On 3 August 1887, lawmakers in the El Dorado County, California passed a decree which classified the mountain trail between Georgetown and Lake Tahoe as a public road. Little did they know it at the time, but the right of way they had created was to become possibly the world’s most famous 4×4 trails.

The ‘road,’ which at the time was used only by stagecoaches, passed through Rubicon Springs – where, twenty years previously, John and George Hunsucker had built a riverside log cabin at the foot of a towering granite cliff. They went on to develop the site into a productive livestock and hunting ranch, before setting up a thriving business bottling the spring water.

Just under two decades had passed when Vade Phillips Clark, the daughter of landowner Joseph Phillips, approached the Hunsucker brothers and made them a successful offer for their holding in Rubicon Springs. She also bought a
second parcel of land at Potter’s Springs, around a mile away on the trail – which, less than half a century after the first white man ever laid eyes on Lake Tahoe, was now home to a fully fledged tourist resort.

Read the full article in the April Issue of Overlander 4×4

There’s not a lot to put the wind up you like the words ‘frozen lake.’ If you’re from Scandinavia, or Alaska, or no doubt large parts of Russia, driving on seasonal ice is about as remarkable as going to the toilet. But to us flimsy Brits, who see half an inch of snow and lose the capacity to think, a sniff of the idea is enough to send us into a swivel-eyed
funk.

Have the Health and Safety people been informed? Has someone done a risk assessment? Who checked the depth of
the ice? What if it breaks? How can they be so blasé about it? Is it frozen all the way to the bottom? Is this all a sick joke and we’re about to be plunged to a shivery end? Oh yes, and look at all this snow! Everything must grind to a halt and everyone must unleash their inner crap driver upon each other. It’s the law! Forgive me. We’re British and it’s what
we do.

So here’s the first thing I learned aboard a convoy of Nissan Ariyas and X-Trails amid the extremely white landscape of
late February in Finland. You can drive a car on just 15cm of lake ice. A bit more is better, but that’s enough. A cheerful former rally driver told me this, with the patient demeanour of someone who’s used to talking to idiots.

Right now, he explains, we’ve got more like 60cm below us. Someone’s been out there in a nine-tonne tractor and they didn’t cause even a crack, so stop being so lame about it. He didn’t say the last bit, I said it to myself.

Read the full article in the April issue of Overlander 4×4.

Isuzu is on a mission to enhance the D-Max’s image as a lifestyle vehicle in this country. And, as usual, it’s doing a good job of it, with the range-topping V-Cross building an ever-stronger presence in the sales charts.

A pick-up range needs to be built on a solid foundation, though, and that’s where the likes of the DL20 come in. A couple of years ago, Isuzu widened the options in its line-up allowing this model to be ordered with an automatic gearbox – and that’s what we have here.

The D-Max has also had a mild facelift in the relatively recent past. This amounts to a more aggressive looking grille, as well as a revised design of alloy wheels and, in the case of the DL20, new premium woven fabric upholstery. Oh, and some of the paint options have been updated.

Not exactly big stuff, then. But it makes a surprising difference, especially the grille. The vehicle is mechanically identical to the model from before the facelift, but the new look really does stand out. Climbing in, the new seat fabric feels stout and robust. It’s dark grey, with contrasting light grey stitching, but more to the point you’d expect that it’s going to last a good long time. The seats themselves as well shaped to hold you, too – we did a couple of lengthy trips in our DL20 and never got fatigued. Heartily unimpressed by the state of the traffic (they were lengthy trips in more than just distance), but not fatigued.

Read the full article in this month’s issue of Overlander 4×4.

A vehicle with one of the longest running names in the market, the Suzuki Vitara has been coming to the UK since 1991. It’s changed a lot in that time, of course – from the Vitara to the Grand Vitara and back again, through various sizes, shapes, body configurations and chassis set-ups and, notably, in and thankfully back out of a deep trough
immediately after turning its back on old-school off-road tech.

What it has become is a very sound choice at the budget end of the SUV market – and it became sounder than ever a couple of years ago with the introduction of a full hybrid engine. This mates a 1.5-litre petrol unit to a 140-volt electric system. Not the biggest beast on the market, but the motor adds 33bhp and 44lbf.ft to the engine’s 115bhp and 101lbf.ft – not creating a huge total, but that’s something like 25% of the vehicle’s output so it’s not to be sniffed at. Especially as part of its job is to smooth out the gearchanges in an automated manual box.

How well does it do this? Quite effectively, in fact. Normally, we hate automated manuals, but the Vitara doesn’t jolt and bump its way through the gears and whether you’re taking it easy around town or asking for more on the open road it’s smooth enough not to cause any upsets.

The engine is pretty loud, however, with an ever-present background note that rises to become quite raucous under load. It’s not short of zest, with better performance than the raw figures would give you to expect, but it sounds as if it’s straining to move the vehicle around. You do get used to it after a while, but t would be so much better if you didn’t have to in the first place.

Read the full article in the April issue of Overlander 4×4.