As the Land Rover Discovery announces its 25th anniversary, one of the best pick-ups on the market, and one of the few areas that has taken sales away from Jaguar Land Rover product, announced its own special edition. The Volkswagen Amarok deservedly won our 2014 Pick-up Of The Year. Now, if there was one area where we could have criticised the model slightly was in its overall looks; it exudes that Germanic functionality and technical brilliance that can leave some a little cold.

Great to see, therefore that there’s now an Amarok Canyon on the market that will certainly turn heads. The model is based on the Trendline version but has a highly visible styling bar and colour-keyed underbody protection plate. It is also packed with what is claimed to be some £8500 worth of extra equipment including satnav with six inch touchscreen, Bluetooth connectivity, heated leather seats, privacy glass, front and rear parking sensors, styling bars, 19inch Cantera alloy wheels. Nappa and Vienna leather upholstery in two-tone Moonrock (light grey) Anthracite (dark grey) give the interior a quality look. You can also select a special edition Amarok roof bar for £945 (ex VAT).

This is the first ‘official’ picture of the proposed Bentley SUV. You can decide for yourself whether it was constructed in an engineering workshop, or on a graphic designer’s computer. But it is official; the vehicle will be with us in 2016. Few details have been released with the picture, apart from the claim that “the company anticipates a minimum annual sales volume of 3000 SUVs.” The important word in that sentence is ‘minimum’. However, when you remember that this forthcoming SUV is part of a massive £800m investment over the next three years, the company will need to sell a few…

Toby Savage joins a Camel Trophy style expedition in deepest Guatemala in search of undiscovered palaces. Part One of this story explains how Toby found mud. Lots of mud…

Words and photography: Toby Savage

When my pal, Jason Paterniti, emailled me from the States back in August 2013 asking if I fancied a Camel Trophy style drive through the jungles of Guatemala early in 2014, I waited a full 10 seconds before answering the affirmative. To reassure me that I had made the correct decision, Jason then sent the small group of us who had agreed to his wild plan, links to the 1995 ‘Mundo Maya’ Camel Trophy event that used some of the tracks we were actually going to drive. Our plan was to cover about 1000 miles over 12 days, visiting several difficult to reach Mayan Archaeological sites and, to give the project some vague justification, we were to meet with a group of Archaeologists from San Diego University to try and confirm that potential new Mayan sites identified by remote sensing (staring long and hard at Google Earth) could indeed be outlying tombs on the already excavated El Zotz site.

The Mayan Civilisation existed in Central America from roughly 2000 BC until as recently as the 13th Century and their descendants live and farm the area to this day, but have largely integrated with other races to become a generic group of Central Americans. In their heyday they built some remarkable structures such as tombs and palaces, some of which have been excavated and preserved as tourist attractions, but many others are still buried under 1000 years of jungle. With excavation costs and the logistics of even getting to them being very expensive, it is likely that they will remain buried for many years

To state that a vehicle ‘revolutionised the 4×4 landscape’ is quite a claim, and regardless if that is a little too much marketing rhetoric for some, there is no doubt that after 25 years and one million models, it is certainly time of a celebration; hence the arrival of the new Discovery XXV Special Edition.

Of course, this new model has little in common to the original version that was first built back in 1989. The original model was built at a time when the company’s future was particularly fragile, then under the ownership of British Aerospace, and before the sale to BMW, Ford and then to Tata where all can agree it has flourished. It’s perhaps not surprising that those early models were something of a fragile mixture themselves, built from raids to assorted British Leyland parts bins, grabbing items previously seen on Morris Marinas, Austin Allegros and even Sherpa commercial vans.

Last year was the best ever in terms of sales for Isuzu UK, and the company’s intention to be the number one in the UK pick-up market continues with the introduction of a new D-Max version, the Blade. The new model has an under rail loadbed liner with either the Aeroklas hard top or a Mountain Top roller cover. The 18inch ‘Shadow’ alloy wheels help distinguish the model and the exterior upgrades include a ‘Shadow’ grey front grille, privacy glass windows, black door and tailgate handles, black roof bars and rear bumper and side steps. The new Blade will also have a Pioneer DAB digital radio included in the touch screen navigation system. As with other D-Max models, the Blade has the 2.5-litre turbodiesel engine allowing for a 3500kg towing capacity and a 1000kg payload. It has been designed to increase the market for the excellent pick-up into what Isuzu call ‘urban tradespeople as well as recreational lifestyle users’. The Blade is available through Isuzu UK’s 100-dealer network.