Overlander 4X4 - January 2024

LATEST: ALL-NEW DACIA DUSTER | FIRST DRIVE: KIA EV9 | TRAVEL: ZAMBIA HIRE-DRIVE

ANTARCTICA

Endurance overlanding in a desert of ice January 2024 £5.99

UYUNI

The railway graveyard on the Altiplano

01_4x4 Cover Jan2423 _195x275mm(wxh_1pg).indd 1

IN THE PINK

Wrangler Rubicon 4xe concept

CARAWAGON A Range Rover built for travel

10/12/2023 23:46

EXPLORE A FULLY ELECTRIC LIFE WITH THE SUBARU SOLTERRA. PERSONAL CONTRACT HIRE FROM ONLY

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Model shown is a Solterra 150kW Touring including optional special paint finish from £374 inc.

VAT @ 20% a month plus initial rental of £3,366 inc. VAT @ 20%

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SUBARU. ALL-WHEEL DRIVE. ALL THE TIME. To find out more visit subaru.co.uk or contact your local Subaru dealer.

• Permanent All-Wheel Drive • Range up to 289† miles • Charge 20-80%^ in 30 minutes • Subaru Safety Sense Technology • 12.3” Touchscreen with Apple CarPlay™ and Android Auto™ • 210mm Ground Clearance • 360-degree Panoramic Monitors

SUBARU SOLTERRA WLTP Pure Electric Energy Consumption and Driving Range: Combined 180Wh/km, 257 mile range in Subaru Solterra Touring. Figures shown are combined WLTP (indicative) and can vary significantly depending on factors such as selected grade, accessories fitted, driving style, weather conditions, speed or vehicle load. These figures may not reflect your real-life driving results. *Example based on 8,000 miles per annum, non-maintained. Subject to status. UK residents 18+. Rental amounts shown are on the specific model stated inc. VAT @ 20%. This offer excludes fleet and Members Affinity scheme sales, is only available through participating Subaru dealers and is not available in conjunction with any other offers unless specified. Crystal white special paint finish free of charge across all models. This offer is only available through Blackhorse Contract Hire a trading name of Lex Autolease. Registered office Heathside Park, Heathside Park Road, Stockport, SK3 0RB. Offers may be varied or withdrawn at any time.

Offer ends 31.03.2024. Vehicle must be returned in a good condition to avoid further charges. You will not own the vehicle. If the vehicle has exceeded the maximum permitted mileage then a charge of 19.8p on Touring inc. VAT @20% per excess mile will apply. Offer applies to 23MY Solterra only. ^The Electric Battery is covered by an 8-year/100,000 mile warranty (whichever comes first).

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TERRAFIRMA2”LIFT 2”LIFTAIR AIRTO TOCOIL COIL TERRAFIRMA CONVERSIONKIT KITD3 D3&&D4 D4 CONVERSION TF266 TF266 Fitting an air to coil conversion kit to a Discovery 3 or 4 reduces the likelihood of expensive air suspension repairs and eliminates the potential for suspension failure in remote operating conditions.

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Editor

Alan Kidd

Design

Ian Denby-Jones

Contributors

Chris Collard, Graham Scott, Jurij Modic, Mike Trott, Kaziyoshi Sasazaki, Olly Sack, Gary Noskill, Dan Fenn, Paul Looe, Tom Alderney

Photographers

I

t’s always striking, when the subject of electric vehicles comes up, to see how many people perceive them as a threat. As well as Overlander 4x4, we also publish Custom Car magazine and between the two of them we see no end of venom aimed at EVs. Perhaps it’s not surprising. My view is always that you should live and let live (decades of green laning have taught me that), and I’m constantly reminding people that EVs are not evil.

The problem is that EVs, or at least the government policies that promote them, are not living and letting live.

We all know about that. No more petrol or diesel engines by 2030 (well, 2035 now), and taxes on older vehicles that are borderline abusive.

However much you care about the planet, it’s impossible not to feel like

you’re being treated like a criminal by people who only care about winning the next election.

It’s an absolute fact that EVs are here to stay, and that they’re going to take over. And actually there’s no need to be scared of that, because the best of them are very good – the new Kia EV9, which we’ve just driven for the first time, being one of the best yet.

What must not be allowed to happen, though, is for any group of drivers to be left high and dry by all this. Overlanding and EVs will not be a match until battery technology and global charging infrastructure have caught up, for example – and until then, governments need to recognise that abandoning minorities is no way to save the planet – or their jobs.

Alan Kidd, Editor

Steve Taylor, Richard Hair, Harry Hamm, Vic Peel

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Sarah Moss Email: sarah.moss@assignment-media.co.uk To subscribe to 4x4, or renew a subscription, call 01283 742970. Prices for 12 issues: UK £42 (24 issues £76); Europe Airmail/ROW Surface £54; ROW Airmail £78 Distributed by Marketforce; www.marketforce.co.uk Every effort is made to ensure the contents of 4x4 are accurate, but Assignment Media accepts no responsibility for errors or omissions nor the consequences of actions made as a result of these.

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overlander4x4.co.uk

Contents Jan 2024 IN PROGRESS.indd 2

10/12/2023 23:09

LATEST: ALL-NEW DACIA DUSTER | FIRST DRIVE: KIA EV9 | TRAVEL: ZAMBIA HIRE-DRIVE

ANTARCTICA

Endurance overlanding in a desert of ice January 2024 £5.99

UYUNI

The railway graveyard on the Altiplano

IN THE PINK

Wrangler Rubicon 4xe concept

CLASSIC CARAWAGON A Range Rover built for travel

75% OFF

62

Six issues for the price of 12 sounds like half-price – but when you subscribe to Overlander 4x4 for a year, you actually end up getting 75% off the price on the cover

CONTENTS JANUARY 2024 4x4 Scene 4

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News

All-new Dacia Duster breaks cover, Toyota Hilux gets its first hybrid engine and Audi returns to the Dakar in a bid for electric-powered glory

Events

The 2023 off-road show season reaches it climax at the Great British Land Rover Show

10 Products

Coil conversions for troublesome Landies, proper clutches for Shoguns, an overland camping trailer to dream of and more

14 Review

Back Road Campsites of Spain by Duncan Gough

Every Month 62 Subscribe

Get Overlander 4x4 delivered for a fraction of the cover price

64 Next Month

Sex, tarantulas and off-roading in a Lamborghini…

Driven 26 Kia EV9

All-electric premium SUV moves Kia into a new era and asks questions of 4x4s costing twice the price

30 SsangYong Musso Saracen+

Replacement for the leaf-sprung Rhino moves the Musso upwards – so we drove it up a mountain

Vehicles 48 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 4xe concept

Hardcore off-road build explores how macho a truck can be when it’s painted bright pink

50 Range Rover Carawagon

A true overlanding classic – restored and in use as the ultimate daily drive

Travel 16 Antarctica

36

First in a two-part tale of an eyeball-bleeding expedition across an uncharted ice desert

36 Zambia

Three weeks in one of Africa’s most expeditionfriendly nations aboard a hired Hilux that (mostly) proved that you don’t need a 4x4 of your own

56 Uyuni

The Bolivian town that’s famous for the world’s biggest salt flat is also home to a unique graveyard of abandoned steam trains

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10/12/2023 23:09

NEWS SCENE

DACIA UNVEILS ALL-NEW DUSTER

D

acia has lifted the wraps on a new, significantly modernised Duster – the first production model in the company’s journey towards realising its ambition of being seen in the same light as the likes of Jeep and Land Rover. Based on the CMF-B platform shared by Renault and Nissan, the vehicle promises to be more rugged and, in 4x4 form, better off-road than before, while also adding new hybrid powertrains to its offering.

As before, all-wheel drive will only be available with part of the engine line-up.

This will include the TCe 130 mild-hybrid petrol model, in which a 6-speed manual box will be available with a choice of 4x4 and 4x4 models. The rest of the range will include full hybrid and bi-fuel LPG options, however diesel will no longer be in the mix.

The promise of enhanced off-road capabilities comes from from a range of updates over the previous Duster. These

include a smart virtual centre diff lock, which distributes torque to the front and rear wheels according to grip and speed, and separate drive modes for mud, sand and snow.

Dacia quotes ground clearance of 217mm and approach, departure and breakover angles of 31°, 36° and 24°. Downhill speed control also becomes standard on 4x4 models, as do heavy-duty body cladding and skid plates.

The Duster will be available in four grades, including a new Extreme spec with features like roof bars, rubber mats and washable seat fabrics. You’ll be able to get a roof rack to mount on said bars, too, as well as a Sleep Pack for turning the vehicle into a basic camper.

The new Duster is expected to go on sale in the spring, with deliveries starting a few months later. Prices are yet to be confirmed, but they won’t be dramatically higher than for the outgoing model.

Subaru Crosstrek set to replace XV Subaru will launch a new model, called the Crosstrek, in the first part of 2024. Replacing the existing XV, this has the familiar 2.0 hybrid engine and auto box driving all four wheels, with Subaru’s X-Mode system providing Normal, Snow/Dirt and Deep Snow/Mud drive modes.

Subaru says the Crossback will be a safety leader, with its latest Eyesight system among the driver aids and the whole vehicle being underpinned by the company’s excellent Global Platform. It’ll be loaded with kit, too, including an 11.6” info screen running phone pairing and built-in sat-nav on top-spec models. Prices are expected to start at £34,500 on the road.

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First Grenadier joins blue light services

Skoda announces Enyaq upgrades

Skoda is upgrading the Enyaq for 2024. Our former Electric SUV of the year gains new, more powerful 85 and 85x powertrains with 286bhp, while vRS models develop 340bhp, and next-generation battery management technology will bring charge times down to less than 30 minutes. Further improvements include a longer range of up to 353 miles.

At the entry-level end of the range, the Enyaq 60 remains unchanged – however all models drop the ‘iV’ which was previously part of the vehicle’s name. On top of the existing spec options, meanwhile, Skoda’s high-end Laurin & Klement trim comes to the Enyaq for the first time.

Ex-Jag design boss creates 2+2 off-road buggy

Callum Design, the automotive design house headed by exJaguar man Ian Callum, is transitioning into a car maker in its own right. The company has unveiled its first own-brand vehicle, developed fully in-house – and it’s an off-roader.

Specifically, the Skye is ‘the world’s most beautiful highperformance, multi-terrain vehicle.’ Built in very small numbers for people with very big bank balances, it will combine light weight with an advanced all-electric drivetrain to combine sportscar performance and handling with a 170-mile range and ultra-fast charging times.

Measuring 4047mm long and 1900mm wide, the Skye promises ‘impeccably balanced 50/50 weight distribution.’

Its buggy-like 2+2 body is mounted on a steel spaceframe supporting all-independent suspension with high ground clearance and long travel for all-terrain use. Callum says the vehicle’s styling is ‘focused on its rugged practical capabilities and off-road prowess.’

Full details of the vehicle’s specifications are promised by the spring of 2024, with final development work and testing continuing in the meantime. Callum speaks of ‘curated variants, each finely tailored for focused on or off-road use’

Nith Inshore Rescue, based near Dumfries on the Solway Firth, has become the first blue-light emergency service in the UK to order an Ineos Grenadier. Based on the Utility Wagon model, the vehicle was prepared by specialist supplier Emergency One with a variety of equipment including an extendable roof-mounted camera.

‘We deal with life-and-death situations, very harsh weather and challenging terrain,’ said Peter Bryden, secretary of Nith Inshore Rescue. ‘So when it came to evaluating the options for a new support vehicle, there were few options and the Grenadier stood out, ticking all the boxes.

‘We were very impressed with the way it has been engineered and built to last, as well as how straightforward it was to convert it for this role. Together with our revitalised lifeboat, we expect it serve our team for the next 40 years.’

Updates for Yaris Cross

Toyota has upgraded the Yaris Cross for 2024, giving it more power and tech as well as tweaks to its styling. The former comes from the addition of a new, more powerful hybrid powertrain in the GR Sport model; this will also feature in the Premiere Edition, a new model introduced for the launch of the updated vehicle.

The Premiere has an exclusive new Urban Khaki paint finish with a bi-tone execution, along with new 18” machined five-spoke alloys that enhance the dynamic, rugged look and matching stitching inside. Across the range, meanwhile, seat upholstery has been improved and there’s now a soft covering on the lower instrument panel. Toyota promises improvements to the vehicle’s refinement, too, as well as further safety aids and a ‘completely new digital user experience.’ Prices and an on-sale date are due to have been announced by the time this magazine goes on sale.

January 2024 I Overlander 4x4

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THIRD-GENERATION RS Q E-TRON SET FOR DAKAR ASSAULT

A

udi will return to the Dakar Rally in January with the latest version of its RS Q e-tron. Headed by a new Technical Director in Dr. Leonardo Pascali, Audi Motorsport has focused on five main areas of development – safety, reliability, comfort, performance and maintenance times.

Various detail changes mean the new vehicle is slightly lighter than before, and changes in the event’s regulations mean its electric motors can now be tuned for greater output. Suspension uprights have been redesigned to help prevent stones from getting stuck behind the rim and brake disc, something that has previously caused time-consuming damage, and the wheels will be shod with a new tyre featuring stronger sidewalls.

The suspension has also been rethought to reduce peak vertical acceleration during landings, with a

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better distribution of loads also allowing enhanced handling control and a longer crash box at the front of the chassis. This is now more efficient at absorbing the energy generated during a hard frontal landing – such as the one which put Carlos Sainz out of the 2023 Dakar when his RS Q e-tron dug in and somersaulted.

Sainz is one of three Audi drivers at the 2024 Dakar, all of them returning after last year. He’ll be co-driven by Lucas Cruz; other teams are Mattias Ekström/ Emil Bergkvist and Stéphane Peterhansel/ Edouard Boulanger.

‘Our engineering team has improved the RS Q e-tron even further with many creative solutions,’ says Audi’s Head of Motorsport Rolf Michl. ‘Drivers and co-drivers, as well as all of the mechanics and engineers, benefit from the imaginative ideas. We feel that we are prepared for the Dakar Rally in the best possible way.’

Back to black

Volvo has added a new Black Edition to its XC60 line-up. Available with a choice of B5 petrol and T6 and T8 plug-in hybrid powertrains, the vehicle comes with a range of interior and exterior styling themes including black paint, black badging, black alloys, black badges and black trims.

The Black Edition is based on existing Plus and Ultimate trims. Prices start at £54,035 for the B5 Plus and rise to £69,385 for the T8 Ultimate.

Hybrid system joins Hilux range Toyota’s new Hilux Hybrid 48V will go on sale in the middle of 2024.

Initially available just in Invincible and Invincible X grades, and only with automatic transmission, this mates the vehicle’s familiar 2.8-litre diesel engine to a 48V hybrid system, adding up to 16bhp and 48lbf.ft to its overall output.

The result, says Toyota, is enhanced acceleration, power and efficiency.

The system comes at no loss to the Hilux’s towing or payload capacity.

Toyota says it will allow smoother driving in town and off-road, too, thanks to a lower idling speed of 600 rather than 720rpm, and that the motor-generator within the hybrid set-up has been designed to withstand harsh working environments. By waterproofing the 48V battery and DCDC converter and using anti-slip and strengthening measures on the motorgenerator pulley and belt, Toyota has been able to retain a 700mm wading depth for the vehicle.

www.overlander4x4.co.uk

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Minilite Alloy Wheels Iconic Genuine Minilite Wheels now available for Land Rover’s!

DA3785

The original Minilite wheel, was probably the most successful competition wheel of the 1960’s and 70’s.

As the name suggests, it was originally developed as a magnesium competition wheel for the then revolutionary new Austin ‘Mini’, but its instant success meant that it was soon to be seen on many of the serious race and rally cars of that era. A new iconic style was born, and to this day, all genuine Minilite wheels are made to that original classic design. Originally conceived for race and rally, demand soon grew for road car applications, and has remained so ever since. Minilite wheels are ‘Low-Pressure’ die cast, in high grade aluminium alloy; machined on the latest CNC equipment, 100% pressure tested, and finally powder coated for maximum protection against the elements.

Series 3, Defender 1987 - 2016 Range Rover Classic & Discovery 1 DA3785 8 x 18 Anthracite DA3786 8 x 18 Black DA3787 8 x 18 Silver > Load Rating: 1,220kg > Offset: ET0 > PCD: 5 x 165.1 > Weight: 11.7kg > Test Standard: JWL DA3785

DA3787

DA3786

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

Overlander4x4_2024_01January_Britpart_FP.indd 1

27/11/2023 09:55

EVENTS

OVERLANDERS APLENTY AT STONELEIGH SHOW

T

he 2023 Great British Land Rover Show at Stoneleigh provided a rousing finale to the year’s 4x4 show season. Now a well established part of the annual calendar, the event attracted its usual blend of exhibitors from across the spectrum – who were greeted by a strong crowd of attendees for whom the grotty weather wasn’t going to prevent them from seeing the best the trade has to offer.

The show, whose indoor venue at the NAEC makes it reassuringly winter-proof, saw a range of new exhibitors rubbing shoulders with a wide range of familiar names. The former included Braydon Elite and Churchill 4x4, both of whom wowed the crowds with their restified classic vehicles, and RoofVenture, whose bundle deal on roof tents, racks and peripherals left visitors stunned at the value on offer.

Onlookers were open-mouthed in their admiration for the display vehicles at the

8

entrance to the main show hall, too, from Bowler’s hardcore baja truck and Wallis Defenders’ glorious 110 to the movie-star Wolf gracing the front cover of the Winter 2024 issue of The Landy.

