Land Rover is the official team partner of Red Bull Extreme Sailing. Apparently Land Rover all-terrain vehicles and the Extreme 40 catamarans make a natural fit. One floats a bit better than the other though. If you have never seem Extreme 40s in action, go to You Tube and check them out. Awesome things.
KELSEYAdmin
Bespoke Defenders
You have to admit that this Land Rover Defender looks the business! It’s one of the bespoke Land Rovers from Bespoke Cars Ltd, based at Harrogate in Yorkshire. Each Land Rover conversion is done to suit the customer, hence the name! While that might be a little too expensive for some of us, the guys at Bespoke have let us know that the super cool GTS-R Defender wheels are available at an excellent £245 per wheel, and to make that even more reasonable, there’s a 10 per cent discount for 4×4 Magazine readers (just quote the code: bes69). We will be looking at ‘special 4x4s’ in a future issue and look forward to learning more at what Bespoke has to offer.
Website: www.bespokecars.co.uk
Trac-Grabber
Here’s an interesting new product that we have just heard about. Called the Trac-Grabber it’s claimed to be an inexpensive, and very simple to fit device to get a vehicle unstuck. Basically you strap a large rubber pad across the tyre, which when rotated offers more bite and actually raises the tyre slightly. Looking at the demonstration video on the website, it looks a pretty good ‘get you home’ device for severe snowy conditions, but would probably be useful for commercial/utility organisations; not a bad addition to an overlanders emergency kit bag either. As yet, it’s not available in the UK – you heard about it here first, folks – but you can contact the company via the website. And if you do, please give us a mention!
Website: www.tracgrabber.com
MULTIVAN ALLTRAK
Volkswagen Commercials has a new version of the Multivan range, now fitted with the company’s 4MOTION all-wheel drive technology. This means the 2.0-litre TDI engine is connected to the Haldex multi-plate coupling in the rear axle to give all four wheels drive. The van has an approach angle of 21deg and a departure angle of 15deg. It also has 19inch alloy wheels, which will give the machine some decent abilities when the weather gets bad, or ideal for deliveries to rural locations, building sites etc. This Multivan Alltrak fits neatly into VW’s commercial range. Interestingly, VW actually produced the company’s first 4×4 van some 29 years ago with its T3 Transporter.
TIME PASSES FOR G-CLASS
It is the 35th Anniversary of the Mercedes-Benz G-Class (G-Wagon to us traditionalists) and to celebrate there’s an exclusive new chronograph from the Classic Ride Collection by 69 Pit Stop. The anniversary watch is made in Germany, naturally – although the G-Wagon is an Austrian production. As is the trend these days, this is a big watch with a diameter of some 43mm, with a black leather strap and stainless-steel clasp. The anniversary chronograph is available exclusively online at www.69pitstop.com and is available for 129 euros.
OME 4inch Wrangler lift
Jeep JK Wrangler owners can now buy a complete four-inch lift suspension kit. Old Man Emu is part of off-road experts ARB, and available in the UK through the guys at Arbil. The kit comprises of front and rear coil springs, Nitrocharger Sport shocks, steering damper, front Panhard rod, brakeline relocation kits, bump stop kit, coil packers, castor and driveline kit, along with anti roll bar disconnection kit and rear Panhard kit. Arbil explain that buying the complete kit will save a customer money when compared to sourcing individual items. The overall price of £1900 (inc VAT), which sounds pretty good to us. Due to the nature of the kit, it is designed for off-road use only in the UK, and ideal therefore for competition use. To get the full details of this kit, go to the Arbil website and search OMEJK4 for left hand drive Wranglers, or OMEJK4RHD for right hand drive. You can also find you local dealer online or call the guys at Arbil 0845 600 4556. Do tell them you heard about the kit in 4×4 Magazine.
Website: www.arbil.co.uk
Tracking your 4×4
There’s a growing trend of quality 4x4s being stolen, and not all of them the top of the range expensive models either. Land Rover Defenders still seem to be ‘disappearing’ overnight, often broken up for spares. Security is a hot topic, and this is one new high tech modern option that while it may not stop you actually losing your 4×4, you will at least know where it’s gone! CarLock uses remote GPS technology so an owner will know immediately that a vehicle is being tampered with, and possibly stolen. Plugged into the vehicle’s diagnostic port it communicates constantly to the CarLock Cloud. This then links to the mobile phone app that the owner downloads, letting the owner know if the vehicle is moving outside its locked area. The app is designed to work even when not turned on. Interestingly, it is claimed that this app will not drain a phone’s battery life due to the built-in cellular and GPS antenna. The CarLock system has subscription plans for throughout Europe, not just the UK. The price of the unit is currently 99 Euros, with a monthly subscription fee of 4.90 Euros. To learn more, check out the CarLock website.
Website: https://www.carlock.co/
Jeep Cherokee
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.
Subaru Forester 2.0D XC Premium
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).
Toyota Land Cruiser Invincible
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.
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