Louise Limb – contributor
If Monday this week saw me well and truly into my second half century, today was also a significant milestone in my Grand Vitara’s (we hope) long relationship with the open road. As I pootled through Long Preston, a village on the A65 along the stretch from Skipton to Kendal, the numbers on the milometer suddenly changed from 40 something to a tidy 50,000. If my Suzuki had been a horse, I’d have patted it on the neck and given it a carrot.
It had been a good day, not too much chugging and no sliding at all really, even on the wet bits; leftovers from hilltop rain sluicing down into overworked gullies and forming puddles of a depth that can surprise. Ever since I spent a whopping £700 (give or take four pounds) on the beast between Christmas and New Year to cure the sluggishness and a seeming lack of revs, of which a cracked diesel filter housing had been the chief suspect, the Suzuki has continued, determinedly, to behave as if it is in way too high a gear for the speed. I’m lucky if I can maintain third gear when stuck behind ditherers who hate driving and think 40 is a suitable maximum speed; ‘quite fast enough for anyone’ as my dad used to say in his twilight driving years. A teeth-rattling diesel chug is standard, then, on the road, more so when I steer to the left. Off road and in 4 high, the problem evaporates. Hmm, must mention this to Jeepman Phil, when I finally admit defeat and take the Vitara back to him for further tinkering. Or maybe my 4×4 has the menopause…
Hils Everitt – Editor
In this cold weather we’ve experienced – although by the time you read this we are probably in the first flushes of spring, the snowdrops and crocuses are making a valiant effort and the daff shoots are poking their heads above the thawed earth – a car heater is one of those luxuries you just can’t do without.
Once the initial shock of the snow had passed, it’s fair to say that we started to really enjoy our Rav4 last month. We spoke last issue about how impressed we are with the Continental ContiCrossContact winter tyres that we have fitted and have no hesitation of once again recommending that every reader considers doing similar. We live on a steep hill, which means that it quickly turns into a set from some disaster movie as the road becomes littered with abandoned vehicles within a few hours of any heavy snowfall.
Christmas, that most expensive indulgence; the weather has now merged into a uniform dull, wet, depressing grey murk and the ominously spreading oil leak beneath the engine bay that the tyre fitter thought might be the transfer box – could be why the Grand’s been lumbering about like a farting buffalo – turned out to be precious diesel leaking from an invisible crack in the diesel filter housing.
Christmas arrived a month late here in Canada but I am not complaining – not one bit! TerraFirma and Rock Island Rovers stepped up to the plate and sent along the promised parts to get my poor stricken Kelsey up and running; without the wobble, I hope.
Jamie Stuart is my contractor, surfer and snowboarder son. He bought the Freelander in December 2010 after a long search for a good example at the right price. Jamie would have liked a Discovery but wanted as new a vehicle as his budget would allow so he looked at Freelanders instead. He has always been partial to the Solihull brand as he spent much of his youth around Nightingale Farm, Swindon where Michael Hall plies his trade in quality used Land Rovers.
This is my fifth year of Td5 ownership. The drunken eBay purchase has proven to be the best vehicle I have ever owned. My pockets are not deep enough to run a car and a Land Rover, so the 90 needed to be the do-all vehicle. My weekly commute varies massively, the nature of being a freelance. The miles have been creeping up, however, and are now close to 200,000.
As you’ll see from our UK adventure on p48 when our brilliant little Jimny took on the mighty 1940s Ford Jeep in glorious Snowdonia, the Suzuki long-termer equipped itself extremely well on the rocky lanes, some of them really quite tricky in places. To receive the nod of approval from Toby, a veteran of off-roader and staunch Land Rover/Jeep fan, is a true accolade for the Jimny.
It felt good to climb into the old Range Rover after five weeks of driving such a wide variety of vehicles while travelling in the States. I missed the amount of visibility from the cockpit of the RR, the height when in traffic, how easy it is to manoeuvre her, and even the space other drivers tend to allow you, although I am not sure it is a sign of respect or a concern that parts may fly off at any time. Either way, sliding behind the wheel felt like coming home.
I can state with absolute veracity that putting on a show for the photographer is the only reason I got the Cherokee planted up to its floorpan in soft sand at the Hogmoor Enclosure off-road site on an All Wheel Drive Club Driveround day recently. Hogmoor has a fair variety of conditions, but its main feature is lots of soft sandy soil that can be fairly treacherous – it doesn’t take more than a few spins of a wheel that’s lost traction to grind itself inextricably axle-deep into the ground, and that’s particularly likely to happen if you’re attempting a steep climb. I had to be particularly careful, since the Cherokee’s tyres are relatively narrow 225-section Mud Terrains, and although they’re the newer type with the less-course tread pattern they’re still aggressive enough to turn the wheels into grinding discs on soft going. So, most of the time, I’d kept to the rather more stable areas under the trees, which was actually quite interesting in its own way because of the way the softer soil had been eroded away where there weren’t any trees, leaving the forested areas standing high above the surrounding terrain. That made for steep climbs up in among the trees, and it takes care to enter those areas without scraping the bodywork. Or, to be more politically correct, without barking the trees, particularly in the case of the Cherokee which has had so much bodily contact that an additional dent or scratch would simply blend in with their surroundings.
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