Outside, kids were loving the chance to get behind the wheel of a Toylander, and on the off-road course big kids were relishing the opportunity to put their trucks through their paces – from hardcore lane motors to sparkly new showroom Land Rovers, the All Wheel Drive Club had the perfect route set up for all.

Hot news, announced immediately afterwards, is that for 2024 there will be not one but three runnings of the Great British Land Rover Show. This outdoor event at Bath and West Showground returns on 20-21 April; Newark is back after a year away on 23 June; and the big finish will once again be happening at Stoneleigh on 17 November. It’s all at

www.gblandrovershow.co.uk.

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FROM THE SMALLEST NUT & BOLT TO A COMPLETE CHASSIS & EVERYTHING IN-BETWEEN GENUINE, OEM & AFTERMARKET PARTS & ACCESSORIES FAST & RELIABLE WORLDWIDE DELIVERY EXTENSIVE WEBSITE VAST STOCKS AT 100,000 SQ FT HQ KNOWLEDGEABLE STAFF FREE COMPREHENSIVE CATALOGUES PRICE MATCH TRADE & WHOLESALE ENQUIRIES WELCOME

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08/12/2023 11:22

PRODUCTS

Lightweight bumper from AlliSport Prices start at £285 plus VAT | www.allisport.com.

You don’t tend to think of AlliSport as a company that makes bumpers. But in addition to all the cool stuff they create to go under the bonnets of the world’s Land Rovers, this lightweight unit for proper-shape Defenders is a predictably tidy bit of work.

A direct replacement for the original steel bumper, AlliSport’s has raised end profiles for a better approach angles. It’s made from 4mm thick aluminium which is laser-cut and CNC-folded, and it comes in a choice of black or silver powder-coat – leaving you to decide whether or not you want it with DRLs.

HD clutch for Shogun £265 plus VAT | lofclutches.com

There are still plenty of Mitsubishi Shoguns around, and more and more of them are being used as work trucks or off-roaders.

For either of those uses, LOF’s POWERspec clutch kit eliminates a potential weak point in one fell swoop.You get everything you need to do the job, including a heavy-duty drive plate, release bearing and cover (the latter with a +40% clamp load over the original) plus a spigot bearing, cover bolts and alignment tool. The 270mm, 23-spline clutch is suitable for 3.2 DI-D Shoguns and Pajeros from 2000-2006, and it comes with a two-year warranty.

Keep your camp kitchen tidy

Coil conversion for Disco 3 and 4

If you live out of your truck, ARB’s Camp Kitchen Organiser may well turn out to be one of those things you needed more than you realised. It hangs from your awning (or whatever else you can find that’s horizontal enough to hold it) and has multiple sleeves for your utensils as well as various pockets and a clip-on paper towel holder. It measures 810mm x 375mm when hanging, then when you break camp it folds down to about half that and zips up for easy stowage. Time to cook up a storm…

Price ca £800 inc VAT | www.britpart.com

If you’ve got a Land Rover Discovery 3 or 4 and you’re thinking about binning off its air springs (and if you haven’t yet, you will), these kits from Britpart contain all you need to do the job. You get four pre-assembled struts, and air suspension override module to keep the vehicle’s brain happy and a wiring harness to suit your model – either the Disco 3 and 2005-2009 Range Rover Sport, or the Disco 4 and 2010-2013 Sport. This particular kit maintains the vehicle’s original ride height, though an alternative is available which lifts it by approximately two inches.

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BOOK REVIEW Back Road Campsites of Spain Duncan Gough | Published in 2023 by Hombre, £7.00 A seasoned traveller, Duncan Gough grew up on a 100-acre farm. in the wilds of Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). A childhood spent in the bush taught him self-reliance and instilled a lifelong love of the natural world – which, in later life, inspired him to start exploring the parts of Spain and Portugal rarely seen by British visitors.

His chosen mode of travel is on two wheels rather than four. However his guide to Spain’s lesser-known campsites is written with all travellers in mind – including, of course, 4x4 overlanders.

This publication may be seen as a practical accompaniment to his main guidebook, Sketches of Spain (2016), a Matador Publishing bestseller. Its 44 pages include a wealth of information about 22 different campsites, generously illustrated by a combination of photographs, aerial pictures and watercolour maps.

Guidebooks like this can so easily be anodyne and formulaic, but it’s very clear from the text that you’re reading the words of someone who has spent time at each of the campsites he’s describing. In some cases, the owners are mentioned by name;

one gets the impression that Gough is a well known client and friend.

Grouped by region, the campsite listings are augmented by general notes on travelling in Spain, providing a wealth of useful information from someone who has learned from experience. There’s a guide to simple Spanish words and phrases, too, and – somewhat improbably, but interesting nonetheless – a raptor identification chart to help you recognise the many bird of prey you’re likely to see while travelling in the Spanish interior.

Having worked as an engineer, boat fitter, cabinetmaker and in the film and theatre industries, Duncan Gough is now a full-time tour guide and travel writer. It’s a vocation that suits him.

Back Road Campsite of Spain strikes a perfect balance between the professional presentation of a corporate publication and the fact-filled honesty of a close friend telling you his experiences. It’s straightforward, it’s true and, at £7.00, it will have more than paid for itself after your first night in one of these sites. If you’re planning an expedition in Iberia, it’s a no-brainer.

Top-end trailer from Bushwakka Price POA | www.expedition-equipment.com Off-road trailers get less attention than roof tents, but in the real world of expedition travel a good one offers a serious amount of usability while leaving the top of your vehicle free for things like jerry cans and spare wheels. And since you’re only interested in good ones, you ought to be interested in the Sundowner EVO2 from South African outfit Bushwakka. This is based on a stainless steel chassis and its body is supported on heavy-duty leaf springs and gas shocks, with a design allowing a departure angle of 17 degrees.

The trailer’s roof and side portions pop open to create a spacious interior featuring a king-sized bed accessed by proper steps and a full-height doorway. A 270-degree

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awning on the other side of the trailer screens a large kitchen area, and there’s also an attached bathroom tent with a hot shower fed by a 140-litre tank.

The trailer’s total length is 4800mm, with the actual body accounting for 3570mm of that.

Bushwakka promises that it will be as easy

to set up as it is comfortable to use. It’s available in the UK through APB Trading, on an imported-to-order basis.

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PRODUCTS

Headline Act

Special offer price £900 | grp4x4.com GRP 4x4 is currently offering £150 off the normal price of its Defender 110 Full Headlining in Black Alston. A premium quality installation, it promises precision craftsmanship and a perfect fit for your vehicle.

The headliner comes in three sections – front, middle and rear. GRP 4x4 says it will last for years to come, never sagging or working loose, and all the while it’ll be adding a touch of sophistication to your 110’s interior.

RLG Tyres

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January 2024 I Overlander 4x4

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BOOK REVIEW

Trans Africa Land Rover

Martin Port | Published in 2022 by Porter Press, £30.00 This remarkable book, by classic car specialist and Land Rover enthusiast Martin Port, is a biography of Philip Kohler told through the story of his travels in Africa in the late 1950s and early 60s. It is, however, much more than that. It’s the biography of the 88” Series II in which he did it, and the story of a continent finding its way into the modern world.

Kohler’s name is not as well known as it should be, however as a location manager in the movie industry he worked on almost 40 different feature films including several in the James Bond franchise. Born in Australia in 1933, he set out to see the world in 1955 and spent time in London before buying a new Land Rover and taking to the road – on an expedition that was to last three years as he explored a continent in a state of great change.

This was overland travel at its most straightforward, with none of the comforts we consider essential today. Kohler’s Land Rover was not modified or accessorised,

and he carried little with him aside from the absolute essentials needed to survive and keep the vehicle running.

He did, however, take a camera – and the result was a fabulous set of images documenting not just the expedition but his life before and afterwards. These appear liberally throughout the book, along with an astonishing collection of personal documents – letters, tickets, receipts, passports and more – illustrating a story whose richness of breadth and depth is hard to comprehend.

Some time in the 1990s, Philip Kohler parked his Land Rover in front of his home in London, Whether he knew that this would be for the last time is impossible to know, however it stayed there until after his death in 2015, becoming a well known local landmark to the people of Shepherd’s Bush. He had resisted all offers to sell it, saying he wanted to know it was there should he ever wish to travel the world again. Thus the final chapter tells the

story of its restoration – a sympathetic process done by the author himself, whose over-arching policy was to keep it looking exactly as it was when its only other owner drove it home across Africa.

There could be no more fitting conclusion to the book. However the Land Rover’s story continues. Having bought and restored it, Martin Port now uses it as his daily driver – something which, one suspects, Kohler himself would approve of.

Perhaps another trans-Africa expedition awaits? For now, this magnificent book is a superb testament to a man, and his Land Rover, whose lives should be an inspiration to all who dream of seeing the world.

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TRAVEL

THE WHITE DESERT

Part 1

A team of explorers aboard two Arctic Trucks Toyota Hiluxes experiences three weeks in Antarctica – the coldest, driest and windiest continent on the planet Words and pictures: Chris Collard

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B

eyond the windscreen, I can barely make out the edge of the bonnet; the rest is white upon white. I glance at the thermometer, which reads -25°C, and then at Gísli, my driving partner for the past 12 days. I rub my face and squint tightly in an attempt to infuse blood flow to my eyes.

For the last three hours, we have been transfixed by a thin track line on our GPS screen, which is zoomed in as far as it

can go. Outside is a world of crevasses and snow bridges. The line is our guide, our chaperone, our god, at least for the moment. Without it, we stop and wait for clear skies – which could be days.

Around my waist is a climbing harness and a 50-foot rope. If we get stuck and need to get out, we’ll tether ourselves to the vehicle. We’ve been travelling for nearly 30 hours straight and are virtually in a state of delirium.

Gísli was at the wheel when we entered this bleached hell. When the horizon disappeared, I leaned out the window in an attempt to locate our previous track and give him hand-signal directions. This had been futile. I’ve been driving for 90 minutes and am beat-dog tied. My attention darts from the LCD to the windscreen and back, and I pray for this to be over.

This is the White Desert: Antarctica, the coldest, driest, and windiest place on the

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Living in Antarctica is an intensely practical business with a deep focus on survival. You might go there in search of adventure, but your existence will quickly distilled down to a simple routine in which supplies are literally keeping you alive

planet. I rub my face again and force my eyes back to the screen.

Two weeks earlier, Scott Brady, Greg Miller, and I stepped off an Ilyushin IL-76 cargo plane on to a 12,000-foot runway of ice. The flight was everything we had been warned of: cramped, hot then cold, with an elixir of adrenaline flooding out of the air ducts, washing the occupants with anticipation. The plane was Russian built, the pilots were from its motherland, and there were no windows. It was a six-hour flight from Cape Town, South Africa, to the Antarctic Logistics Centre International air base (ALCI) at Novolazarevskaya Station (Novo), where a Southern Ocean cyclone had grounded all aircraft for the previous three days.

We had been given the green light to fly less than 24 hours earlier. It was a ‘go’ – but if the weather closed in on Novo, we could have a problem. The Ilyushin had enough fuel to get there and back, but fuel for the back leg was stored in 200-litre drums in the cargo bay. If we breached the halfway point, we were committed to land, regardless of weather, on a runway that was not exactly straight, nor was it level.

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I queried the pending landing with a fellow passenger who had been on this flight more than once. ‘I wouldn’t worry,’ she said. ‘The pilots sip a few shots of vodka to relax… they do this all the time.’ I pulled my lap belt tightly to my waist and reassured myself that she was kidding.

Antarctic expert

We climbed down a long steel ladder and were greeted by Gísli Elísson, Artic Trucks’ Antarctic workshop manager and one of the few people on the planet that could be considered an expert on vehicle-based Antarctic travel. We were the first contact they’d had with the outside world in more than a week and the airfield was buzzing with activity. Ground crews organised loading zones as a forklift loomed like a praying mantis anticipating its next meal.

The belly of the plane parted, the loading ramp settled to the ice and the concert began. Out came pallets of food, barrels of fuel, duffel bags, wooden crates of various sizes and shapes and Pelican cases bearing ‘fragile’ and ‘keep frozen’ stickers.

Keep frozen? That didn’t seem to pose a problem here.

The last item to be off-loaded was one of vital importance to our team. It was a bright red four-door Toyota Hilux, specially built for Greg and Expeditions 7 by the specialists at Arctic Trucks.

In the distance, we could see a row of structures: brightly coloured shipping containers that had been reincarnated as living quarters, workshops, a communications office and an upmarket ‘double-wide’ mess hall. With gear piled high, we made our way to the Arctic Trucks shop for last-minute modifications, fuel and verification of GPS tracks. And for a nap. In a few hours, we’d turn the wheels south, a trajectory they would maintain for the next seven days.

We were about to embark on the sixth leg of Expeditions 7’s enormously ambitious journey around the world. Greg, a passionate Land Cruiser aficionado, was fulfilling his dream of driving Land Cruisers not just around the world, but also on all seven continents. He and Scott departed the Arctic Ocean in the northern reaches of Alaska two years prior and had already crossed Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa.

If Siberia had been the tip of the proverbial iceberg, Antarctica would be the 90 percent that lay below the waterline. There were many uncertainties, and they had spent months on the logistics. The plan was to head due south for approximately 2200 kilometres. If our GPS breadcrumbs were accurate, we maintained an average pace of 25 kilometers per hour, were spared mechanical issues and avoided close encounters with crevasses, the AmundsenScott South Pole Station would be ours.

The next leg, though ambitious, was optional. Push north (an odd term at the South Pole, where all compass points are, uh, north) towards the Ross Ice Shelf and western edge of the continent. Time would be of the essence, as this would put us nearly 3000 kilometres from Novo and our flight back to Cape Town. It was the last departure of the season… and it wasn’t going to be waiting for a wayward clan of Amundsen wannabes.

Wagons roll

The air was crisp and clean, and the skies cerulean blue when we quietly rolled out

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‘I was near the southern extremities of the planet – and it was quite possible that my feet rested where no-one had trod before’ of Novo. The settlement stands at an elevation of 538 metres and from here, we began our ascent toward the continent’s centre, an 11,000-foot ice cap known as the Antarctic Plateau.

We were crossing fields of cobalt-blue ice that had been swept clean of snow.

Like a river chasing gravity relentlessly toward the sea, glacial flows eddy and boil, constantly tormented and upturned by forces thousands of feet below. Long fissures develop in the crossfire and are slowly covered with drift snow, forming unstable bridges. These are fairly easy to see on the blue ice, but in many areas they are indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain.

Here, venturing off the thin line of the GPS track is risky business. As a safeguard, everyone donned a climbing harness and length of rope. If we exited the vehicle, it was mandatory that we tether ourselves.

This was Queen Maud Land, a fascinating example of Antarctica’s unique geological DNA. Its coast is veiled under a thick sheet of snow and frozen seawater. Sheer spires, sculpted through the millennia by wind, glacial flows and tectonic movement punctuate the ice cap. The Shcherbakov Range, a line of craggy, reddish-brown mountains drifted by to the west. Greg, Scott and I, the

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newbies to Antarctica, were in awe of the magnificence of our surroundings.

Antarctica is unique. In addition to being cold, windy, and dry, it is also the most sparsely populated continent with around 0.00035 people per square kilometre. It is a land of extremes ruled by no singular political influence, rather an alliance of nations in agreement that the continent should be fervently protected and preserved. Most who live in Antarctica are involved in scientific research, and the Antarctic Treaty dictates that no mining or military activities are to take place.

Another provision the treaty mandates is a pack-it-in, pack-it-out policy. This includes empty fuel drums, trash and human waste, not to mention abandoned vehicles, downed aircraft and cryogenically preserved corpses. Everything must be hauled out. For us, another expedition (Walking With The Wounded’s South Pole Allied Challenge) was in the area at the same time, and each was the other’s backup plan.

Mjollnir

Much later that day, we reached Thor’s Hammer. At 2356 metres above sea level, this was to be our camp for the night – the ‘night’ being cold, crisp and brightly lit by the midnight sun. Having set up our tents, latrine and mess hall, we melted

some ice for water, set up our gas stoves, mixed up a dehydrated meal then went to bed. It was quickly to become a well rehearsed routine.

Before turning in, though, I took a walk to set up a camera for a time-lapse sequence. I guessed it must be around 0100 hours, as the sun was passing nearly due south. Its rays dispensed a harsh and contrasting light as crisp as the snow underfoot.

The area around the camp is considered a safe zone, at least by Gísli.

Was it okay to be out on foot without a tether, I asked. ‘I think okay, not so many crevasses here.’ Reassuring.

I moved slowly and with purpose, using a monopod as a probe and placing each step with care as I made my way up to the base of Thor’s Hammer about a thousand meters to the east.

Midway there, I paused to survey my surroundings. My lifeline to the world, a small gathering of tents and vehicles, was now a series of distant yellow, red, and orange specks among a sea of white… and dreadfully small. It was at this moment, perched alone atop a thousand feet of ice that it sank in. I was in Antarctica, near the southern extremities of the planet – and it was quite possible that my feet rested where no human had trod before.

There were mountains in the near distance but to the south, where the sun beckoned, lay a vast sea of emptiness, the White Desert. I reflected on my home in sunny California and my wife, Suzanne.

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wind picked up considerably and the temperature was dropping steeply; I had ventured far enough.

