Bob Cooke – contributor

If anyone thinks it’s silly that I should own and run two gas-guzzling Cherokees, I’d like to explain that there is some reason for this apparent madness, and it does go further than to point out that the fuel consumption isn’t a problem because I can only drive one of them at a time. When I acquired my ’95 model in July 2011, I’d actually been on the lookout for one of the facelifted Cherokees from 1997 on; I bought the N-reg one because it came up unexpectedly and looked like a good deal at the time – £700 for a car with just 73,000 miles on it. Regular readers will remember the concerns I had about this car from the start – for instance there was no immobiliser reset key, the air con didn’t work because the reason for the car’s low mileage is that it sat in a field for years and the air con pipework had simply rotted away. Nevertheless, the old truck has given me excellent and trouble-free service for nearly two years, the only significant cost having been the few hundred I spent on fitting heavy-duty springs to give it a little lift.

However, I’ve always had in the back of my mind the thought that I’d really wanted one of the later, theoretically more refined, Cherokees. And even though the green ’95 model is still going strong (apart from a clonking from the rear which I suspect is a failed damper, not a serious problem to fix) when I saw the black ’98 model being wheeled on to the auction floor I couldn’t resist it.

Hils Everitt – Editor at Large

This month we have taken delivery of a new long-termer. Having won our Mid Range SUV category in our 2014 4×4 of the Year, we wanted to give the latest Subaru Forester a real-life long-term test, as opposed to the week that our big test allows us.

The latest, fourth generation, version was launched early last year and was available from May, so now it is approaching its first birthday on the road. Sales figures before launch of the fourth incarnation had reached 170,000 globally (15,000 Europe) and since May, Subaru has shifted 1300 units in the UK of the new version. We completely fell for the original Forester, launched way back in 1997, which sold around 8000 units until it was updated in 2002. It looked like a conventional, bland estate car, which many didn’t like, but it offered low-range gearing and was a very good competent off-roader, which afforded a remarkably pleasant on-road drive. (This month’s – June 2014 – Buyers Guide includes the Forester, see page 96).

Nigel Fryatt, Editor

It’s big, bold and brassy. Sitting on my suburban drive, it dominates. Now it’s a long while since I drove my first ever Toyota Land Cruiser back in the mid-1980s – that was a 90 series diesel, very practical but with little passenger comforts. Since then we’ve both put on a lot of weight, and one of us has become rather clever at what it does; the other remains a motoring magazine journalist.

This latest Land Cruiser is in Invincible spec (surely the best moniker for any 4×4?). This means it is the five-door version, complete with additional third row of seats and is powered by the 188bhp 3.0-litre D-4D engine (delivering a thumping 420Nm of torque at only 3000rpm), coupled to a five speed automatic transmission and a very clever Multi-Terrain Select off-road system. The third row of seats are particularly well designed in the way that they fold flat, and do not seem to restrict rear luggage space, which in a vehicle of this bulk you would expect to be quite cavernous. The result means you can carry seven people and a little luggage, or five people and a great deal of extra stuff.