One fateful day in the middle of the Texas summer, when temperatures were expected to be around 105 degrees, my mother, Jodi, and I pulled up to an off-road park outside of Dallas. It didn’t take us long to realize there wasn’t much shade out there, and that we were in over our heads with this business.
A video has surfaced on the interwebs showing a tractor flipping a rolled-over Toyota Land Cruiser upright. But the SUV diver apparently hadn’t set the park brake, because the off-roader then barrels down a steep hill into thick woods in what has to be among the saddest off-road recoveries I’ve ever seen.
I’m an avid off-roader, and yet somehow I didn’t know about this brilliant method of winching out a stuck vehicle with nothing more than rope and some logs. Here’s how it works.
The Mahindra Roxor is the modern incarnation of the original civilian Jeep, the Willys CJ-2A. But to find out if it’s as good in the rough stuff, I took the Indian side-by-side and my junky 1948 Willys off-road, and beat the crap out of both. After flooding the Willys’ engine and denting the Mahindra’s tub, one winner…
The BMW X5! Scourge of school drop-off zones! Bimmer’s big behemoth! A true German luxury crossover if there ever was one. It’s just about the last vehicle you’d expect to get sawzalled apart into a crazy open-top off-road mud buggy, but this exists and it rules hard.
I built two two extra days into my 1,700 mile Michigan-to-Moab expedition to give us some leeway in case of breakdowns. I’ve now used those two days before ever leaving my driveway, thanks to my 1986 Jeep Grand Wagoneer’s copious brake problems. Now the Jeep is ready, but there’s no margin for error. If the Woodie…
A few days ago, Ford showed the silhouette of the 2020 Ford Bronco, and the crowd went wild, in part, because of what looks like a rear-mounted spare. It’s exciting news in an era when most automakers have their spare-tire placement all wrong. The rear door is indeed where the thing belongs.
This little Toyota Hilux barely makes any power, and yet it can still climb a steep obstacle on the Rubicon Trail with ease. That’s because the ultimate solution for a lack of grunt is gearing. Let’s go over how it all works.
In Madison County, Illinois, a couple of buddies went off-roading in a new, lifted Chevy Silverado on what they thought was a frozen field. But the field was a pond, and now their truck and the backhoe they rented to extract it are both stuck in deep, frozen mud in an area that—come springtime—will be under up to…
When I bought my 1986 Jeep Grand Wagoneer a few weeks ago, I’ll admit that I didn’t really look at it very carefully. “Frame doesn’t have holes, engine isn’t seized—I’ll take it,” I decided in desperation after failing to find a project for months. Now I’ve had some time to look the Woodie over, and, well, it’s not…
Women’s participation in motorsports is growing for sure, but it definitely doesn’t represent the ratio between men and women in the general population—yet. This has not escaped the notice of professional off-roader and bona fide badass Emily Miller, whose women-only Rebelle Rally has become one of the most grueling…
Here’s a Subaru Forester that looks like it lost one ox, 420 pounds of food and three sets of clothing fording the swollen Moore River in Western Australia. The river was nearly 4 feet deep and carried the early Forester away, but this off-roader managed to save it anyway. Definitely don’t try this at home.
The theory of Tuff Trucks is pretty simple. Lay out a torture test on a dirt course, complete with hills and jumps, and let just about anything run the track. A lot of the time you get incredibly hardcore trucks that look like they could run the Baja. But sometimes, you get crap like this Saturn. And it’s amazing.
Three years ago, I dropped $1,000 on a lift kit for my daily-driver, a 1992 Jeep Cherokee. And while I initially loved the way it turned out, I’ve grown to detest almost everything about my new suspension. Lifting my daily driver was a dumb idea.
If you’ve always wondered which of the current crop of SUVs is best off-road, Autocar did a head-to-head comparison between the Jeep Wrangler, Land Rover Discovery, Mercedes G-Wagon, Toyota Land Cruiser, Dacia Duster and a modified Isuzu D-Max. So get ready for some off-road goodness.
It’s like a paddlewheeler but for your truck.
When most people think of off-roading, few think of a Porsche, but the Cayenne is far more capable than its scourge-of-Nordstrom’s-parking-lot reputation would suggest. Here’s a Cayenne Turbo crashing an off-road day with the Camden County Georgia Jeep Club, just gettin’ muddy like it’s no big deal.
Yesterday, as I drove down the highway at 75 mph in my 1992 Jeep Cherokee, my left tire hit a pothole and triggered the most violent, frightening, uncontrollable shaking I’ve ever experienced—in both me and the Jeep.
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