Little more than a day’s drive from Britain, the Alps of northern Italy combine a sublime landscape with a rich military history that dates back to Napoleonic times – and has provided a network of rough
mountain trails that are perfect for exploring by 4×4.

When it comes to adventure, I consider myself genre-fluid (yes genre…). My adventures have thus far consisted
of climbing mountains, hunting, scuba diving, getting up close and personal with dangerous animals and most recently
riding across the Sahara Desert on top of a freight train carrying iron ore – so I certainly don’t consider myself a specialist in any adventuring discipline. However I will put my hand to anything in the name of
expanding my comfort zones and visiting places most would consider inaccessible – and 4×4 driving has always been a means to an end for this.

When I was looking for an adventure for last summer, I considered the usual options – and a few unusual ones.
Eventually. I decided that I would take my dogs to explore the military trails and instalments in the Alps, which date back as far as the Napoleonic era.

Read the full article in the March issue https://shop.assignmentmedia.co.uk/issue/4X4202403

It’s a strange name isn’t it? Anyone who has watched real-world giant pandas for any length of time will come away
astonished that they’re not extinct. Sure they look all cute and cuddly but they’re also clumsy, often helpless and have a ridiculous diet.

They’re bears, for heaven’s sake, with a digestion set up for eating meat, yet they eat only bamboo shoots, which have low nutritional value and the pandas aren’t good at extracting even that. So they have to eat up to 38kg of bamboo shoots and leaves a day. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for personal development or musings on the meaning of life. Plus they have a lot of bulk to keep fed, about the same size as an American black bear. Standing on its back feet it would loom over you, weighing in at around 250lb (113kg ). And it’s the national symbol of China. There, it’s known as ‘GuoBao’ or ‘national heirloom’, something that’s usually priceless and fragile.

So when Fiat launched its cute little new vehicle you have to wonder what thought process led to the name Panda. And yet here we are, celebrating 40 years of the Fiat Panda 4×4. That’s slightly longer, by the way, than any panda has lived, in the wild or in captivity.

Read the full article in the March issue https://shop.assignmentmedia.co.uk/issue/4X4202403

There’s a facelifted version of the Jeep Wrangler on the way in the next few months. It has a new take on the famous seven-slot grille, additional safety features, revised wheel designs and a more upmarket cabin with 12-way power adjustable front seats and a 12.3” touch-screen running the company’s latest Uconnect 5 infotainment system, and
the Dana rear axle on the Rubicon model gains strength by becoming fully-floating for the first time.

Worth waiting for? Quite possibly, yes, given that pricing remains unchanged – and since that means a Wrangler will cost from £60,785 OTR in Sahara form and £62,785 for the Rubicon, you’re going to want everything you can get to ease the pain. It remains hard to believe that the previous model to this one started in the teens.

Anyway, facelift incoming or not Jeep can sell every Wrangler they can get their hands on in the UK, as those prices
illustrate. So between now and when those first deliveries these shores, you’re going to get the chance to buy one of the soon-to become-old-shape examples at a discount of precisely zero.

Read the full article in the March issue https://shop.assignmentmedia.co.uk/issue/4X4202403

Carlos Sainz made history in the 2024 Dakar Rally – by becoming the first driver to take overall victory in an electric vehicle. The Spanish veteran has now won the legendary event four times for four different, having triumphed with
Volkswagen in 2010, Peugeot in 2018 and Mini in 2020 prior to taking the wheel of Audi’s revolutionary RS Q e-tron.

Sainz was aided in his run to the title by team-mates Stéphane Peterhansel and Mattias Ekström, who were going well before dropping out of contention with technical issues on the sixth and seventh stages respectively. With victory out of their reach, both crews got to helping their colleague, Peterhansel stopping for six minutes on Stage 9 to wait for Sainz to pass, so that he could run behind him as a support car.

The value of this could never have been better illustrated than on Stage 10, when Sainz suffered not one but two punctures – a misfortune that would have cost him any chance of the title had it not been for Ekström coming to his rescue and getting him back on his way within a few minutes.

Read the full article in the March issue https://shop.assignmentmedia.co.uk/issue/4×4202403

The Nissan X-Trail won our 4×4 of the Year award when it was launched, thanks in no small part to its remarkable off-road ability. But the model is nothing compared to the X-Trail Mountain Rescue – a one-off designed to highlight the tractability of the electric layout that allows the e-4ORCE drivetrain to react almost instantaneously to changing levels of grip. It is of course very apparent indeed that the headline modification to the X-Trail Mountain Rescue is the addition of snow tracks instead of wheels. However equally important is the removal of its rear seats to let it carry a stretcher, plus medical equipment and personnel.
In addition to all this, an evacuation stretcher and snow shovels are carried on a bespoke roof rack and the front bumper has been strengthened to mountain electric winch. The extra width of the tracks is covered by extended wing flares, while there are heavy-duty towing hooks front and rear and running boards for access to the cabin – very necessary for some as the vehicle rides 230mm higher than standard.
Nissan built the vehicle as part of a campaign it’s supporting to prevent accidents by encouraging responsible skiing in Europe’s major resorts. It will be displayed in a glass box in one of them, Cervinia in Italy, and feature in promotional material encouraging people to slow down on the slopes.

The Salar de Uyuni is one of the world’s most iconic destinations for overland travel. But there’s more to this famed region of Bolivia than a salt pan half the size of Wales. Venture just a few miles south and you’ll find yourself amid the tangled remains of a railway that was once a wonder of the engineering world.

In Britain, we tend to think of narrowgauge railways as quaint old things, short sections of track amid the worked-out late mines of North Wales plied by gleaming little engines for the amusement of tourists. The idea of crossborder heavy industry being built on such a thing sounds impossible. Exactly 150 years ago, however, the first trains ran on what was one of the most ambitious railway projects the world has ever seen. One of the most ambitious and, at the time, the highest above sea level anywhere on the planet. The Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia (FCAB) runs between the Bolivian capital of La Paz and the port of Antofagasta, some 715 miles to the south. On the way, it climbs to an altitude of 3956 metres – that’s not far off halfway to Everest, on a route for which ground was first broken at a time when the world’s highest peak was still more than a quarter of a century away from being conquered.

Read more in the January 2024 issue of Overlander 4×4 – buy it here