In the morning, if it could be called so, Greg and Scott checked the vehicles and sorted out our gear while Gísli and I melted snow for coffee and a breakfast of oatmeal and dried fruit. This would become a daily ritual over the next two weeks. Not that the concept of ‘daily’ was as we would understand it back home.

The plan was to travel for 20 hours and them rest for 10 hours. Driving shifts would be in four-hour rotations, with offduty times to be spent managing music

selection, keeping the driver awake or with a jacket pulled over your head in an attempt to sleep.

Around midday, we crossed the tracks of two French skiers who had their sights set on the Pole. Also in the area at the time were Parker Liautaud, who was attempting to set the record for the youngest person to complete an unsupported coast-topole ski trek; British adventurer Maria Leijerstam, doing it on a recumbent tricycle; the aforementioned WWTW crew; and a fuel train sliding its way from McMurdo Station to the Pole. Not exactly rush hour, but this was certainly rush

season – though 24 hours later, we would hear that the French skiers had abandoned their quest due to weather and called in to Novo to be picked up.

Whiteout

And on we went, climbing steadily upwards. Our next camp was at 3197 metres; the temperature was down to -23°C and earlier that day we had experienced our first whiteout, as dense fog and blowing snow closed in like a cloak, obscuring the sun and reducing visibility to 20 metres. The scene all around us was eerie, like a milky cloud of

This image might just about give you some idea of the sheer bleakness of the Antarctic ice desert. Even then, you can barely comprehend the shattering cold and biting winds

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‘Antarctica is not the largest continent, but 98% of it is covered by ice with an average thickness of 3000 metres’

We’re all familiar with having to defrost our cars in the morning. But there’s frozen, and then there’s Antarctic frozen 22

The team from Expeditions 7 were on a mission to drive Land Cruisers on every continent; Antarctica was their sixth

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swarming white locusts rolling through an already weird dream.

Antarctica’s environment is otherworldly.

Though South America boasts the Andes, and Asia the Himalayas, Antarctica claims the title for the highest average elevation.

It is not the largest continent (it only ranks fifth) but 98% of it is covered by ice with an average thickness of 3000 metres. It also claims the lowest recorded naturally occurring temperature on earth, an almost unbelievable -89.2°C. In the mountain regions and fringes of the plateau katabatic winds wreak havoc on anything in their path. These develop when air at higher elevations is cooled, becomes heavy and is drawn by gravity to areas of less dense air. In Antarctica, katabatics can reach nearly 200 mph – enough to upend shipping containers and scatter humans like leaves.

Though we would not be blessed with this phenomenon, in every direction and as far as the eye could see was evidence of their existence in the form of sastrugi.

When the katabatic winds arrive, predominantly in the autumn and winter, they torment the landscape, cutting divots and snow tunnels and sculpting the ice into sharp and irregular patterns. These can be up to two metres in height and are the nemesis of the polar traveler. Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott wrote of the sastrugi and the difficulty they imposed. For us, it was a matter of slowing the pace and choosing a path that was as close as possible to our GPS breadcrumbs.

The storm cleared just in time for us to pitch out camp. After everyone turned in, I again stood alone on the ice. There was something profoundly peaceful about this environment; beyond the sastrugi in the foreground it was nearly pool table smooth, a moonscape so flat and expansive I could see the curvature of the earth. Drift snow, suspended just a few inches above the surface, swept by like a genie on a magic carpet; above, the sun glistened off a crystalline orchestra as it played across the plateau.

Service station

Jet A-1 is the fuel of choice for use in these extreme conditions

There were few 7-11 corner stores along our route. In fact, there weren’t any. We’d not seen a Starbucks, McDonalds or KFC yet. It was magnificent.

Fuel stops, however, were required at least once during each driving session.

Arctic Trucks, which is based in Iceland, has spent decades perfecting the art of polar travel. Our two vehicles, an AT44 and AT6x6, ran on Jet A-1 fuel with twocycle oil added for lubrication. Each was fitted with extended-range fuel cells (280 and 600 litres respectively) and carried additional 200-litre fuel drums in the bed (we had six in total). With a combined reserve of 2080 litres and an average fuel consumption of about 5.1mpg for each vehicle, we had a range of approximately 2100 kilometres.

Regular stops included transferring fuel from the drums to the vehicles via a 12-volt pump. We would also require two refuels while en route to and from the South Pole.

We arrived at Camp 83, at 2618 metres and a latitude of S83°, to be greeted by Andrei, a Russian national and the camp manager. The extent of the facility was a few tents and an open-air latrine dug into the base of a snow pile, with an airstrip marked out by posts in the distance.

Andrei and his team of four would spend three months in this remote outpost to support the season’s few expeditions.

The day prior to our arrival, indeed, 208 barrels of fuel had been pushed out of the tail of the Ilyushin and parachuted down to the airfield. Andrei’s crew was in the process of collecting the payload and burying it under a few feet of snow for future retrieval.

We stepped into their mess tent; it was warm and smelled of coffee and herbs.

Sleeping cots lined the sides and wooden planks provided a solid floor free of snow and ice. They shared hot bowls of solanka, a Russian soup of sausage, potato and spice, and we sipped coffee and talked… about the weather. This was not simply small talk, though – it dictates what work can be done and when.

Andrei received a report from Novo that conditions looked favourable for our next leg to Camp 89, where we were to rendezvous with the WWTW crew. I pulled out a bottle of Captain Morgan and shared it with our hosts, who in turn produced a small container of vodka.

It was an odd mix for breakfast, or dinner, or whatever mealtime it was… but what the heck? After a nap, we made our way out to the fuel depot, dug up a few drums, topped off the tanks, and continued on our way. Our heading? South… of course.

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FIRST DRIVE

KIA EV9

‘W

e used to make crap cars,’ a former Kia executive once told us.

That was approaching twenty years ago at the launch of the second-generation Sportage, which was by no means a crap car.

The point he was making was that at the time, Kia was moving from being a company that built cars down to a price to ones that built them up to a quality but still down to a price. It’s a familiar path that many car makers have trodden on their journeys to the mainstream.

And the mainstream is now very much the space that Kia inhabits. It still comes

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on as a high-value brand, having led the industry into the era of proper warranties, but no longer does it just make cheap cars. Or indeed crap ones. It’s a technology powerhouse, a design leader and currently Britain’s fourth biggest car brand. Its star is on the rise – and if the new EV9 is anything to go by, it’s only just begun.

The EV9 is a statement vehicle for Kia. It’s what business people like to call a disruptor – a bold new product that changes the way customers think. In this case, it’s about Kia muscling in on new territory, in the lucrative premium and luxury sectors of the car market. If the Sorento is Kia’s Discovery, the EV9 is its Range Rover.

In Britain, there’s a kind of buyer who won’t look beyond those vehicles because they think an Indian-owned company with a factory in Slovakia is as red, white and blue as strawberries and cream at Wimbledon.

But the signs are there that the EV9 IS changing the way customers think. Kia expects to sell around 4000 of them in the first year – and 800 firm orders have already been placed before any customers have even driven one.

That’s a sure sign that the boldness is working. And the EV9 is bold. Its styling speaks for itself, as does its size. It’s luxurious, it’s priced well into the premium range, and it’s all electric.

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Luggage space is enormous in 6 and 7-seat models alike. When both rear rows are folded, it’s big enough to live in

Below: As if a room-sized boot isn’t enough, you can fit some more in a sizeable ‘frunk’ where the engine would be if the vehicle had one

A sign of the times that we’ve made it this far before mentioning that. The EV9 is available with a choice of single or twin-motor powertrains delivering 200 and 378bhp respectively; the latter is all-wheel drive, while the former is powered just by the rears. On top of this there are three trim levels; prices start at £64,995, or £73,245 in 4wd form, and climb to £76,995 – however unlike most premium car makers, Kia doesn’t blag you with an options list that’ll bump an extra 15% on top of that before you know what’s happening. Bung on £725 for special paint and away you go.

One choice you do have at the top of the range is between six and seven-seat

interiors. Each offers its own version of extreme practicality, with the former costing a grand more and adding a lot of innovation for customers who don’t need the extra pew.

Ahead of the usual flat-folding third row, the second is made up of two individual chairs, each of which slides forward and back through a particularly long range and also rotates, allowing you to create a lounge-like rear. It’s quite snug, definitely not in VW Caravelle territory, but for families with young kids it’s an absolute monster of a feature.

When the second row is facing forward, another nice feature is a huge console which slides out from between the front

seats. It has a usably flat, grippy lid up top and a huge space inside, and can even be configured to act as a lounge table.

Legroom is sufficient for one six-footer to sit behind another, even with both being greedy; give up a little in the way of stretching room and you could feasibly get a full crew of adults on board, even if in practice the third row is always going to be better for kids.

Unbelievably, there’s room for a decent load of luggage even with the third row in use. Once it’s down, the boot space is cavernous – and with the second row also folded, it’s about the size of a bedroom in the typical new-build home. The floor is completely flat, too – for overall practicality,

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goes beyond that and convincingly far into the realms of the luxury SUV. It’s a different kind of luxury to the wood-and-leather approach – which, in its most elevated form, can be very nice indeed but might just appear kind of chintzy in the face of the gloriously functional luxury the EV9 delivers.

We don’t think the driving experience is likely to put anyone off, either. Of course, 378bhp is only going to mean one thing in terms of performance and sure enough, the EV9 shifts when you want it to. It’s very easy to drive calmly, with a lovely, smooth take-up and seamless acceleration however hard or soft you want to hit it.

It’s quiet, of course, but what matters is refinement – and in the driveline and suspension alike, Kia has got this spot-on.

Ride quality is superb, even on 21” rims with 45-profile tyres – we haven’t yet experienced

it’s right up there with the very best in the business, and a real demonstration of what can be achieved with the packaging opportunities an electric platform allows.

All this might make you overlook what it’s like up front, were it not for the fact that to put it bluntly, it’s pretty stunning. The seats have all sorts of adjustability, including a front cushion that raises up electrically to add support beneath your thighs, preventing fatigue on long journeys, and you can choose from a range of massage settings as well as very effective heating and ventilation functions. The heating and ventilation system offers all sorts of options, too – we found that it needed quite a lot of fiddling with to get the right balance between cabin comfort and keeping the windows demisted on a cold, wet day, but once we’d got there it behaved just fine.

We could go on at length about the interior and, once we’ve given the EV9 a full test, we’ll do just that. So be warned. What we’ll say for now is that it is, emphatically, that of a premium vehicle. The equipment is as high in quality as it is abundant, the ambience and ergonomics are beautifully relaxing and the materials and built are spoton. Even where the plastics are hard, they’re dense and strong and don’t detract one bit from the feeling of quality.

Typical of the thought that’s gone into the whole thing are netted headrests that accommodate you like a soft pillow. The only other manufacturer we’ve known to hit the same standard in this detail is Bentley.

Yes, we’re comparing Kia with Bentley.

Sneer if you want, but you’d better get used to it because the EV9 is such a bold incursion into the premium market that it

Mud, Sand and Snow settings in the Terrain Mode menu are standard on all models with four-wheel drive. Within the limits imposed by the tyres, and the driver’s willingness to risk getting his panels scratched and his carpet dirty, they’ll allow the EV9 to tackle rougher ground than almost anyone will ever care to attempt

There seating position is magnificent, with a view ahead that’s up there with the best. With superb controls and fittings, the EV9 turns functionality into a form of luxury – and you might even conclude that it makes traditional high-end vehicles look as if they’re straining for effect with their wood veneers and soft leather. It’s laden with equipment and oozes quality from every pore – and it all feels very cleverly thought through

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it on the worst of urban roads, but around Inverness and the Highlands it didn’t once shudder or crash over a bump, seam or pot hole – and it dealt very well with all but the worst corrugations and rough patches, too.

During the launch, we shared a vehicle with a performance car expert who said he would have welcomed more feel in the steering. Coming at it from a different angle, we see it as a well balanced combination for a luxurious family SUV whose drivers are looking for a vehicle that’s enjoyable and entertaining but don’t want to sacrifice anything in the way of sophistication for even a suggestion of fast-car handling – however fast a car it might be. And fast it is, banging you up to 62mph in 5.3 seconds and making a brisk cruise feel like nothing.

To us, the steering is nicely weighted and communicative enough to provide a great

feeling of security which is backed up by reassuring grip and body control. To put it bluntly, it goes where you point it. We’ve only driven the 4wd model thus far, but with a small army of safety functions looking after you we have no doubt that the single-motor model will hold the road every bit as well.

There wasn’t any off-tarmac driving on the launch, which seems like a bit of an oversight when you’ve got the Highlands to play with. All 4wd models come with Kia’s Terrain Mode palette, giving you Mud, Snow and Sand settings; in reality, anybody with one of these vehicles who takes if off-road on anything more challenging than a stone or gravel track will be in a fingers-of-onehand minority, but as always the limits will be set by the tyres and, mainly, the owner’s willingness or otherwise to get it dented, scratched or, more likely, just muddy.

An unusual option on the EV9 is to have two or three seats across the second row. The former, seen here, gives you two separate captain’s chairs – both of which slide back and forth through a huge distance and can also be rotated to create a rear lounge

To be perfectly honest, we’re not expecting to be green laning on Salisbury Plain and see an EV9 coming the other way any time soon. If that happens to you, though, come over and say hello because it will probably be us – we’re looking forward to filling in that blank in our knowledge of what is a hugely promising new addition to the upper end of the 4x4 market.

As we said at the top, the EV9 is a statement vehicle for Kia. It’s a statement of real confidence, and of the company’s determination to push ever upwards in the SUV market. It has the potential to become a benchmark in the development of the EV market – and to encourage people out of the traditional luxury brands and into one which would once have been unthinkable.

They’re definitely not making crap cars any more.

Six-seat models feature an enormous console which can be slid out from between the front seats, providing a table with a huge storage space underneath

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SSANGYONG MUSSO SARACEN+

P

eople who purport to know about cars like nothing more than to sneer at other people who, they

like to think, don’t. This could be the intro to any article quoting any thread about EVs on any social media platform, but in fact we’re here to talk car snobbery.

Whatever Facebook Guy drives, he wants the whole world to know why Other Facebook Guy is stupid because he drives something else. Other Facebook Guy thinks First Facebook Guy is the stupid one, and lets the world know by using one of those laughing reactions (remember

30

when the laughing reaction meant ‘I found your joke funny’ as opposed to ‘I think you’re laughable’?), or if he’s feeling really savage the ‘care’ reaction (remember when the care reaction meant ‘I care’ as opposed to ‘I think you’re pathetic’?), then they bicker until they get bored and both go off to troll someone with an EV instead.

An EV, or a SsangYong. We’re not aware of any owners of the Korean company’s vehicles feeling the need to constantly belittle anyone else for what they drive. By the same token, we’ve never seen any of those posturing forum experts everyone sucks up to online but secretly hates ever

having anything good to say about them.

And if the world’s biggest losers have nothing good to say about you, you’re probably doing something right.

SsangYong has been doing something right ever since the current Musso was launched. That something being the Musso (among others – if there’s one thing bigger than a forum expert’s ego, for example, it’s a SsangYong’s warranty).

The Musso is good because its interior is borrowed from the Rexton, SsangYong’s always-impressive SUV. It’s good because it can carry big, tow big and, party trick, carry big and tow big at the same time.

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It’s good because it has lots of kit and it’s good because it doesn’t cost silly money.

Just under four years ago, it got better still when SsangYong introduced the Rhino, a range-topping version of the Musso with an extended wheelbase and rear overhang which between them kicked its practicality up to the next level. Rather oddly, it was leaf-sprung at the back (the rest of the Musso range has coils) however it combined this apparently work-focused attribute with the same kitchen-sink spec list as the previously range-topping Saracen. The idea was that the Saracen was the high-bling one, with lairy great

alloys and so on, and the Rhino was the high-usability one.

Well, some time has passed and the Rhino is no more. What we have here is its replacement, the Saracen+. Basically, it’s like a Saracen but there’s more of it, hence the name.

More truck means more money, of course, and so the plus appears at the bottom of the invoice too. The vehicle lists at £34,115, which becomes £34,490 on the road if you get your VAT back and £41,313 if you don’t. The standard-length Saracen, by comparison, will owe you £33,240 or £39,813 – and this time last year, the OTR

figure for a Rhino was £39,543 if you didn’t get your VAT back.

So it’s coming on for a couple of grand more. But that’s not the only change that’s happened. You notice them in some ways, but in others it feels a lot like the old Rhino used to. Mainly, that’s good.

The first thing we’ll say is that coils or leaves, it makes no more difference than it ever has on any other pick-up. They still need to be able to carry 1000kg and if you can achieve that without it having an effect on how the thing drives when it’s not carrying anything, you’ve done more than just change the kind of springs beneath it.

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Borrowed from the highly under-rated Rexton SUV, the Musso’s interior has always been one of its selling points.

This latest model feels a touch more truck-like than before, however

chicia

chicia

This sounds like we’re winding up for a broadside, but actually we’re going to say that the Rhino drove pretty well on its cart springs – and the Saracen+ drives pretty well on its coils. There’s no significant difference between them in that respect; we found ourselves feeling that perhaps the new vehicle flexes with a touch more suppleness over uneven ground, but the margins are very fine.

We did a lot of miles in our Musso, including a couple of lengthy motorway treks, and it’s a placid companion here.

The engine keeps its mouth shut except when kicked very hard indeed, and even then it’s more a grumble than a bark. With loads of torque, anyway, you never really need to give it that sort of treatment; driven unladen, it’s quite pacy too.

