-out speed while keeping sixty feet apart and never travelling in a group of fewer than five trucks.

A convoy of Red Ball trucks passes through a regulating point on the N304. The roads were closed to all other traffic to allow the supply vehicles to make the smoothest, quickest and safest possible progress; compared to the picture of Isigny sur Mer a few pages ago, this inland village has come through the war mercifully unscathed

After the end of the war, none of the GMC trucks returned back home to America. Those that survived ended up being put to all manner of uses in private hands, before the passage of time thinned their numbers still further and they became collectable historics.

They may be surprisingly nice to drive these days, but one can only imagine what it must have been like to pilot one of these things along unending miles of rough, unmade tracks, with nothing but tail lights for a reference point in the clouds of dust and the prospect of coming under attack at any moment. Doing so day after day, week after week, on next to no sleep… those drivers truly were unsung heroes of the Second World War.

Even trying to find a parking place at Tesco would seem relaxing compared to all that – though a roadworthy Jimmy is a perfectly legal thing to drive on the road. A bit on the big side, perhaps, but guaranteed to confer school run legend status upon anyone who dares. The British equivalent might be Bedford’s wonderful MJ, a truck that makes the Land Rover 101 look small, but the CCKW 353 has a panache to it that even this can’t match.

It has a similar level of rarity to it, too, which means owning one is unlikely to be as straightforward as leasing an SUV to use as your daily. Still, though Nick told us he’s seen prices start to drift upwards, you can still get one worth having for the sort of money that would only get you a list of problems wrapped up in a Defender body. Five figures and you’re into the nice ones.

The phrase ‘a lot of metal for your money’ is one that’s used a great deal in relation to old 4x4s, but it takes on a whole new meaning here. It’s eight decades old, yes, but very few of them will have done more than a handful of miles in the last halfcentury or so.

Tempted? Drive a Jimmy and you will enjoy precisely no creature comforts – but you certainly will be able to glory in the attention that comes with having biblicallevel cool marks and road presence off the scale. You’ll be driving something with history, too – you’re unlikely ever to find out what it is, but after the role it played in ridding Europe of the fascist scourge, with a CCKW 353 you can rest assured you’ll have a hero on your hands.

Thanks to Armourgeddon for its help in compiling this article. Its museum is near Market Harborough in Leicestershire – check it out at www.armourgeddon.co.uk

VEHICLE: Isuzu D-Max GO2

YEAR: 2018

RUN BY: Alan Kidd

LAST UPDATE: Feb 2025

FLEET DEBUT: Jan 2020

SMILES PER GALLON

Last time we checked in on the D-Max, a couple of issues ago, we mentioned that by removing the heavy steel drawers from its pick-up bed, shifting the spare wheel to a more aerodynamic position and swapping its old mud-terrains for a set of less aggressive CST Sahara A/T IIs, we were hoping to get

its fuel economy closer to 30 than 20mpg. A big ask, considering it’s been hovering around the 20-21 zone ever since Isuzu took an everyday Utah model and turned it into the all-conquering GO2.

Since then, we’ve been assiduously keeping tabs on the mileage every time we’ve filled up. Real-world fuel consumption testing is never a 100% exact science, what with different pumps having their own idea of when to go click (I still remember the wan-eyed cretin in a fuel station in Abergavenny, many years ago, who insisted there was nothing wrong with a pump that cut off after every 10p of diesel and said it was because I didn’t know how to use it), but doing the sums can yield a figure that’s close enough to be worth quoting. So let’s do that.

First up was a fairly realistic mixture of driving conditions including mainly urban work but with a couple of longer-legged stints thrown in. First came a quick dualcarriageway trip to check out a Renault Avantime I was thinking about buying (us car hacks are known for our obsessions

with all things retro, the more obscure and unpopular the better), and this was followed by more of the same, plus a stretch on the M1, for the dubious pleasure of freezing slowly while watching Swindon Town lose 2-0 to Kevin McGoldrick. Well, strictly speaking it was to Notts County but he pretty much took us to the cleaners on his own without ever breaking into a trot.

So the Curse of Kidd remained intact (I don’t go to many games, but if we only lose one out of ten that’ll be the one I’m at) and now the fuel gauge was getting low. The trip said I’d covered 368.6 miles, the receipt said I’d put in 68.81 litres and that all worked out at (drum roll)… 24.35mpg.

So close! But not quite there. Still, an improvement of about 15% on what I’d been getting before, which can’t be bad.

