4XFORWARD
Welcome to MotorDome: Two things enter, one thing leaves
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side from 1980s-era Tina Turner’s legs, one of the most memorable things from the movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is the line, “Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves.” That pretty much sums up the blood-in-the-arena ethos of my automotive journalism career. At my core I have to admit my guilty pleasure is pitting two (or more) things against each other and devising diabolical testing criteria that ensures only one true victor emerges. I just love a good product shootout. I’m not alone, because no matter what the genre, one of the most widely used search words is “vs”. Apple versus pumpkin pie, vegetarianism versus veganism, blender versus juicer, you name it, somebody out there has compared something you’re interested in against something else you’re interested in, even if you didn’t know you were interested in it before you typed “versus” into your search browser. Don’t believe me? Go try it right now. Pick any old random word and type it into your search engine of choice followed by vs. Like, “marble vs.” and you’re most likely to see a long dropdown list of words like granite, quartz, porcelain, limestone, tile, and so on. And as you sit there thinking to yourself, “no, I meant the little round marbles that you play inside a little chalk ring on the schoolyard playground,” you’ll probably think to yourself, “but maybe I’ll click here to see how granite stacks up against marble.” To that end, the internet can create something of a self-fulfilling prophecy in which you can find yourself lumped into the same shrinking world-wide pool of interest. A homogenization, if you will, that limits the scope of your imagination while paradoxically at the same time opens an immense sea of information right at your
8 JUNE 2022 FOUR WHEELER
fingertips. But like a search engine that took the reins and dragged you off to places you didn’t anticipate heading, my original point is getting a bit diffused here. It’s the day job of my Four Wheeler coworkers and myself to go out and test things in the offroad environment. Spending three days out in Johnson Valley repeatedly winching an M-715 up a dune to intentionally drain batteries in order to determine a clear winner? Yup, we’ve done that. Mounting six different sets of various off-road tires on wheels and dragging the whole shebang to a mud pit to test which tread works the best on the same test vehicle? Been there, done that. Installing one fuel-injection system, then taking it off and installing another, and another, and another on the same engine to see which is easiest to install and works best? Guilty. CO2 tank versus onboard air compressor, this shock versus that shock, that winch versus that winch, and so on. Comparative battles were something we excelled at, but admittedly, is also something we throttled back on. But no more. The foot is getting smashed to the arena floor. Two things enter, one thing leaves. Email me at
christian_hazel@motortrend.com or DM me at @hbombindustries on Instagram to let me know if there’s something you wanna see us flog for all it’s worth before you make your purchase decision. -CHRISTIAN HAZEL CHRISTIAN_HAZEL@MOTORTREND.COM PHOTOS: CHRISTIAN HAZEL
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