Wind and road noise are more noticeable when cruising, but it stops short of being intrusive – as does any unevenness in the vehicle’s ride, which is well enough settled not to upset you even when you hit bumps at speed. The same goes around town – in fact, the control in the rear suspension is one of the most impressive things about the Musso’s dynamics. Again running unladen, speed bumps don’t upset it at all – obviously the long wheelbase helps here. Typically rubbish urban roads can make it shudder

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a little, but we can hardly blame it for that when they make us shudder too.

More impressively still, we spanked the Musso up a mountain in the Scottish Highlands and its steering and handling on the steep, twisting road were surprisingly fluid. You don’t buy a pick-up for this kind of driving, but at the same time you don’t want it to corner like a pregnant cow and while we would no doubt have had more of a blast in an MX5 or something like that, it was still a thoroughly entertaining way to pass half an hour on an autumn afternoon with a cool road all to yourself. A little sports car wouldn’t give you anything like as good a view of the road ahead, either – the Musso’s driving position is excellent and very confidence inspiring in every situation, on and off-road.

So too is the amount of kit in the cabin, which leaves you in no doubt that you’re being looked after. You get heated and cooled seats, heated steering wheel, lumbar adjust, all that kind of stuff, as well as a good media system displayed on a big, wide screen on top of the dashboard.

For reasons we couldn’t quite put out fingers on, however, it felt just a little less SUV-like than Mussos we’ve driven previously, with less of the lavish Rextonderived elegance we’ve become used to.

The materials still feel as good as ever, as

do the controls and the seat comfort, but we found ourselves wondering whether the factory has started to look for economies as the vehicle gets further into its life cycle.

This was all very indefinable and may be down to us overthinking it, except in the case of the reversing camera. Previously, we’ve been blown away by how clear and sharp its picture has been – better than on the Bentley Bentayga, we commented last year. But on the Saracen+, it was blurry and at night it was so dark it might as well not have been there at all.

Whether SsangYong is tightening up on the spec spending or not, details like this are relevant to a vehicle whose equipment has always been one of its strongest suits.

Value for money matters to Musso buyers – but when you compare its prices to the Isuzu D-Max there’s not a lot of wiggle room, so it does need to keep on delivering bangs per buck.

And it does, these small concerns notwithstanding. The Musso remains a lot of truck for your money, and while the Saracen+ is more money it’s more truck, too. Literally. You get a vehicle with an enormous appetite for work and an equally enormous warranty – and one that’s far, far better to drive than all those clowns on social media would have you believe.

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TRAVEL

THE REAL AFRICA African expeditions take many forms. A three-week overland holiday in Zambia aboard a hired Hilux might not sound like the most hardcore form of travel – but when you’re sharing your campsite with hippos, leopards and elephants, you know you really are in Words and pictures: Jurij Modic the beating heart of the continent’s wildest corners 36

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.uk

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shop.cst-tyres.co.uk Crossing the Luangwa river at Chifunda, where vehicles are hauled across by hand on a pontoon

Ask anyone who’s been up close and they’ll tell you that elephants are the real kings of the jungle. And it doesn’t get much closer than them coming in to share your campsite with you

The rental Hilux came well equipped withe a roof tent and general camping set-up. The bumper didn’t come pre-dented, but that’s why overlanders like ARB so much…

M

y family are seasoned overlanders and have explored a great many countries, most of them in Africa. Yet we don’t own an off-road vehicle. Instead, we rent expedition-ready 4x4s – a strategy which has worked well for us as, rather than spending our whole lives on the road, we fly out from our home in Europe to travel for a few weeks at a time.

Our first visit to the Southern African state of Zambia was in 2016, and ever since we had wanted to go back. A couple of years later, we got our wish, renting a Toyota Hilux double-cab from Ivory 4x4 Hire to spend three weeks revisiting some of the parks we fell in love with on our first visit, discovering new ones and driving through some the most remote parts of this beautiful country.

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Ivory 4x4 is based in Johannesburg, but the company’s own er Diederik delivered our vehicle to Lusaka himself. It was fully equipped with camping equipment and a roof tent, all in excellent condition and, with 120,000km on the clock, ready for more.

The engine was spotlessly clean and even the fridge worked flawlessly, so we were well stocked with fresh meat and cold drinks during the entire trip.

We did have a problem with the tent’s ladder on the first morning, when it stuck in place, but quickly fixed it with some basic tools and a bit of improvisation. Also, the gas bottle was less than half full at delivery and we ran out in the middle of our trip; we were able to refill it the next day in the nearest large town, so no big deal, but of course as a rental overlander this is the kind of thing that takes you by surprise.

Something else that surprised us, and could have been very awkward, was a blow out which trashed one of our tyres. These things happen from time to time and it’s not the end of the world – we have a spare, a jack and the right tools, so it shouldn’t set us back for more than thirty minutes, right? Well, it turned out that the nuts on this wheel were too big for our wrench – it was 19mm, while the nuts were 21. The car had been supplied with lots of adaptors, but none of them were the right size. Grrrr!

Luckily this happened near Lusaka, where there are lots of people willing to help and it was easy to find the right tool for the job. But somewhere in the wilderness, we would have been in big trouble. Lesson learned – while it clearly is the rental company’s duty to make sure things like that are correct, before putting

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‘People in Zambia are always smiling and children wave their arms as you pass through their countryside villages’

your trust in any vehicle it’s up to you to make sure it’s fit for the job you’re going to use it for.

With that little hurdle overcome, we set out properly. The traffic in Lusaka is chaotic but overall, Zambia is a very easy country in which to travel. Supermarkets in larger towns are excellently supplied with goods and fresh vegetables are sold everywhere along the roads. People are always smiling and children in particular wave their arms when you pass through countryside villages.

Main roads are generally in excellent condition, with not too many potholes and, apart from many heavy trucks, the traffic is not too dense. Minor roads, though, can be a different matter altogether.

As for the navigation, well, I made a major mistake before we set out: I forgot

to load the Tracks4Africa digital map of Zambia on to our GPS! These maps are by far the best routable GPS maps for southern Africa, in particular for more remote areas and national parks.

Fortunately, we had an offline Google map of Zambia on our phones, as well as Maps.me, another routable GPS app. With a combination of the two, as well as a very good and detailed paper map of Zambia that we have bought locally, we managed not to get lost too frequently.

We also managed not to get pulled over more than a couple of times, which counts as an achievement. The police like to position themselves in the shade alongside a section of the road where it’s practically impossible to stay within the speed limit.

One policeman operates the radar gun, another pulls over the offending cars

and three or four others busy themselves writing fines and collecting money. As long as there is any free space along the road, they fine everyone who passes by.

The officers who stopped us were very polite, and there was never even a hint of them expecting a bribe. The fine for speeding is 300 ZMW ( about $30 US) and on each occasion we received what looked like a commemorative souvenir receipt.

There’s no point in letting these things ruin your experience of a country. And Zambia was full of highlights. We visited the South Luangwa and North Luangwa National Parks, Kapishya Hot Springs, Bangwuelu Wetlands, Kafue National Park and the Lower Zambezi region – and we didn’t regret any of them.

Things got off to a particularly good start in South Luangwa, where the animals

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shop.cst-tyres.co.uk North Luangwa is known for its walking safaris. An armed ranger provides reassurance, but this must be one of the few safaris where you don’t want to see any lions

are particularly relaxed. None more so than the herd of elephants who came wandering in to the camp site one afternoon and grazed peacefully for more than an hour in between the tents and vehicles.

The camp’s position at Mfuwe, on the bank of the Luangwa river, meant we didn’t have to drive into the park itself to view all manner of animals – though we did, of course, and were rewarded with a wonderful range of tracks and precisely no other vehicles wanting to share them.

With no river crossings, mud or deep sand, the going was easy – you may or may not see this as a good thing, but there’s a time and a place for off-road battles and we were far more interested in the buffalos, giraffes, zebras, hippos and more that we had all to ourselves.

Of course, a trip like this takes a lot of planning. But you should always be ready to go with the flow. While we were staying near Mfuwe, our neighbours told us about a new community camp site en route to North Luangwa at Kanunshya. So, after a long day on a series of typically African dirt roads, we took a chance – and were rewarded with the most idyllic camping spot of the entire trip. It was in excellent condition, and once again we were right on the river bank – and for us, there is no better music than a hippo’s grunting to lull us to sleep.

The next morning, we continued toward Chifunda – where we crossed the Luangwa on a pontoon. Its capacity is only one vehicle and it’s pulled to the other side by hand. A quick look at the crossing’s

visitors’ book revealed that most travellers here seem to be German or South African – and that only about five vehicles had used it in last week.

Our home in the North Luangwa National Park was Buffalo Camp, where the chalets are completely open on one side to provide an unobstructed view across the river. The following day, on one of the park’s trademark walking safaris, by looking at footprints on the ground our tracker could see that a pride of lions was moving along our path about an hour ahead of us. We were of course accompanied by an armed ranger, which provided some reassurance during the rest of the tour.

Beyond here we took a good gravel road to Mukungule. The smooth surface felt like

‘After a long day on a series of dirt roads, we were rewarded with the most idyllic camping spot of the entire trip’

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08/12/2023 17:26:28

PERFECT FOR CHRISTMAS – AND ALL YEAR ROUND, TOO! The essential annual for Land Rover owners and enthusiasts

Land Rover

2 024

YEARBOOK 11 £9.99

the year’s pages of ucts for od pr st be Rover your Land

Every year, the Land Rover Yearbook brings together the best stories from the pages of The Landy and beyond. Lavishly illustrated and printed on high-quality gloss paper, it’s a bumper read – and great value at just £9.99!

Highlights of the 2024 Yearbook include…

• A stunning restored Series IIA reputed to have the most expensive paintwork ever applied to a Land Rover • A 90 with the engine from a BMW – and the suspension from a Disco 2 • Two very different home-built overland 110s – and a stunning boutique 130 camper • 11 pages of the latest and best parts, accessories and tools for every Land Rover • One of the first 90s to get the best from air suspension • Fitting a galvanised chassis in one of the country’s leading Land Rover workshops

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PERFECTION

• A restified Range Rover with the sort of engine that makes a Rover V8 look tiny

Brought back from the brink of oblivion, this Series IIA has probably the best paintwork ever applied to a Land Rover

• A roundup of the latest restorations, premium EV conversions and much more

EVOLVED DEFENDER

The Coolest Camper

Street and overland come together in a stunning 130

Air springs, auto gearbox: not your typical 90…

• The biggest ever gathering of Land Rovers from behind the gates of the Royal household • Exploring Europe in a whistle-stop Discovery expedition • The trip of a lifetime reaches its conclusion as a pioneering Range Rover reaches Cape Town

✔ Enhanced ✔ Restored ✔ Preserved ✔ Modified

One great Land Rover after another inside

88” TO AFRICA

Overland to Liberia in a £950 leafer

2024 Yearbook Cover AWAITING BARCODE.indd 1

• London to Liberia in the sort of Series III you’d normally treat as a restoration project

07/11/2023 11:01 NEW 4x4S

NEWS NEWS

Goodwood Revival hosts largest earliest royal family goes back to the very Land Rover’s relationship with the a rich variety of all kinds of vehicles days of the Series I. Today, there’s on the first anniversary of with connections to the crown – and Land Rover brought Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s death, them that’s ever together the biggest collection of been in the same place at once.

ever gathering of royal Landies GOIN’ DOWN SLOW

Defender or of vehicle is between an old-shape For most overlanders now, the choice to Liberia on a 7000-mile expedition from Britain mile into an adventure, try embarking

Oshe introduces thunderous take on Land Rover Defender

W

hen you’re getting ready for a lengthy vehicle-dependent expedition though

Words and Pictures: Oscar Scafidi

one of the world’s most arid and hostile regions, it’s advisable to buy the newest 4x4 you can afford.

Having done this, you should as spend as much time and money possible ensuring it’s loaded up with

suspension • V8 engine, auto gearbox, semi-active Boutique restification programme from £225,000 to four vehicles per year • Priced • Luxury interior • Production limited

top quality equipment – including anything that will help you cope with the extreme temperatures.

That’s the sensible approach, but there are two major drawbacks to doing things the right way. One, it’s

often boring. Two, it’s sometimes just not possible.

When my friend Mark and I began planning a 7000-mile trip to the West African nation of Liberia, we had £2000 to spend. Doing it aboard a heavily modified new Land Cruiser

just wasn’t going to happen.

Instead, we bought a 1973 88” Series III Land Rover, fitted with a 2.25-litre petrol engine, for just £950. It was old, it was loud, it was slow and it was very thirsty, but we still hoped that this classic off-road workhorse would carry us every step of the way.

It didn’t take very long at all for us we to realise that for this to happen, do were going to need to be able to at more than just change a tyre. And this point, our collective mechanical knowledge barely stretched to doing

at Gumtree 4x4 in East Sussex.

Although we weren’t sure if our old Landy was realistically capable of

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static display.

The procession featured Landies and Range Rovers used by the Royal family in either an official capacity or privately as part of the household collection. It included vehicles from the Royal fleet and JLR Classic as well as those now in private hands.

The pair of Land Rovers remainthe ing on static display were two of earliest Royal vehicles – the first Series I State Review vehicle and

another Series I ordered by HM King George VI. While all these vehicles are well known to enthusiasts, this was the first time they had ever

been brought together.

Land Rover has had a long assoas ciation with the Royal Family, and dispart of JLR today it continues to play the Royal Warrant in recognition of its status as an official supplier.

Lennard Hoornik, JLR’s Chief Com-

4

carrying us across the obstacles of the Sierra Nevada, the sand of the Sahara, the swamps of Senegal and the forests of Sierra Leone, John told us he was optimistic about our chances – and £1000 later our Land Rover had a brand new air filter, timing chain and front suspension, together with a box of spares (or ‘bodging kit’ as John put it) and a high lift jack. We left the workshop assured that as well as now having a suitably prepped vehicle, we also had the firm belief

mercial Officer, said: ‘We are proud of our Royal associations, which stretch back to the very origins of the business, and wanted to honour HM Queen Elizabeth II with a fitting tribute on the anniversary of her passing. We have never gathered such an extensive collection of Royal vehicles in this way and the commemorative parade was a fitting

of a Land Rover expert.

moment of remembrance.’

2024 Land Rover Yearbook

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2024 Land Rover Yearbook

2024 Land Rover Yearbook

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OR NOT?

Nobody sets out to do a Land Rover badly, but few have ever reached for the stars like the owner of this Series IIA. It was built to a mixture to necessities. I’m not sure I’d want really solid underpinning that should is a of Rolls-Royce and mahogany that with Kipling I’ll admit.) To be fair, this have a crash engender confidence whether programme based on heart and life steering wheel in front of me but or standards tackling a rocky slope in the Cape superyacht a driver employ will and experience, as well as pamperowners maybe driving over one of the hated ULEZ ing the one percent. Owner David so they won’t worry too much. and, rather unusually for camera cars in Bexleyheath.

Lane grew up on a South African OF course, it’s still a 90 and no Oshe the spec In this Adventure you to make Landy, finished wildlife reserve, and that’s where amount of magic is going old an Land Rover has semi-active suspenlearn how important a reliable vehithe interior a truly comfortable place settings mappable five the with sion, their the most expensive cle is when you’re out in the bush. with to lounge. But they’ve done electronically controlled, assisted In those early days there were best, with reprofiling of the heated by a G-sensor to further smooth Jeeps existence Willys in old and and pedal paint Land Rovers seats, and different out the handling. Add in AP Racing and that’s when he made that quote at the beginning of this story. True enough. After adventures around the world, he settled in London and started a company with the name of an African thunder god. Oshe Automotive therefore is based on

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his quite took me back.

Not to South Africa, which I motorbiked to in the 1980s. But that

quote: ‘The last thing you want to do is break down; if the heat doesn’t get you, the wildlife might.’ Those summer nights in The Projects in

South London, ah yes.

David Lane, heading up Oshe to Automotive, probably doesn’t go that part of town. His Land Rover certainly wouldn’t. It looks far more of comfortable in the surroundings the Royal Automobile Club in Pall in Mall, further north in London than Sarf Lunnun.

a When we looked there were only couple of properties for sale in Pall Mall, both of them just one-bedroomed apartments, both of them with price tags of over one million pounds. To be fair, one of them had a tiny balcony and if you leaned out

(assuming you weren’t a Russian who would never now do such a thing) you could see the RAC Club.

And there, inside, not outside, you

would have found the Okavango. but Fortunately not the African river, the latest in a long line of Defenders that have been upgraded into the stratosphere but with a price tag that means, if you didn’t buy the

2024 Land Rover Yearbook

Sponsored by

handbrake arrangements to try to Words: Paul Looe make more room. You can’t say that had a reallyHarry Hamm Oshe Automotive hasn’t Pictures: at good, thoughtful and thorough go auto converting a 90 into a luxury automobile, yet one that is still capable here are many reasons for restoring of tackling some serious outdoors.a Land Rover. Some are good, others Which is good as prices start at not so much. But we’ve just come £225,000 but we all know the end across the best. as point will be nowhere near ‘Ithat did it to stop my husband from spending adding resist the owner can owners never the money on something else,’ says appeal that, we’ll more. David Lane puts the of this gorgeous Series IIA. And with wood – very African of course. the this is like this: ‘For the connoisseur, boldly predict that every bloke reading The dash has been reworked exnoticenotice get spilled. improvements will be very now jealous of her husband. tensively so now features more retro improve IIA. Or The idea is that this is what Land able and are a dramatic improveYou might also be a fan of her Series dials, an Audison and Moreli audio is you, if you think Rover might have been or might ment.’ If that connoisseur maybe you won’t, actually, because system feeding through Burmester at did, well, no have been developed into. Hardly you can find the company they should look the way they once audio, wireless Bluetooth speakers, before. a novel idea, as it’s a rich seam www.osheautomotive.com Land Rover EVER looked like this charging and all the other modern to leave her several companies are currently Its owner herself (who asked us historically clean, ‘a is truck do the mining. This name out of the story and let her of opinion right respectful, modern interpretation talking instead) admits that it splits Ain’t they all. legend.’