Fiction science

As a point of reference, the official combined figure for our D-Max is 40.4mpg. It’s 37.2 urban and 42.8 extra-urban, too. However with the truck having first been registered in September 2018, it would

still have been tested under the hilariously fictional old NEDC regime – the new model has the same basic engine, uses AdBlue and is more efficient, yet its official combined figure in the new WLTP test is 32.5mpg, so go figure.

I knew I had a longer road trip to come a few days after the Notts County debacle, so I kept score again in the hope that with less on-off work with the brakes and clutch we’d sneak past the magic 25mpg mark. My first destination was the Cotswolds, for the KGM Actyon launch (see last month’s issue), so plenty of motorway miles followed by some B-road fun – plus, because it would be rude not to, a quick recce on a section of the Fosse Way a couple of miles from where the event was based. KGM probably weren’t expecting us to do any green laning in their new SUV… actually they know us pretty well, so they would probably have been disappointed if we hadn’t. So I ran the lane in the D-Max first and, having ascertained that there was nothing in it to damage the Actyon or get it stuck, we went for it and got the only photo you’ll see of the vehicle pushing a bow wave. The lengths we go to in the name of keeping it real.

Back up to the Midlands the following day, we headed straight from the KGM event to the launch of the new… Isuzu D-Max. See also in last month’s issue. This time it was just a case of parking up, with no green laning required, though given the weather conditions most of the roads were approaching bow-wave territory themselves. Lovely.

Home again, and time to check the miles before another fill up. Just the 198.7 miles this time, and 7.907 gallons used –which equated to 25.45mpg. Ya beauty!

The average of these two figures is 24.9mpg. So that’s 15.5 worse than the official figure. As we all know, adding off-road modifications (aka weight) is never good for your fuel consumption, so it’s no surprise at all that the numbers are worse than for a standard D-Max of the same age. Nonetheless, it says something that of those 15.5mpg, a little more than half (7.9mpg) is spoken for by the rank dishonesty of the old testing regime. That leaves the suspension lift, 33” tyres, heavyduty bumpers and so on to blame for the remaining 7.6mpg. No, the figures aren’t accurate because we’ve been comparing

data from old and new versions of the 1.9 TD engine, but close enough to say something. And whatever that something is, I’m getting better than 25mpg out of the truck again so God be praised.

Can you dig it?

Since we were on the subject of green laning, which is what the GO2 was built for, how did the Saharas cope on the Fosse? Well, you’ve already ascertained that this wasn’t the most testing stretch of byway in the land, what with the two-wheel drive Actyon being able to rock it after we’d done our recce, but the lane we used includes a lengthy ford whose base has been laid with loose pebbles. I know from experience that mud-terrains can dig down into this kind of surface rather than pushing you forward – biting into the ground is what they’re designed for, after all – and as well as the D-Max our old Patrol and Discovery 2 could sometimes feel as if they were bogging down in similar conditions.

So I was on alert, though given what we were recce-ing for I decided to do it without engaging four-wheel drive. If we couldn’t do it in the D-Max, after all, I wasn’t going to risk the Actyon.

Even though the water wasn’t all that deep, the stones beneath it certainly did seem to be. It reminded me of another ford, not a million miles further south, that used to be very popular until the local authority ‘improved’ it by dumping ton after ton of shingle on both sides of the water until it was basically impossible to drive in or out without starting to sink. Momentum is

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.

important in such conditions, of course, so here we were needing to keep moving while also maintaining a bow wave.

That’s exaggerating it a bit, of course. But I very much did feel that on our old muds, the loose ground would have sapped more torque and made the crossing even harder work. Not so much that there would have been any danger of us not making it, but it does show that hairier tyres don’t always equal more traction.

The CSTs certainly did equal a quieter ride on the motorway going home, however, and they resisted aquaplaning in the horrible conditions we faced the following day. Well, presented with half a mile of clear, wide and very wet private road on the way in to the launch site, it would have been negligent not to try. They grip very well in the wet and they handle with great stability too, even when the bozo behind the wheel is trying to unstick them. We really will get round to showing them some mud soon – but as one box after gets ticked off, the Sahara A/T IIs are proving to be very good all-rounders indeed.

WAY OUT WEST

Crossing America in the footsteps of the 19th Century pioneers on the Applegate-Lassen Emigrant Trail

PLUS

A Land Rover Lightweight that’s not what it seems

As good as ever: Subaru’s evergreen Outback

Harking back to the great days of Jimny building

MAY 2025 ISSUE: ON SALE 10 APR