Sue Loy

Spent a very wet Sunday morning at our local Toyota dealer this month. Why? Well, it’s time for a change, or rather more of the same as I have decided to change the RAV4. For what, you may wonder… well, for another RAV4! Having spent the last couple of decades living with the Editor of this magazine, I do get the chance to drive an awful lot of 4x4s, so perhaps you’d think I’m not being very imaginative! It’s easy to imagine being the owner of the sumptuous, effortless, powerful, beautiful Range Rover Sport that I drove recently, and I would love one, but sadly that cannot be on the list.

Robert Pepper

Six recoveries this month, each of which has their own little story. No sooner I had finished enjoying the nostalgic delights of a Series 1 then it was into the most talked about car of the year, the Evoque, on a mission to see just how good it really is in the rough stuff. I have the answer, which will be featured in this magazine shortly, but I also managed to get our standby recovery Navara stuck because I didn’t check a mound that can usually be driven right over, and which had changed a bit since the last visit to the area. The Nissan’s lack of clearance didn’t help, but I’ll put my hand up for driver error there even if the recovery didn’t take long. Of course, I say this because as we finished the Evoque shoot and prepared to depart, the radio crackled into life and it was my assistant who had managed to get the Nissan properly stuck in a different location, well and truly high centred with all four wheels dangling in the air!

Louise Limb – contributor

In the couple of months since my last entry, the trip to have the brakes looked at again is still very much on the ‘to do’ list (I just drive even more cautiously for now), along with servicing and a peek at the back box of the exhaust, since ‘flatulent elephant’ has now been added to the mental chart of weird noises and sensations emitting from my gently aging steed. My Grand Vitara has served me well (and is so much more solid than the two Vitaras that preceded it), with only the usual catalogue of replacements and repairs, with the addition of course of marque specific irritants like plastic door handles that snap off in your hand, weak bits of trim (for example the power socket – formerly known in the age of the Morris Minor as the cigarette lighter) shattering under normal use and that old chestnut I have now to endure, the possible corrosion of the co axial cable leading to the radio aerial.

Matt Carson

The stock headlamps on a Jeep Wrangler are just about good enough, in other words, OK but not great. So when I got a call offering a test of some LED headlights, I was intrigued. Sharp-eyed readers may have spotted these sort of lamps making their way onto bespoke, high end Land Rovers from the likes of Nene Overland and others, but they haven’t hit the mainstream yet.

The lights in question are LED not HID, and are manufactured by JW Speaker. JW Speaker is probably the biggest light company you’ve never heard of and has been producing top quality lights for the military, mining and construction industry for many years. More recently, these lamps have filtered down to the aftermarket, where JW Speaker is already the bestselling LED lamp brand in Europe.