Rover pictures Land see the people ‘When down the middle. apartment, you could afford about they’ll like it However, hurrah, they haven’t of it,’ she says, ‘it’s 50:50 whether four of these vehicles. not one gone down the electric vehicle or not. But when you see it for real…

Which would be tricky as proroute – it’s doubtful the founder’s person hasn’t loved it.’ duction is planned at four vehicles a restorapast involved finding many electric That’s because this is the story of a year. With just a handful coming with a Land recharging points amid the ronis tion with a difference. Yes, it starts on stream (sorry), the Okavango V8 up with one davels. Instead there’s a ‘beating Rover that was knackered and ends the beginning of a range that will also a Land heart’, in this case a 3.5-litre but the that’s better than ever, but this is add the 110 model to the 90 you go down the long-wheelbase versions will have Rover whose owner didn’t want to see here. Further projects will be to make the heart V8 it looked 6.2-litre way LT1 the an to normal route of returning it called Zambezi, Sabie and Limpopo. beat a little faster. when it was new. She had other ideas.

(Or ‘the great grey-green greasy through an auto box, this as do I Feeding what of because with is it about what ‘It is Limpopo River, all set in the should give decent grunt whether so an everyday job,’ she explains. ‘I work fever trees’ as the Just So Stories a standard for deep in the Serengeti or deep in superyacht industry. We work to eloquently put it. There’s a wraparesults.

Sloane Square traffic. And while it high-end clients who expect high-end round graphic that needs doing.) truck.’ may look like all the effort has gone That was the standard I put into the So what’s with all the Africa vibe? a restorers into the shiny, fancy bits, there’s There’s only a limited number of (Not exactly channelling Rudyard technical you’d go to for a job like this. Clearly, to matter, just skills and knowledge were going some solid, real-world experience although it’s quite hard to see how sweating round a game reserve in this open-top Land Rover 90 would is end well. Perhaps the red interior to disguise all the blood that might

even that.

We needed expert help. And they don’t come much more expert than John Bowden, the main man

his year’s Goodwood Revival got underway on 8 September – the first anniversary of the late Queen’s death. To mark the event, Land Rover put on a unique show of historic royal vehicles in Her Majesty’s honour, with a total of nine lapping the Goodwood circuit while two more were presented on

YAC HT

NEW 4X4S

to turn every or maybe a pick-up. But if you want Discovery, a Land Cruiser or Wrangler Just don’t expect to get there quickly… aboard an 88” Series III Land Rover.

2024 Land Rover Yearbook

brakes and even a bespoke wiring loom. There’s attention to detail here – even the bulbs in the headlights

have ‘Oshe’ tags.

Much of that remains unnoticed at rest, but the interior, sometimes covered with a bikini hood, is all about being noticed. You will notice the Muirhead red leather seats and red German woven carpet, with accents of both mahogany and acacia

T

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2024 Land Rover Yearbook

2024 Land Rover Yearbook

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The 2024 Land Rover Yearbook is on sale and available to buy in time for Christmas! £9.99 at WHSmith – or buy direct at shop.assignmentmedia.co.uk/books-merchandise Yearbook 2024 AD.indd 23

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The sound of a contented hippo grunting to itself is pretty good for getting you to nod off, apparently. Stocking up with provisions is no problem in Zambia – the towns have excellent supermarkets, and village markets are replete with fruit and veg

a luxury after a week of dirt tracks – but then as we continued on towards Shiva Ngandu it deteriorated badly to become brutally rough.

We were drawn here, however, as it has a very special place in Zambian history.

Buying a huge tract of land and building an English style manor, establishing a large farming enterprise and giving work to more than a thousand locals, then helping black Zambian leaders in their struggle for independence – all this was the lifelong work of English aristocrat Sir Stewart GoreBrowne, a lawyer, soldier, sometime racing driver and later politician, who was first posted to Africa in 1902 at the age of 19 and returned to live most of his life there, becoming the only white person ever to receive a state funeral in Zambia following

his death in 1967. The African House, by Christina Lamb, describes his life, the uprising and the fall of the estate.

A little way beyond Shiva Ngandu, there is a strong hot spring coming out from the depths of the earth which flows into the Chambesi river a few meters away.

This was one of the favourite spots on his estate for Sir Gore-Browne. Nowadays, his descendants run a lodge with a campsite near the spring, which offers a very comfortable retreat for many self-driving overlanders en route to or from Tanzania.

The hot spring itself is surrounded by lush tropical vegetation and taking a bath in its hot waters on a chilly winter morning is a fantastic experience. We took a whole day off here, doing nothing but relaxing and bird-watching, then as we headed back

towards the main road, early the following morning, we spotted a magnificent Eland bull – the only one of this entire trip.

It was a long drive to our next destination of Bangweulu Wetlands, with the smooth tarmac of the Great North Road soon giving way to rough dirt and gravel. We passed through Lavushi Manda National Park, which is recovering after being decimated by poaching, but the going was still quite good – until we entered the Wetlands, near the village of Chiundaponde, and the road quickly became painfully slow and uncomfortable.

In the Bemba language, ‘Bangweulu’ means ‘where the water meets the sky.’

Apart from an impression of immense solitude, it also offers two exceptional attractions from the animal kingdom.

When the Hilux picked up a sidewall puncture, it transpired that the wheel was held on by non-standard nuts – and the vehicle wasn’t carrying the right size of brace for them.

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The first one is black lechwe. This subspecies of aquatic antelope is to be found only here and nowhere else in the world.

And in Bangweulu, you are guaranteed to see them in large herds.

The other main attraction is the shoebill, a prehistoric-looking bird. These are much more elusive than the black lechwe – to see them, we took a whole day’s expedition involving a three-hour mission on the worst imaginable narrow dirt tracks through the swamps. An immense privilege here was to meet a group of children from the village, along with their mothers; tourists venture this far into the swamps so incredibly rarely that our guide told us some of the younger children would never seen a white man before.

We continued from here on foot, mainly wading through thigh-deep water but occasionally using a dugout canoe to cross deeper channels. It was exhausting, but at last our guide signalled to us that we were close to shoebill’s nest. And indeed, for a few moments we could see

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her through the reeds. She flew away the moment she spotted us, leaving a three day old chick on its own – not wanting to intrude, we moved quietly away as mother and father circled high above us, watching our every move.

We finally got back to our camp site after 12 hours of exhausting driving, walking and wading. But it was very well worth it!

After three days at Bangweulu, it was time to move on. Heading towards lake Waka Waka, we continued south on excruciatingly slow, bumpy dirt tracks at an average speed of little more than 10mph.

This went on for about seven hours – so you can imagine our relief when we finally arrived at our camp site. Stopping the next day in Kabwe to resupply our provisions, brim our fuel tank and refill our empty gas bottle, we continued west on a very minor road which we had driven once before and knew to be in a particularly bad condition.

Why? Because the alternative would be to engage with the traffic in Lusaka…

Our destination was McBride’s Camp in Kafue National Park. This is true wild Africa, where animals come and go through the camp as they please – not just elephants this time, but lions, leopards, hippos and more.

The camp is owned and run by Charlotte and Chris McBride, both of whom have spent most of their lives in the African bush. Chris is famous for his studies of white lions in Timbavati, and as well as being a highly entertaining character he is always willing to share his immense knowledge with his guests. Whatever he says is either hilariously amusing or very educational. In most cases it is both.

On a morning game drive from the camp, our guide suddenly stopped the car.

‘There’s something going on there,’ he said, and drove us closer. And there was a large male leopard.

Moving away from us, he quickly disappeared into the bush. But it was not over yet! Our guide whispered: ‘Look there, lions.’ And in the shade of a tree there

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When you look at the raw power of this leopard, it’s hard to picture him being chased away from a kill. But here he’s waiting for his turn after a pair of lionesses robbed his lunch

The campsite near the hot spring at Shiva Ngandu is still run by descendants of the estate’s founder, Sir Stewart Gore-Browne

were indeed two lionesses, guarding what looked like a kill.

Now the whole story was clear. The leopard had stalked and brought down a large puku. But before he was able to drag it away to the safety of a nearby tree, the lionesses surprised him and stole his kill.

Being much weaker, he had to retreat.

But that was not the end of the story.

On that evening’s game drive, we decided to go and check if the lions were still there.

They were nowhere to be seen – but wait, there was the leopard! The lionesses must have left the carcass with their bellies full, but there was still enough left for the leopard to come back for his meal. What a day in Kafue!

After this, our final destination was the Lower Zambezi. This time, Lusaka was unavoidable – though the traffic heading towards the city was quieter than we had expected, mening we had high hopes of arriving early.

No such luck. This was when the aforementioned tyre decided to blow – and

One of the less probably sights at Shiva Ngandu is a Fowler traction engine that was driven through the bush over the course of several weeks. Now, that’s an expedition… without the right size of wheel brace, what should have been a quick change left us at the mercy of the locals who came to help. Happily, that’s exactly what they did, though we calculated that we didn’t have enough time to buy a new tyre and have it mounted – meaning that for the last four days, we risked it with no spare.

Now thoroughly frazzled, we threw ourselves into the chaos of the Lusaka’s traffic – made even worse as some of the main roads being closed for repairs. And then, all of a sudden, some of the electrics on the Hilux failed without warning, leaving us without indicators, air-conditioning and, worst of all, electric windows. Having limped to our destination, Gwabi River Lodge, the owner offered his help and eventually traced the source of our woes to… a blown fuse. What a relief!

The road from here into the Lower Zambezi valley started out as good gravel but soon became worse and worse and ended up very punishing indeed. We were quite uneasy about doing it without a

spare – having arrived at Mvuu Lodge, we decided to abandon our plans to drive further into the national park.

As with so many other camps, that didn’t stop us from having close encounters with the animals. We were visited by baboons, vervet monkeys, bushbucks, hippos, a water monitor lizard and countless birds – as well as yet more elephants, who were to keep us company day and night.

The Lower Zambezi was new to us, but it made for a fantastic conclusion to our second Zambian expedition. We may have missed out on driving into the National Park itself, but we got closer to the wildlife than we even realised at the time – as I discovered when we arrived home and looked at the pictures on our trap camera, which showed a magnificent leopard casually strolling through our campsite during our last night there. A fitting climax to three weeks in which our Hilux truly did take us into the heart of the real Africa!.

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11/12/2023 17:48

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13/11/2023 16:55

PRETTY INPINK

The idea behind Jeep’s Wrangler Rubicon 4xe concept was to prove that its Tuscadero paint colour would still look right on a tough truck. A question no-one was asking, possibly – but an answer everyone should like Words Kaziyoshi Sasazaki Pictures Jeep

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hristmas is coming as we write this, but here we are looking back at the last of Jeep’s concept builds for the 2023 Easter Safari at Moab. It’s a long-wheelbase Wrangler – but, rather unusually for a Moab motor, the whole idea for it came from a paint colour.

Even less predictably, that colour is pink. Tuscadero, to give it the name Jeep uses, but pink is pink. And you know what, that’s fine, because pink is under-rated.

I’m sure we can all agree that some of our favourite things in the world are pink.

Actually, it’s ‘chromatic magenta,’ it sez ‘ere. Maybe some of your favourite things in the world are chromatic magenta, I don’t know. Pink is still pink as far as I’m concerned, anyway, and I bet the pink things you’re thinking about are neither chromatic nor magenta.

So probably best to start thinking about the Wrangler Rubicon 4xe concept again, then. The Tuscadero colour made its debut (in North America, obviously, it’s way too much fun for Britain) as a special-run, limited-edition hue during the 2021 model

year. The reaction was, in Jeep’s words, ‘overwhelmingly positive,’ so they decided to celebrate it with a gnarly off-road build.

‘It was time to flip the colour’s perception and make it a lot tougher than expected,’ says Jeep, which suggests people may have thought a pink Wrangler was on the girly side. Shocking.

The way to toughen up a Wrangler is of course to lift it and use bigger tyres, which is exactly what Jeep did. They didn’t use any old suspension kit, though, but an adjustable AccuAir system. Party tricks follow, but the basic hike makes room for a set of 37” tyres wrapped around custom 17” high-gloss black rims from American Expedition Vehicles. The same company was also used for its front and rear bumpers and diff covers, while up front there’s a Warn Zeon winch.

Behind this, a special version of Jeep’s trademark seven-slot grille is borrowed from the Wrangler Rubicon 20th Anniversary model. There’s then a custom bonnet graphic and, up top, the retractable full canvas roof that made

its debut a couple of years back on the Wrangler 80th Anniversary.

Inside, there are pink highlights to the custom leather seats, along with a perforated animal print surface, white metal grommets and gloss black patent leather accents on the bolsters and pull straps. The rest of the cabin features ‘additional pops of magenta’, which you’ll find on the door pulls, grab handles and gear selector and transfer case shift boots.

Jeep says the pièce de resistance in the interior is a black patent leather dash panel, with a zipper trim that hides a layer of pink velvet just beneath it. They must be particularly proud of this, to the point of guarding it jealously, because they didn’t include a picture of it for us to show you.

So this is a pink Jeep with pink bits inside, and people might think it’s girly but it’s dressed up like Tank Girl so that’s alright by us. No doubt she was quite pink too if you looked hard enough.

She wasn’t Tuscadero though, was she?

See, there’s pink and then there’s pink.

Chromatic magenta, sorry…

It’s all about 4xe now in Jeep’s world. The Wrangler is a greener shade of pink

When you’re on 37” tyres, you can be any colour you want and you’ll still be macho

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10/12/2023 23:44

Dave Blackburn wasn’t looking for a classic Range Rover, but a chance comment in a pub led to him becoming the owner of an original Carawagon. It needed plenty of work, but at the end of the project he had a camper that did the lot as a daily driver and whose rarity value was off the scale Words and pictures Mike Trott

CAMPING CLASSIC L

and Rovers and camping can go hand-in-hand together. Just pack up your stuff in your very practical and desirable truck, get to your destination with minimal hassle – because you can of course drive anywhere – and enjoy all that there is to offer upon your majestic arrival.

Splendid, job done, a fantastic travel experience guaranteed… right? Wrong. Oh, so, so wrong.

For those of you familiar with Britain – and you should be, seeing as it’s where you live – the weather can be, let’s say, questionable. Erecting a tent in Britain’s fabulous weather can in some cases be like trying to pole-vault in a hurricane. Someone will get hurt.

Still, there are solutions to this problem.

Dave Blackburn bought and restored one, and 15 years later he told us happily about how he spends his time driving it to Wales, Norfolk, the supermarket, work and

50

everywhere else you care to mention.

‘It never fails to do anything I ask of it,’ Dave explained happily. ‘It’ is a 1974 Range Rover Classic, one of the few to receive a camping conversion from R.J. Searle Ltd of Sunbury-on-Thames.

So it’s a classic, a rarity and a great Land Rover to boot. All of which adds up to equal one happy owner. Yet it took a level of provocation for him to buy the Rangey in the first place.

‘I was in the pub with my mates, talking about how I was fed up of short-wheelbase Land Rovers and tents, when one of them mentioned that they had the parts from an old Searle conversion.’

Dave explains how the price of the conversion on a new Range Rover was horrendously expensive back when they were new, adding that for some it was on the small side for a camper too.

‘The previous owners had sold the Range Rover without the conversion,’ he

explains, ‘and replaced the roof with a very 70s and 80s vinyl roof in order to get a sale.’

If vinyl roofs make you think of Allegros and late Cortinas, you’ll be shivering with horror right now.

Actually, if automotive sacrilege in general makes you shiver with horror that’s exactly what you’ll be doing right now, too.

This was a time when Range Rover Classics were in the main just Old Trucks, so turning a rarity into a quasi-anonymous everyday motor has got Crime Against Cars written all over it.

It all come back together, anyway, thanks to Dave, making him the proud owner of what was once again a well sorted, well together Searle Rangey. Well sorted, well together and a lot more than just a holiday fun-mobile, too.

‘I do everything with this car,’ he told us.

‘It is my daily drive. It’s so versatile – and the fact it does everything means it’s the best vehicle for what I am doing.’

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A bit of everything

And what was he doing? Commuting, playing and, at any opportunity, sleeping in his Range Rover. Using it for towing his vintage tractor, too, taking it off-piste on numerous occasions and driving it round most of England and Wales on holiday.

This is of course a vehicle that will be celebrating its 50th birthday in the coming months. Thanks to Dave’s efforts, it will do so in the most robust health. And that’s not to say that it’s been wrapped up in cotton wool – on the contrary, it has seen some big-time action – both in the workshop as well as out and about.

It had the usual V8 engine when it first rolled off the production line. But, as with so many survivors from those days, what we found when we looked under the bonnet was a 300Tdi. Don’t for a second think it was a straight swap, though.

‘When I bought it back in 1999, it had a Perkins 4.236,’ Dave explained to us.

