Diesel performance specialist Tunit reckons it can save 4×4 drivers as much as 12 per cent on the cost of fuel. Its aftermarket tuning accessories improve performance and maximise economy – an appealing combination as fuel prices continue to rocket. Tunit’s online Fuel Savings Calculator gives potential customers a flavour of the savings available.
Visit www.tunit.come/save for more information.
This new grab handle has just come on the market, thanks to MUD-UK. The MUD Flexible Grab Handle replaces the rigid plastic door handle on a Land Rover Defender. It is manufactured from nylon webbing and features a tough rubber handle that folds flat against the door trim panel, keeping it out of the way of the driver’s leg.
Priced at £8.75 including VAT, the Grab Handle comes with a fitting kit for DIY installation.
www.mudstuff.co.uk
Another new piece of kit to come out of the LPI/Trekk 4×4 Adventure Stores stable is this tyre
repair kit.
Priced at €345 plus VAT, the kit contains everything that is needed to repair a puncture
on the hop – including tyre levers, repair patches and glue. www.lpi.be
June 2011 Issue of 4×4 Magazine
It’s probably Roger Crathorne’s fault for doing such a good job instructing me in a Land Rover Ninety at Eastnor Castle. Or maybe it was the year I was lucky enough to join the British Team for the Camel Trophy in Sulawesi, Indonesia. Then again, it could have been earlier this year when our suburban Surrey road was gridlocked by sliding, wheel-spinning cars, pirouetting on the snow as I drove imperiously passed in our winter tyre-shod Rav4. Once you get the 4×4 bug, it doesn’t leave.
So, being invited to return to the Editor’s chair of this gritty, mud-loving publication was an offer that couldn’t feasibly be refused. Like that drunk that will always have just one more, the opportunity to return to the world of 4×4 merely fed my addiction; the itch that has never been successfully scratched.
As a brief resume: I was the Editor of this magazine when originally known as Off Road & 4 Wheel Driver. Never liking the ‘r’ on the end of the title, I removed it one month, much to the furious annoyance of the suits in the boardroom of the magazine’s then owners. Apparently doing such a radical thing had to be a board decision. Phah, it was always too long a title, boardroom politics or not, and 4×4 is so much better.
Would you drive the length of the country – on an ATV? Well, three hardy farmers will be doing that this month to raise money for children’s cancer charities and Southampton Hospital. Wiltshire farmer and Network Grain UK director, Jerry Bailey, NFU South Wiltshire Group Secretary, Steve Bartlett and East Yorkshire farmer and Green Pea Company director, Nick Baker, will ride their bikes from John O’Groats to Lands End in memory of Jerry’s son Robert Bailey, who lost his fight against cancer back in 2008 at the age of only 13. “We are hoping to raise a total of £15,000 to go to the Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group, CLIC Sargent (Cancer and Leukaemia in Children) and the Southampton Hospital Charity,” said Jerry Bailey who farms at Ford near Salisbury. The farmers will be riding three new All Terrain Vehicles, kindly supplied by Polaris UK. They will leave John O’Groats and aim to reach Lands End by the end on May, in eleven days.
Back in 1911, Henry Alexander, an Edinburgh-based Ford agent drove a Model T to the top of Ben Nevis. It took five days and was a great publicity stunt for Ford, claiming the Model T ‘the ultimate off-roader’.
You cannot take motorised vehicles up Ben Nevis any more but this month no less than 60 Model Ts will gather at Ben Nevis and one will again reach the summit – this time, however, it will be a replica of the 1911 Model T, dismantled at Achintree, carried by volunteers and reassembled at the summit. The event celebrates the 100th anniversary of a Model T scaling the 4,406ft peak.
Audi’s new compact SUV, the Q3, will be on the UK roads this November, with base models on sale for around £25,000. Unmistakably an Audi Q-series (the vehicle is certainly compact but it still has that domineering front grille), the new model was unveiled at the Shanghai Motor Show.
The approximate £25,000 tag is the only price available at time of going to press, but one can assume that will be for the petrol 170bhp 2.0-litre TFSI engined version. There will be three engine options, all directly injected and turbocharged; 2.0-litre TFSI in either 170bhp or 211bhp and the 2.0-litre TDI which offers 177bhp.
All models will have the benefits of Audi’s quattro four-wheel drive transmission (we don’t feel the necessity to mention that there will also be a front-drive model). The engines all have a new S tronic twin-clutch transmission, which disengages when the throttle pedal is released, when you are cruising, to reduce fuel consumption and improve engine efficiency.
We’ve found an usual 4×4 designed, apparently, for the ladies. The bullet-proof 4×4 has been designed as a luxury SUV for ladies and includes eight parking cameras and the finishes include snake and crocodile! The only part that’s not so lady-like is this SUV’s looks…
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