Unbelievably, the Range Rover’s previous owner replaced the Carawagon pop-top with a fixed roof to try and make it more saleable. Thankfully, Dave was able to put that right January 2024 I Overlander 4x4

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This is the Range Rover’s fourth engine that Dave knows about. The original was of course a 3.5-litre Rover V8, but a previous owner replaced this with a Perkins 4.236. Literally agricultural. It in turn was replaced with a Daihatsu diesel, which anyone who knows them will tell you is a thoroughly good engine, but what Dave really wanted was a 300Tdi – and when the Japanese lump finally waved the white flag, their prices had come down low enough for him to be able to fit one

52

‘Then I wore that out and replaced it with a Daihatsu engine.’

Putting a Perkins in a Range Rover is a bit like asking the Monarch to do their Christmas speech in a West Country accent.

There’s nothing wrong with either, but they don’t go together. This is a tractor engine, and the Rangey may have plenty of traction but that doesn’t make it a Massey Ferguson.

The Daihatsu engine that followed it was much more suited to the Range Rover, though Dave only took this path because buying a Tdi at the time would have meant selling a couple of vital organs. Like most Japanese units, wearing out is something it wasn’t about to do in a hurry, but it did in the end – by which time Dave, kidneys still intact, had managed to find a 300Tdi. Now with his favoured engine, he decided to go the whole hog while fitting it and mate it up to a bigger turbo and intercooler.

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The centre console is way too high to be any use as an armrest. But when the top hinges forward to reveal a twin-hob gas burner, you know you’re talking about a whole new level of practicality. Behind it is the actual kitchen sink, proving that the Carawagon does indeed have everything

‘With the changes, it became a much better tow car. I fitted a galvanised chassis too, and a winch behind the grille – the little sign lifts up so you can reach the spool.’

Another nice exterior touch is the presence of two apparent fuel flaps. One is obviously for diesel, which Dave needs to travel to his paradise of choice; the flap above it opens to reveal the connection point for gas and electric hook-ups. Nifty.

Glamping it up

Inside the cosy cabin, there is a strong hint of the Seventies pervading the atmosphere.

If you were to rock up to a festival with this as your dwelling for the weekend, the term ‘glamping’ would never have been so fitting.

Dave’s verdict on its camping credentials? ‘I’ve got everything I need in here. A cooker, a sink, wardrobes and two single beds.

‘There are extra pads, too, to fill the gap in the middle and make it a double. It’s funny at first, but you get tired of falling down the hole when you come back drunk at night!’

We all know that Range Rovers, particularly today’s, are extremely well equipped. But seeing a kettle above the gearstick takes it to a whole new level. We wouldn’t recommend making a brew while on the move, though…

‘The seats at the front actually have covers on which I made to match the rest of the interior,’ Dave told us. ‘I’ve made all the trim inside, but apart from that everything is pretty much as it was.’

It’s hard not to escape the conclusionthat Dave found his perfect vehicle when the Range Rover came in to his life. An everyday runabout you can use for everything, including a spontaneous vacation or indeed a well planned expedition… actually, it’s

hard not to escape the conclusion that he found everybody’s perfect vehicle at the same time. When you’ve got a classic car, an overland wagon and a work truck rolled into one, and you don’t even need to run something else for day-to-day errands, you’re one smart motorist.

‘In my first 15 years of owning this car,’ Dave said as our chat concluded, ‘I probably did about 100,000 miles in it. It gets about, that’s for sure – but it is still the newest car I’ve ever owned.’

That’s saying something of a car approaching the big 5-0. But somehow, it didn’t come as any surprise at all. So we took our leave with that nugget of information ringing in ours ears. This rare old Rangey was Dave’s youngest ever vehicle. The youngest, and also safe to say the best? We didn’t even need to ask.

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LEXUS RZ450E

L

exus was there at the dawn of hybrid SUVs. Since then, the company has pushed relentlessly forward with plug-in hybrids and started to introduce full EVs into its range – which more recently gained a new all-electric flagship in the form of the RZ450e.

This could be interpreted as an electric RX. There’s a bit more to it than that, obviously, but the similarities are there – and many of the hallmarks that make the RX such a superb premium SUV are there to be seen in the RZ too.

To start with something you’d expect, build quality and materials are outstanding.

The fixtures and fittings are rock solid and every touch point feels good, from the steering wheel to the controls. The seats are exceptionally comfortable, with loads of adjustability all round, and their leather cladding looks and feels luxurious.

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Something you might not expect, on the other hand, is that despite its very sporty looking body shape, rear legroom is enormous. Even more surprisingly, headroom is too, even with a steeply sloping tailgate and panoramic glass roof, and despite a high waistline you still get a good view out. We’re not sure how Lexus managed to combine all these things, but they did and it’s a very fine vehicle in which to be a passenger.

It’s even quite practical, with rear seats that fold close to flat and leave a good, long cargo bay whose low floor makes up for the space lost to that fast tailgate. Considering this is such a style wagon, its overall usability in the back for people and luggage alike is way better than we expected.

It’s not bad up front, either, with a big cubby box whose lid very cleverly hinges to right or left depending on who’s opening it.

Most of our oddments ended up in the door pockets, but this is a smart bit of design (one that’s carried over directly from the RX).

Cabin space is as generous up front as it is in the back, and the all-round view is excellent – with very good surround and rear-view cameras allowing precise manoeuvring in reverse. These are displayed on a big, wide infotainment screen that’s part of an effortlessly stylish dashboard arrangement and works very well with good graphics and quick responses.

The resemblance to an RX is strong here, and overall the RZ doesn’t feel as if it’s bashing you over the head with its electricness. Some EVs are designed to let you know that they’re not to be confused with those nasty smelly things but this one feels like part of the Lexus family, with a character that’s reminiscent of the RX but at once true to itself.

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It’s pure Lexus in the way it drives, too. The electric powertrain only ever has masses in reserve, with 309bhp and 321lbf. ft delivering utterly effortless performance from standstill onwards. It’s fast, but more to the point it’s gloriously refined.

Around town, you get noise coming through from seams and bumps in the road.

It really is just noise, though, with nothing in the way of crashes or rumbling to disturb you. Tyre noise is well muted at all speeds, and we don’t recall ever hearing any wind noise in it at all.

This is mirrored in its handling, which is very natural and predictable. Its steering

doesn’t have the feel on turn-in a trackday driver might want, but it’s more than alive enough for even a keen SUV owner and you can chuck the vehicle about to your heart’s content without it ever threatening to lose its grip on the road. Again, it feels natural – and with its electric motors dishing up an instant and overwhelming response when your foot goes down, it can be slung out of corners like a catapult.

The response is pretty good when you plug it in, too, with a fast charging time of less than an hour to get it from about 2590%. The meter is honest about how much you’re chewing through and what’s still

available, too – something not every EV can boast. Certainly, we never felt the weight of worry you can get when planning a journey from charger to charger.

Overall, the RX is a really nice premium SUV. It has all the virtues of a top-quality sporty 4x4 – plus the fact that it’s a Lexus… plus the fact that it’s electric. At the time of writing, it’s priced from £64,500 to £75,100 on the road, with our test vehicle listing at £69,600 – and you don’t have to look far away to find a whole slew of SUV that cost similar money or more and don’t come close to matching the RZ’s appeal. This is Lexus doing what it does best.

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TRAVEL

TRAIN IN V

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n Britain, we tend to think of narrowgauge railways as quaint old things, short sections of track amid the worked-out slate mines of North Wales plied by gleaming little engines for the amusement of tourists. The idea of crossborder heavy industry being built on such a thing sounds impossible.

Exactly 150 years ago, however, the first trains ran on what was one of the most ambitious railway projects the world has

ever seen. One of the most ambitious and, at the time, the highest above sea level anywhere on the planet.

The Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia (FCAB) runs between the Bolivian capital of La Paz and the port of Antofagasta, some 715 miles to the south. On the way, it climbs to an altitude of 3956 metres – that’s not far off halfway to Everest, on a route for which ground was first broken at a time when the world’s highest peak was

still more than a quarter of a century away from being conquered.

Back in the early days, trains on the FCAB were hauled by mules. But in 1876, the railway entered the steam age, with a steady stream of heavy goods trains being hauled by locos imported mainly from the USA but also, occasionally, Britain.

These ran on rails with a gauge of 2’ 6”, making the FCAB one of the world’s first narrow-gauge railways. Indeed, it was seen

Train Cemetery, by Andrey Stekachev @ flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED

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N VAIN

This image provides some impression of the sheer scale of the landscape here – the Salar’s area is half that of Wales Pic: Bolivia 2017, by Kyle Taylor @ flickr.com. CC BY 2.0 DEED

The Salar de Uyuni is one of the world’s most iconic destinations for overland travel. But there’s more to this famed region of Bolivia than a salt pan half the size of Wales. Venture just a few miles south and you’ll find yourself amid the tangled remains of a railway that was once a wonder of the engineering world Words: Jorge de las Habas Pictures: As credited

as being the railway which proved to the world that a smaller set-up could work as efficiently as a standard-gauge system.

Less efficient, however, was the fact that as it grew, the railway needed to connect up with other lines.

For a while, the way around this was to change the bogies on freight wagons at the junctions between systems. Up they would go on a hoist, leaving their wheels behind, then down they would be lowered

on to another set and on they would roll.

Imagine doing this on an entire train made up of dozens of wagons, though… what’s that we were saying about efficiency?

So in 1913, the line’s directors decided to convert it to 1000mm standard gauge.

The process, which was finally completed in 1928, saved time and therefore money – though it required a new set of locos to haul the ever bigger, ever busier trains operating on the route.

Starting on the coast in Antofagasta, these ran inland and started to climb almost immediately as the thin strip of litoral flatland on which the city huddles gave way to the foothills of the Andes.

Interestingly, all of this was in Bolivia when the line was built – however after a four-year war between the nations ended in 1883, the first 320 miles or so suddenly found themselves in Chile, where they’ve been ever since.

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‘The bizarre spectacle is made up of a combination of locos and wagons, as well as random pieces of railway equipment dumped alongside some long-forgotten old tracks’

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Train cemetery (Uyuni, Bolivia), by Sasha India @ flickr.com. CC BY 2.0 DEED

It would be impossible to exaggerate the challenges faced by the teams of engineers and navigators whose job it was to built this pioneering railway line.

As they struck ever inland, the terrain became more and more hostile – forcing them to commission what was at the time the second highest viaduct in the world.

Designed by the pioneering civil engineer Edwards Woods, the Viaducto de Conchi is a trestle construction spanning 810 feet and standing 335 feet in height. It went out of use in 1918 when the route of the line was revised, taking it away from the Rio Conchi whose deep valley it had previously needed to cross, but still stands today as a national monument.

Another 40 miles or so beyond here, the line reaches its summit at Ascotán, in the copper mining heartland of Calama, then a similar distance again brings up Ollagūe and the Bolivian border. After this, another hundred miles has you in a town whose name is very familiar to overlanders: Uyuni.

The Salar de Uyuni is famous among travellers in general, not just 4x4 drivers.

And how could a shimmering white desert half the size of Wales not be? The world’s biggest salt pan, it’s also among the largest completely flat areas on the planet – its elevation varies by less than a metre across its entire area.

Also known locally as Salar de Tunupa, after the Aymara deity whose tears are said to have created it, the salt pan is almost completely devoid of vegetation or wildlife. Save for giant, slow-growing cacti which can live to more than a thousand years, it’s probably almost true to say that the most common species of flora or fauna is humankind – typically to be found aboard a Toyota Land Cruiser.

These are the chosen vehicles of the many local tour operators who take backpackers and adventure seekers on to the Salar to gaze in awe at the landscape, though there’s nothing to stop overlanders from venturing out on to the salt in their own vehicles too. Indeed, the sheer size of the pan’s flat expanse means it’s commonly used as a transit route across the Bolivian part of the Altiplano.

But what of the railway? Uyuni is an important transport hub here, too. The FCAB continues to run today, carrying minerals and other cargo as well as passengers, but half a mile or so to the south of the town is a junction. To the right is the line for Chile, to the left Argentina.

But there’s something else here, too. Something which pulls in visitors with almost as much magnetic force as the Salar. It’s not presented as a tourist attraction – there’s no car park or interpretative centre, not even a Subway or McDonalds. But alongside the tracks are two long lines of abandoned trains, partially broken up and slowly rusting away amid the parched landscape.

The bizarre spectacle is made up of a mixture of locos and wagons, as well as random pieces of railway equipment left dumped alongside some long-forgotten old tracks. What it all has in common is that it’s in a state of advanced decay; the lack of rain means it’s only rusting slowly, but over the decades local people have plundered metal from the abandoned

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Bolivia, Uyuni, Train Cemetary,

by Graham Styles @ flickr.com. CC BY 2.0 DEED

hulks, whose condition isn’t helped by frequent strong winds carrying fine particles of abrasive sand. The same winds pick up every item of loose litter dropped in Uyuni, too, all of which seem to end up hooked on some jagged edge or other of a semi-broken loco or tender.

It sounds chaotic, untidy and perhaps rather depressing. And for sure, the sense of decay is all-pervading; it’s known locally as the Cementerio de Trenes, and you might well feel as if you’re walking among the dead as you visit. Take a glass half full approach, though, and this is an almost uniquely well preserved window on a

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form of history rarely seen anywhere else.

The reality of the railways was never like Thomas the Tank Engine; preservation lines back home tell a particular kind of story, dwelling on the twee and the pretty, but these looming wrecks standing silently upon the desert floor are a true product of industry. Used and no longer needed, they were left where they stood simply because that was the cheapest thing to do.

Experts have identified the earliest locomotive in the graveyard as dating from 1906, and the most recent from 1928.

These are build dates, of course, and they don’t indicate when the locos would have

been laid up, but the trigger for their mass abandonment was the collapse of the region’s mining industry in the 1940s.

To add to the sense of melancholy, what hasn’t been removed from the locos and wagons has frequently been daubed in graffiti. You could see this as adding to the heritage here, or taking away from it, but it certainly doesn’t make it any less gloomy.

You look along the line of rusty hulks, each of them the remnants of something that was once magnificent, and imagine them all in full steam. The sound, the drama, the power, the magnificence; now, to quote Hamlet, the rest is silence.

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The Salar is pock-marked with islands – this is Isla Incahuasi. Once a year, the salt flats are flooded by overspill from Lake Titicaca and the islands become actual islands surrounded by water Pic: Jen Bright and Gavin Lowrie

Bolivia, by Belinda Grasnick @ flickr.com. CC BY-ND 2.0 DEED

Yet if the Cementerio de Trenes was in any way preserved as a tourist attraction, it would be less of one for those who visit as overlanders. Those backpackers on their paid-for Land Cruiser tours will be in and out in an hour. For an overlander, the utter lack of restrictions, of rules and of fences means you can park up among the twisted metal and reach peace with the contrasting emotions of witnessing such a thing. You can pop open your roof tent and sleep among the naked shapes, if you don’t find the idea just too creepy, or you can wander to your heart’s content, imagining these very trains steaming across the Viaducto

de Conchi or hauling long lines of loaded wagons up the face of the Andes en route inland from Antofagasta.

There are other train graveyards in this region, some of them better preserved (or, to put it another way, far enough from any major towns not to have been used as a handy source of mild steel). Potosi, in particular, would be worth putting on your itinerary if your travels bring you here.

Uyuni and Potosi are linked by 150 miles of highway, which take you through a jagged landscape of parched mountains.

But as is almost always the case in the Andes and Altiplano, there are roads less

travelled which can turn every journey into a 4x4 adventure. Give yourself time, and you have practically an entire continent to explore. It’s a place that can feel almost untouched by history, let alone modernity, while at the same time there are signs all around that industry was hard at work here at a time when even in Britain, few roads were yet paved. The Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia may have started out as a mule-hauled narrow-gauge tramway built on Victorian engineering – but the rusting hulks of Uyuni bear silent witness to a railroad which, in its day, was a wonder of the industrial world

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Land Rovers are returning to Shepton Mallet this April for a Spring weekend filled with Land Rovers. Take your 4x4 around the Off-Road Course with the AWDC, camp over and enjoy drinks and food with old friends.

Exhibitors old and new will join us, selling everything from parts & accessories to tyres, clothing and toys. Talk to overland adventure specialists about your next trip, discuss modification options with companies with the know-how and other experienced Land Rover owners.

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NEXT MONTH

SIMPSON DESERT

Four Land Rovers on a mission to reach the dead centre of nowhere

ITALIAN JOB

Off-roading Lamborghini’s wildest 4x4 in the land of tarantulas

COPEHILL DOWN

There is a corner of a Wiltshire field that is forever Germany…

PLUS Seven days in an Ineos Grenadier

Concluding the chilling tale of our Antarctic expedition

DS7 and Lexus RZ450e on test

FEBRUARY 2024 ISSUE: ON SALE 18 JANUARY 64

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

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

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06/12/2023 11:33

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

THE EXPERT VERDICT ON THE 4X4 MARKET

50 VEHICLES • 10 CLASS WINNERS • 1 CHAMPION 1 Cover.indd 1

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WELCOME THE DAY I SAT DOWN TO WRITE THIS, a new report by some think tank or other warned that the gap between the haves and the have-nots was growing. It have have been called the Institute for the Bleeding Obvious, I’m not sure, of the wealth, or whatever the utterly disgraceful statistic is, something is blatantly wrong.

Last year in this column, I lamented the fact that people were having to tighten their belts – which meant lowering their car buying sights in order to be able to keep on paying the mortgage.

Are things any better now? The worst of the interest rate crisis is over, supposedly, and food

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

but in a world where 3% of the people own 97%

and fuel prices are a little less ridiculous… if there’s a feel-good factor coming back, it’s doing so in quite a heavy disguise, but when you look at the SUV market there clearly does seem to be no shortage of people spending big money on new motors.

The new-shape Defender is a pretty common sight on the street, after all. And we know what we think about the prices on those. Ineos have a huge order bank on the Grenadier, Jeep’s big problem with the Wrangler and new Grand Cherokee is just getting its hands on them, and Kia has just launched its most expensive car ever in the EV9 – and sold almost a quarter of its first year’s target before any customers had even driven one.

People clearly haven’t given up on buying new vehicles. At the sort of price that’s now considered average, that says something, especially when electric vehicles are one of the big growth areas – and we all know how much

Feel-good factor?

Maybe it should be called the 4x4 factor instead…

they cost.

When you watch the news, it all seems to be wall-to-wall depressing. Poverty, war, climate change… there’s not a lot to smile about. But people who know a good car when they see one are still putting their hands in their pockets.

Feel good factor? Maybe it should be called the 4x4 factor instead…

Alan Kidd Editor

4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | 3

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4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | CONTENTS

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | CONTENTS

CONTENTS 6

Crossovers

LAST YEAR’S WINNERS: Subaru Outback / Nissan Qashqai NOMINATED: Subaru Outback, Nissan Qashqai, Toyota Yaris Cross, SsangYong Korando, Nissan Juke

8

Small SUVs

LAST YEAR’S WINNER: Kia Sportage NOMINATED: Kia Sportage, Jeep Renegade, Volvo XC40, Skoda Karoq, Volkswagen T-Roc

10 Medium SUVs LAST YEAR’S WINNER: Nissan X-Trail NOMINATED: Lexus NX, Nissan X-Trail, Subaru Forester, Toyota RAV4, Ford Kuga

12 Large SUVs LAST YEAR’S WINNER: Kia Sorento NOMINATED: Kia Sorento, Land Rover Discovery, Mercedes-Benz GLE, Volvo XC90, Lexus RX

14 Electric SUVs LAST YEAR’S WINNER: Skoda Enyaq iV NOMINATED: Lexus RZ450e, Jeep Avenger, Kia EV6, Nissan Ariya, Volkswagen ID.4

16 Performance SUVs LAST YEAR’S WINNER: Porsche Cayenne NOMINATED: Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio, Lamborghini Urus, Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, Skoda Enyaq vRS, Aston Martin DBX

18 Budget SUVs LAST YEAR’S WINNER: NOMINATED: Suzuki S-Cross, Dacia Duster, Ford Focus Active, MG HS, Suzuki Vitara

20 Luxury SUVs LAST YEAR’S WINNER: Bentley Bentayga NOMINATED: Kia EV9, Bentley Bentayga, Mercedes-Benz GLS, Range Rover, Rolls-Royce Cullinan

22 Off-Roaders LAST YEAR’S WINNER: Toyota Land Cruiser NOMINATED: Jeep Wrangler, JLR Defender, Mercedes-Benz G-Class, SsangYong Rexton, Ineos Grenadier

24 Pick-Ups LAST YEAR’S WINNER: Isuzu D-Max NOMINATED: Ford Ranger, Isuzu D-Max, SsangYong Musso, Toyota Hilux, Volkswagen Amarok

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | CROSSOVERS NISSAN QASHQAI

£27,120-£42,050

The Qashqai is a perennial favourite with the British public, and with its blend of looks, kit and easy driving that’s no surprise.

It rides well and cruises quietly, and it can carry a family with ease. Top models, meanwhile, reward you with an impressive list of stylish and good-quality equipment.

TOYOTA YARIS CROSS

£24,855-£29,480

The Yaris Cross will soon gain a suite of upgrades, making it a better prospect than ever. It was alreadty sure-footed and capable in most situations on and, within reason, off-road, and it comes with plenty of kit. It’s not a Land Cruiser, but to get a Toyota 4x4 at this sort of money counts as very good value indeed

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

WINNER | SUBARU OUTBACK

BEST CROSSOVER

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | CROSSOVERS SSANGYONG KORANDO

£22,190-£32,485

The Korando is smooth, refined and enjoyable to drive, whether in petrol or diesel form. The top-spec model comes laden with kit, and all are strong on practicality. It’s no longer available with four-wheel drive, though SsangYong’s warrant is as monumental as ever.

NISSAN JUKE

£20,985-£31,110

The Juke’s small size suits its styling well, making it look fun and funky. There’s substance to it as well, though, with a roomy cabin up front and good cargo-carrying abilities, even if the rear seats are only for kids. It’s an up-for-it vehicle to drive, with decent dynamics and enough zest to put a smile on your face.

£36,990-£42,490 THE OUTBACK HAS SEEN OFF almost an entire class of rivals from Audi, Volkswagen, Vauxhall and Volvo to reclaim its position as the go-to vehicle for people wanting an estate car that can go off-road. It’s what Subaru does best.

Last year, the Outback was new and it took over from the Subaru XV at the top of the tree. Now, well, it still feels new. With the Crossover Estates class depleted by the loss of almost every vehicle in it, we’ve merged it back into the Crossovers in general – and here’s the Outback, still on top.

It’s all the family car you’re ever likely to need. And it can splash through mud all day long without flinching – especially in Field form, with a waterproof interior that’s aimed at owners with outdoor lifestyles. It’s ideally suited to life in the countryside, whether at work or play.

It’s very composed in town, too, and on every kind of open road. It steers and handles very naturally and rides with a studied poise that goes well with the refined pull from its 2.5-litre petrol engine.

The refinements continue inside the cabin, too, where the dashboard is dominated by a vertical tablet whose full-height display operates the majority of vehicle functions. It looks classy, modern and premium, and goes very well with the rest of an interior whose build quality is just as you expect from Subaru.

The crossover market is a big one, but there was a time when the Outback had it to itself. In a manner of speaking, it still does.

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | SMALL SUVS JEEP RENEGADE

£30,030-£38,500

The Renegade has a touch of Jeep attitude and a cabin that’s both cool and usable. It’s fine and quite refined to drive, and the plug-in hybrid option is excellent. Best of all, the Trailhawk model at the top of the range has off-road abilities that wipe the floor with everything else in this class.

VOLKSWAGEN T-ROC

£27,815-£44,915

The T-Roc has bags of youth appeal – especially now VW has warmed up its interiors. It’s very well made and enjoyable to drive, and up at the top of the range the high-performance R model is blisteringly fast. Its rear seats are as spacious as you’ll get in this part of the market, and it’s well made and generously kitted across the range.

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

WINNER | KIA SPORTAGE

BEST SMALL SUV

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | SMALL SUVS VOLVO XC40

£33,831-£53,818

You wouldn’t ever mistake an XC40 for anything else.

Its cabin is exceptionally well put together and roomier than you’d expect, with plenty of equipment and good usability. The XC40 is available as a mild hybrid or, in Recharge form, as a full EV – in each case, it’s very good value for money.

SKODA KAROQ

£28,365-£35,115

The days when you could get it in Scout form, with four-wheel drive and off-road accessories, are in the past. But the Karoq is an excellent everyday SUV whose combination of quality, equipment and practicality ticks all the usual Skoda boxes. It’s all petrol engines and frontwheel drive only, but the vehicle itself is willing and built to last.

£29,345-£45,745 IT TAKES SOMETHING TO WIN THIS CLASS, and it takes something else besides to win it twice.

That’s what the Sportage has done, making it two in a row after winning the award in its first year on sale.

Kia is no longer trying to trade on price the way it once did. The Sportage is a good value vehicle, by it’s far from being the cheapest of its kind – in fact, it’s priced in a range that bears comparison to some models in the class above.

That’s an indication of Kia’s confidence in its products, and in the technology it has invested in as it brings them into the electrified age. Most Sportages are hybrids, with a variety of powertrain options on offer, and this is reflected in the spread of prices – as is a range of trim options which, towards the top of the tree, becomes increasinly comprehensive and even premium.

That’s the way it drives, too. Its ride is exeptionally smooth and quiet, with as good as no vibration from its drivetrain or suspension.

You can throw is about for fun, though what’s more relevant is that in normal driving it handles with an easy fluidity that makes it both manoeuvrable and beautifully relaxing.

It’s a joy to sit in, too, with a cabin that’s full of quality materials and equipment. The cabin has been expertly laid out and enough room in the back to make it a true family wagon. Drop the seats down and it turns into a small van, too.

No, it’s not cheap like Kias once were. But this is the work of a 4x4 manufacturer whose confidence, and vehicles, are riding high.

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | MEDIUM SUVS SUBARU FORESTER

£37,990-£40,990

Beneath the Forester’s car-like design is a robust workhorse and elegant family vehicle rolled into one. It makes practicality feel like a form of luxury and has the image of a 4x4 that’ll shrug off anything. Subaru owners tend to be very happy customers – and the Forester demonstrates why.

FORD KUGA

£33,380-£41,125

The Kuga’s hides its size behind the styling of a hatchback. But make no mistake, this is a very capable SUV. It’s spacious and well equipped inside and easy to drive in every situation, just so long as you don’t need all-wheel drive (which isn’t available). Top models in particular offer a high-value premium experience.

WINNER | NISSAN X-TRAIL

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | MEDIUM SUVS LEXUS NX

£44,430-£62,435

The NX brings luxury car road manners to this part of the SUV market, but it’s surprisingly able off-road too. Refinement is off the scale, both in hybrid and plug-in form. It blends sky-high quality with a delightful cabin – and prices for some models have actually come down since last year.

TOYOTA RAV4

£36,080-£48,990

The RAV4 turns chunkiness into an art form, both inside and out, and it’s a pleasure to drive on every kind of road – as well as having some decent green lane skills. It’s related to the Lexus NX and feels similarly high in build quality – and like its cousin it’s available as one of the best plug-in hybrids on the market.

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

£32,890-£49,370

BEST MEDIUM SUV

LAST YEAR’S OVERALL WINNER continues to impress hugely as the standout vehicle in one of the strongest classes on the market.

That’s not just because of the clever e-4ORCE drivetrain, either – because throughout.the range, the X-Trail is an extremely capable vehicle.

A family SUV has to be a highly practical thing it it’s to be any good at all. At the top of the range, the X-Trail takes a well aimed pop at the premium SUV market with the combination of quality, equipment and trim it delivers, but this would mean little if it didn’t also provide good accommodation and the ability to swallow huge loads of luggage, and it has these abilities in abundance.

Models with the e-4ORCE system are quick and have all-wheel drive, and the abilities they demonstrate off-road are spectacular for a 4x4 of this nature. Given the grip, it will tackle remarkably tough obstacles.

The rest of the range is 4x2 only, however on the road there is no such thing as an X-Trail that’s dull to drive. Even the mild hybrid model is beautifully refined, whether in town or on the motorway, and the ePower and e-4ORCE, whose electric drivetrains are kept powered by an on-board petrol engine, take that a step forward. Ride quality is good, too, and all models handle sharply, with 4x4s adding next-level grip on top of what is already a supremely sure-footed experience.

The competition in this market is ferocious, and the X-Trail is by no means the cheapest medium SUV. It really is outstanding, however, both for your money and full stop.

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | LARGE SUVS KIA SORENTO

£44,995-£56,995

Last year’s class winner remains the best value route into a large SUV with a premium feel to it. With seven seats, loads of kit and excellent quality, plus a vast warranty, it’s classy and excellent to drive. This year’s models are only for sale while stocks last, however, so you might want to get in there quick.

LAND ROVER DISCOVERY

£60,540-£80,215

The Discovery has been left behind by the Defender, but it’s distinct from its cousin – and from the Range Rover, too. Its range of abilities is huge, with supreme refinement and real agility both on and off-road, and inside the cabin it’s as calm and relaxing as anything at this price point. It does everything – and does it very, very well.

WINNER | LEXUS RX

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | LARGE SUVS MERCEDES-BENZ GLE

£77,985-£142,200

The GLE’s prices have leapt upwards in the last year. AMG versions were always expensive, but everyday models now make the Discovery look cheap. That does however reflect the quality, road manners and, optionally, mesmerising off-road skill built in to an SUV in which it’s a pleasure to travel.

VOLVO XC90

£57,362-£72,434

Volvo offers a different take on the premium SUV theme, and as well as standing out in a crowd the XC90 also looks like good value alongside its rivals.

It’s a practicality monster and one of the safest family cars around, but it’s also a lavishly specced and comfortable SUV with good all-round road manners and decent green lane skills.

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

£62,125-£82,1955

BEST LARGE SUV

THE NEW RX arrived in Britain this year with four generations of heritage behind it. Lexus is not known for making SUVs that want to go off-road, however this one has a Trail Mode which allows it to take on the sort of terrain that’s appropriate to a vehicle of this nature.

More importantly, this new RX is a quantum leap forward from the previous model – which itself was up there with the best. It’s available with three drivetrains, all of them hybrids: 350h and 500h self-charging systems, and the plug-in 450h+ which Lexus says will account for more than 50% of its UK sales.

Build quality is flawless, with a superb combination of materials creating a wonderful environment in which to travel. It’s lavishly equipped with the best stuff, including a media system whose screen is pinsharp and whose sound reproduction is like being in a concert hall.

It all makes you tend to overlook the vehicle’s practicality, but this too is sky-high – as of course is the comfort in both rows of seats.

It’s very, very relaxing to drive, with a huge feeling of wellness that washes over you as you glide away silently. The smoothness of its ride is exemplary, on every kind of road; it’s more like gliding than being connected to the ground. Yet when you want to have fun, it steers with enough weight and handles with enough poise to be enjoyable on the sort of road that makes you glad to be alive. Combine this with the ability to find traction on rough, slippy ground, and you have the consummate premium SUV.

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | ELECTRIC SUVS KIA EV6

£45,245-£62,645

Kia made waves with the EV6, an coupe-SUV whose range includes a blinding GT model with 577bhp.

You don’t need to go that far to get what is a very well equipped vehicle with a superb cabin and excellent all-round driving characteristics.

It’s a classy, great-looking family SUV with real 4x4 ability.

LEXUS RZ450e

£64,500-£75,100

The RZ450e is more than just an electric version of the RX. The similarities are there, though – which is no bad thing.

Behind the RZ’s eye-catching looks is a gorgeous cabin and a combination of chassis and drivetrain that makes it a delight to drive. It’s both futuristic and reassuringly familiar, all in one sublime package.

WINNER | JEEP AVENGER

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | ELECTRIC SUVS NISSAN ARIYA

£39,645-£59,025

What stands out most about the Ariya is its cabin, a beautifully crafted place to be whose haptic controls and tactile materials put you instantly at ease. It’s a competent load carrier, too, and a pleasingly refined car to drive on every kind of road, with agility to go with its smooth performance.

VOLKSWAGEN ID.4

£46,035-£53,865

The ID.4 is one of the best all-rounders we’ve driven this year. Its interior is exceptional, with exellent seating for all and loads of luggage space, and it has the premium feel of a quality vehicle. It’s easy and enjoyable to drive, too – and in GTX form, four-wheel drive gives it the ability to get you about on loose surfaces.

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

£62,125-£82,1955

BEST ELECTRIC SUV

JEEP’S FIRST FULL ELECTRIC VEHICLE is a proper Jeep. Not in the Wrangler sense, of course, but the company’s unique take on what an SUV should be carries through successful into this new format.

In time, the Avenger will be available with four-wheel drive and, the jungle drums are telling us, a Trailhawk model – and Jeep doesn’t do that lightly. It can be expected to be the best electric off-roader the market has yet seen.

In the meantime, this is an SUV with a funky, classy cabin which proves that you don’t need just-so materials to make an impression.

The bits that matter are spot-on, with family-friendly legroom and enough cargo space to take more or less any load you care to carry.

Talking of what matters, the Avenger looks brilliant. This will matter to a lot of its target buyers, as will a grinworthy turn of pace as you bury the throttle and set off on a wall of torque.

It’s more than just fast, with plenty of grip and control in corners and an impressively composed ride on all but the worst roads. It’s quiet, of course – but the lack of engine noise doesn’t let in any racket from the road on a motorway cruise.

The Avenger won’t become a real off-roader until later in 2024. For now, however, we managed to ease one through a massive axle-twister, wheels waving everywhere, and it never stopped moving forward. And that was with two-wheel drive.

The all-electric Wrangler is still to come. For now, though, Jeep’s first EV is worthy of the name.

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | PERFORMANCE SUVS SKODA ENYAQ vRS

£53,120-£54,820

Last year, the Enyaq held on to the Electric SUV title it won in 2022. Now here it is mixing it with the best performance 4x4s in vRS form. It’s rapid, it looks the business and its cabin is top-notch – and between its purchase price and running costs, it provides near-unbeatable performance for your pound.

LAMBORGHINI URUS

£188,000-£213,750

It’s a big if but, if you’ve got the money, the Urus is an all-round 4x4 of the highest order. It’s a roomy, comfortable family car, a status symbol of the highest order and a warp-speed superSUV that can ease you over a snowy Alpine pass then drop down to the autobahn and blast you home at 190. It’s a work of art, and of engineering brilliance.

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

WINNER | PORSCHE TAYCAN CROSS TURISMO

BEST PERFORMANCE SUV

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | PERFORMANCE SUVS ASTON MARTIN DBX

£179,160-£197,160

With 707bhp coming from its 4.0-litre V8 engine, the DBX is just about as fast as they come. It’s not just about pace, though – its cabin is very spacious for passengers and luggage alike, and as well as bringing rarity value is has the cool cred of being an Aston. It’s a dynamic treat to drive, too.

ALFA ROMEO STELVIO QUADRIFOGLIO

£87,190

In Quadrifoglio form, the Stelvio is a beast of a vehicle.

It bristles with intent – then when you go for Race mode, it turns into a snorting, spitting trackday animal, all crackling exhausts and rock-hard suspension. It’s not refined, but that’s part of its charm – because it’s probably the most rewarding SUV there is to drive.

£88,200-£149,300 AN ELECTRIC VEHICLE WINNING a class open to those with petrol and diesel engines. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

The Taycan Cross Turismo is kind of a crossover estate, albeit a very low and sporty one. It’s luxurious, in a way that’s not showy and tarty – you certainly get looked after, but mainly it’s a performance vehicle.

Many people hate EVs on principle, but we doubt any of them have driven a Taycan. It launches with absolute venom, whether from a standing start or through the typical overtaking range – where it really is crushingly fast.

It handles the way a Porsche should, too, with wired-to-your-brain steering and handling that makes it an absolute joy on B-roads. Yet perhaps what’s most impressive is how smooth and relaxing it is on the motorway, where it glides along in serene isolation like a luxury car.

Talking of which, it has a modern, high-tech design theme inside that matches its futuristic looks. Quality is astronomical, as is the comfort in its seats – which, you may find surprisng to hear, offer enough leg room for one six-footer to sit behind another in real comfort.

Even less likely is the size of the load space when you drop the rear seats – which fold completely flat to yield a cargo bay that’s not very tall but is eye-poppingly long.

This all goes together to create a genuine set of SUV values. On top of this, you have the low running costs of an EV – and a full set of high-performance credentials. It’s a phenomenal vehicle.

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | BUDGET SUVS DACIA DUSTER

£17,295-£24,445

Almost the definition of a low-price SUV, the Duster is one of the very few you can get for under £20k.

Even the top model is cheap to buy, and this has all-wheel drive as well as an impressive range of equipment. There’s an all-new model coming soon, however, which promises to be worth waiting for.

FORD FOCUS ACTIVE

£29,320

Although it doesn’t have fourwheel drive, an effective traction control system gives this version of the Focus some decent ability on rough tracks. Its lower body cladding won’t stop much more than scratches, but it boasts lifted suspension and taller tyres than the rest of the Focus range, and is every bit as good as them on the road.

WINNER | SUZUKI S-CROSS

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | BUDGET SUVS MG HS

£23,495-£25,995

You won’t find another large SUV at this money.

The HS is a good looker, too, and inside the cabin there’s a load of kit even on entry models. You don’t get all-wheel drive, but with good ground clearance it will still go places. There’s no better example of why you see so many MGs on the road now.

SUZUKI VITARA

£20,499-£25,849

An all-time classic name in the world of 4x4s, the Vitara still has the looks of a traditional off-roader – and at the top of the range you can spec it with four-wheel drive, too. The latest version adds refinement to the previous mix, and with a range of lively hybrid engines it’s as cheap to run as it is to buy – and a lot of fun to drive.

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

£26,099-£32,649

BEST BUDGET SUV

THE NEW-GENERATION S-CROSS is what the old one should have been. It’s solid, nippy and very well equipped – all familiar things – but this time it looks good. .

The previous S-Cross was styled like an insect that had flown into a window. This one by contract is aggressive looking and comes over like an SUV from a class or two above. If you see it in your mirrors, at first glance you might think you’ve got something like an Audi Q7 on your case.

While it’s not as cheap as the Vitara, the S-Cross is a little more together as a family SUV. You get stacks of equipment in a cabin with a good feeling of quality about it, as well as ample space for passengers and luggage alike. In particular, the in-car tech works very well, mirroring your smartphone without putting up a fight.

On the road, the S-Cross is a sport utility vehicle with the accent on the sport. It handles well and is brisk enough to be fun on B-roads, and this translates into a grippy, sure-footed performance on loose trails. Severe off-road terrain is not what it was built for, but it will plug its way through stickier conditions than you’d expect – then on the way home, it rides tidily on the motorway and keeps out noise well enough not to be wearing.

The S-Cross has not always been an obvious choice, especially with the Vitara around. However it has become something it never was before – a vehicle with eye appeal to go with its all-round SUV abilities and value-for-money price tag.

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | LUXURY SUVS BENTLEY BENTAYGA

£169,000-£254,000

The Bentayga has won this class for the last two years, and if you want a traditional luxury SUV it remains a seminal choice.

And choice is the word, with endless opportunities to personalise a vehicle that comes with the sort of quality and customer care most other brands can only dreeam of.

MERCEDES-BENZ GLS

£108,070-£181,755

With seven-seat practicality and S-Class quality, the GLS is a workhorse and luxury car in one. An optional off-road pack gives it remarkable capability on rough ground, should you want it, and the AMG model is brutally fast. For real luxury, the Maybach variant at the top of the range is a genuine rival to the Bentley Bentayga.

WINNER | KIA EV9

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | LUXURY SUVS JLR RANGE ROVER

£103,720-£188,825

No longer a Land Rover, but still a Range Rover, with all the quality and reliability that stands for.

Expect effortless performance, silky ride and refinement and a supreme driving position – in a cabin that will make you feel great about yourself. It a capable off-roader and mighty tow car, too.

ROLLS-ROYCE CULLINAN

£298,000

The Cullinan almost belongs in a class of its own for luxury.

It’s powered by a 6.75-litre V12, making it effortlessly fast and supremely refined, and its cabin is like being in a hotel – with an endless range of options meaning you can personalise its specification, styling and price to the skies.

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

£64,995-£76,995

BEST LUXURY SUV

BRITAIN’S BEST LUXURY SUV is electric. And it’s a Kia. Both these things will, unavoidably, cause consternation in some circles. But we’re known for the fearlessness of our verdicts and we’ve been proved right often enough in the past.

Why is the EV9 in this class in the first place? It’s not a luxury car in the same way as last year’s winner, the Bentley Bentayga, but Kia is transforming itself. It has gone from a budget car maker into a mainstream one, and now it’s becoming increasingly premium in its ambitions – and the EV9 is by some way the highest it has ever aimed a product.

And its aim was true. This is a vastly well equipped vehicle whose interior turns practicality into a form of luxury. Its equipment is lavish and works very well, and it has one of the best driving positions we have ever experienced. You get a choice of six and seven-seat cabins, each of them highly flexible and both capable of folding down to reveal a gargantuan cargo area.

Few EVs have ever driven more like a traditional premium SUV. Its acceleration brooks no argument, but what matters more is its ride and handling – both of which are smooth and refined, with a massive feeling of control on every kind of road. Its agile enough for you to enjoy its prodigious power, and you can sit behind the wheel for hours and emerge fresh as a daisy. If you hate electric vehicles, you hate electric vehicles – but if you have an open mind, the EV9 will have you wondering why you need to spend more on a conventional luxury SUV.

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | OFF-ROADERS JEEP WRANGLER

£60,785-£62,785

A traditional truck with all the right engineering, the Wrangler is also very modern in its high-tech toys and luxuries. There’s nothing that can match its capacity for modifications, too. Getting hold of one can be the biggest challenge, but they hold their value like almost no other new vehicle on the market.

JLR DEFENDER

£62,095-£117,120

Genuinely superb on the road and a masterpiece of high-tech ingenuity on every kind of rough terrain, the Defender is the definitive ‘rugged utility vehicle’. It’s a masterpiece of styling with huge presence and cachet. If you want an off-roader, though, look at the alternatives and it’s hard not to see its pricing as a bit of an insult.

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

WINNER | INEOS GRENADIER

BEST OFF-ROADER

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | OFF-ROADERS MERCEDES-BENZ G-CLASS

£131,335-£193,395

It’s primarily sold in Britain as a luxury vehicle, and it can’t escape its rap-star image, but the G-Wagen is the real thing if you want it to be. Its cabin space is less generous than in a true SUV but the driving position is sky-high, and with a live real axle and all the diff-locks it will go wherever you dare take it.

SSANGYONG REXTON

£39,500-£46,250

The Rexton makes every other off-roader look over-priced. It’s a genuinely capable vehicle with low-range as standard, yet it’s also a roomy, classy allrounder with a genuinely premium feeling to it. Whether as a workhorse or daily driver, it has the vibe of a cut-price Range Rover – and you still can’t get more 4x4 for your money.

£64,500-£76,000 THE LONG-AWAITED spiritual successor to the Land Rover Defender (the original one) has finally arrived.

And it was worth waiting for. Land Rover has become JLR and the Defender has become a school run statement, but the Grenadier is a traditional off-road vehicle – done in a modern way.

For the first time in decades, a manufacturer has introduced a new 4x4 with a ladder chassis, beam axles (plural) and low range. That in itself is massive. But there’s much more to the Grenadier than that. Its design is laden with clever touches that make it intensely usable; it was built to be an expedition truck, not an urban runabout.

Nonetheless, the Grenadier’s driving position is perfect around town, where a good view makes life so much easier. In this way, it’s just like the original Defender. Being sat up high is the best safety feature in the world, too, and it’s similarly helpful on the motorway.

Off-road, the vehicle is completely at home. It rolls over loose, rough and slippy terrain with a confidence that never feels contemptuous, and despite helping you out with a range of electronic aids you always feel involved and engaged. Vehicles that do the driving for you are impressive, but if you don’t want to be turned into a passenger the Grenadier will be perfect for you.

Crucially, like the old Defender the Grenadier was built to last – not to become dealer fodder in three years’ time. It’s a big investment, but one which Ineos says will yield a 4x4 for life. A new era has dawned.

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | OFF-ROADERS ISUZU D-MAX

£31,040-£58,760

The D-Max has become a farmers’ favourite, which is always a good sign. It’s very dependable indeed, whether at the utility end of the range or up among the lifestyle brigade – and Isuzu pulled off a master stroke by allying itself with Arctic Trucks to create a mangificent halo model in the AT35.

SSANGYONG MUSSO

£30,993-£41,313

The Musso is the perennial value champion in this class.

It’s a well specced but down to earth double-cab whose cabin owes a lot to the underrated Rexton SUV, and it has the distinction of being able to carry its full payload while also towing the legal maximum. It’s a massive amount of good-quality truck for your money.

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

WINNER | FORD RANGER

BEST PICK-UP

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | OFF-ROADERS TOYOTA HILUX

£34,434-£73,326

The Hilux continues to be known as the vehicle Top Gear couldn’t kill, and its build quality is indeed at the top of the game. But it’s not just a workhorse, as galloping sales of the 2.8-litre Invincible and GR Sport models demonstrate. Most of all, though, it’s hugely competent at everything it does.

VOLKSWAGEN AMAROK

£40,791-£57,591

Volkswagen had the premium end of the pick-up market all to itself with the old Amarok. The new model aims to pull off the same trick – and it gets off to a good start, with a superb cabin whose quality, layout and kit all impress. Possibly its strongest suit, however, is its ability to mimic an executive car’s ride and refinement on the motorway.

£34,639-£60,064 REPLACING AN OVERWHELMING MARKET LEADER is a tough ask.

But that’s what Ford has had to do with the new Ranger.

It got off to a good start, coming on strong with the vehicle’s styling.

It’s incredibly bold from the front, and just as distinctive too. It looks bluff, aggressive and powerful, to the extent that it almost looks like a caricature of itself. But it remains entirely convincing as a work truck, just as much a lifestyle motor.

Talking of lifestyle motors, the range is topped off by the Raptor model – whose performance has been taken to the next level by a 3.0-litre V6 petrol engine. It’s thirsty but oh, is it worth it.

In any Range, though, there’s a real feeling of presence from behind the wheel. Every engine in the lineup develops plenty of power and grunt, and the 10-speed auto box shifts imperceptibly almost every time. Ride quality is composed, too, without any jouncing or skipping over bumps, and you get the gungho handling of a proper truck.

Inside, it’s impressively roomy in both rows of seats and every model is well equipped – with the higher spec versions getting you well into what was once premium SUV territory. There’s plenty of stowage options, too, and the whole cabin feels robustly put together.

That’s as it should be for a truck whose off-road ability shines through the moment you leave the tarmac. The Ranger is big, but it can be driven with real precision thanks to its sure-footed tractability – all of which makes it a winning all-rounder.

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | RESULTS

CLASS AND SPECIAL AWARDS BEST CROSSOVER Subaru Outback BEST SMALL SUV Kia Sportage BEST MEDIUM SUV Nissan X-Trail BEST LARGE SUV Lexus RX BEST ELECTRIC SUV Jeep Avenger BEST PERFORMANCE SUV Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo BEST BUDGET SUV Suzuki S-Cross BEST LUXURY SUV Kia EV9 BEST OFF-ROAD VEHICLE Ineos Grenadier BEST PICK-UP Ford Ranger

BEST VALUE SSANGYONG REXTON

OFF-ROAD AWARD INEOS GRENADIER

Three things in life are certain: death, taxes and the SsangYong Rexton getting the Best Value award. Every year, we consider everything else in the 4x4 market – and every year, the big off-road wagon from Korea refuses to relinquish the title it won when it first went on sale.

The Rexton is not cheap the way it used to be. However with the rest of the market getting ever more expensive, it continues to offer a stellar deal – a big, spacious, well equipped and well made 4x4 with genuine off-road ability and a huge towing capacity at the sort of money you can spend on a small SUV.

It’s so, so rare for a new vehicle to emerge with the sort of engineering that once underpinned every 4x4. The Grenadier is seen by some as a throwback – but in fact it’s a response to a real need from people to whom the loss of the old-shape Defender left a hole in their lives.

The Grenadier is expensive in a way not even the last Defenders became. But it leaves them standing with the equipment it offers – not to mention its built-in longevity (yes, even compared to an old Defender) and, whisper it, what it can do off-road in standard form. It’s what the new Defender would have been if the old Land Rover had made it.

SUSTAINABILITY AWARD MUNRO SERIES M

MANUFACTURER OF THE YEAR KIA

We haven’t tested it yet, so the Series M doesn’t appear in these awards.

But we do recognise the pioneering spirit of the company behind it; a startup whose intention was to make something in the mould of the old Land Rover Defender, with all the right off-road engineering – but 100% electric.

What makes the Series M a true sustainability hero, however, is that Munro designed it to last for decades. Thus the carbon emitted in its manufacture will be locked in for many model cycles. Its batteries and motors are made for easy replacement, too, allowing it to be futureproofed against developments in the technology underpinning it.

We don’t think a manufacturer has ever won this award twice in a row. But Kia is on an absolute roll, posting record sales during 2023 as it muscled its way into fourth place in the UK market – and a huge amount of that is down to its SUVs. The Sportage remains one of the most wanted 4x4s around. Though the Sorento is on hiaitus ahead of a major relaunch during 2024, first the EV6 and now the EV9 have established the company as a major player in the SUV market. The latter, in particular, has the feel of a game-changer, moving Kia into the premium market for the first time. The sky’s the limit.

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4X4 OF THE YEAR 2024 | RESULTS

4X4 OF THE YEAR

2024

THE WINNER | INEOS GRENADIER

BEST 4X4

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THREE YEARS AGO, when the new Defender won this title, we said it almost didn’t matter if it was any good or not. In the way it had set the agenda just by existing, it was the 4x4 of the year almost by default.

The same can be said of the Grenadier. Conceived as a modern vehicle built to do the work of the original Defender, it has absolutely set the agenda in the off-road market. People are talking about it and wanting to know if it’s any good; social media jockeys are beating their fists up and down about it not being made in Britain; orders are flooding in. Most of all, customers who would once have bought a Defender without thinking twice are comparing it to the vehicle which now wears that badge and turning their back on Solihull for the first time in their lives.

If you want the Grenadier to be like driving a Defender (a proper one), there’s good news. Yes, it’s far more refined, far quicker, far

key. Yes, it has an ignition key. All of this is head-scratchingly simple

quieter, far better equipped and everything else – but in the driving

stuff – but we see it endearing people to their trucks rather than

position alone, Ineos have nailed it. Yes, it is like a Defender, not in

putting them off.

the details of how it drives but in its character – and, critically, in the outstandingly natural way it covers ground off-road.

In this way alone, the Grenadier is already doing something some manufacturers spend a lifetime trying to achieve. Its customers are

If you’re a real Defender traditionalist, it even has strange quirks

already falling in love with it – not as a car, but as one of the family.

to make you feel at home. When you first get on board, the steering

That’s an astonishing achievement, and it’s something only the most

feels like a session with Doris Stokes. You soon get used to it, but the

no-nonsense of vehicles can normally achieve.

sun gets you in the face from round the side of the visors and when

We think people will continue to do so. The Grenadier was a huge

it’s behind you, it glares like mad from the big flat screen on top of

undertaking, and its price reflects that – but so too does the scale of

the dash. Get in it at night and the first thing you have to do is poke

what Ineos have achieved with it. The agenda in the off-road market

around helplessly in the dark to try and find the hole for the ignition

has been set – and with it, a new 4x4 of the Year is crowned.

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OUR New Journey has begun TOGETHER WE CAN DISCOVER NEW DESTINATIONS Our Journey as KGM starts here. There will be many exciting adventures along the way and we are looking forward to having you join us for the ride.

As KGM we continue to bring you the great vehicles and exceptional service you have come to expect, as well as innovative new models and advancements in green technology as we strive to build vehicles that can sustain your day-to-day needs, and this amazing world that we inhabit.

kgm-motors.co.uk/journey

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