Those looking for the ultimate off-roading vehicle regardless of its practicability might consider something like this monster seen here at the Abenteuer & Allrad off-road show in Bad Kissingen, Bararia, Germany.
Said to guzzle over 60 litres of diesel costing Euro 1.20 for every 100km down the road (downhill and with a strong wind behind) it is not for those without deep pockets
or perhaps this one
The camping ground currently has over 1500 vehicles packed into every available space and is the perfect place to scout out the perfect vehicle to suit your tastes. The actual show is actually now eclipsed by the atmosphere in the campground which is probably not what the organisers intended.
Just a very tiny part of the whole camp
Said to guzzle over 60 litres of diesel costing Euro 1.20 for every 100km down the road (downhill and with a strong wind behind) it is not for those without deep pockets
or perhaps this one
The camping ground currently has over 1500 vehicles packed into every available space and is the perfect place to scout out the perfect vehicle to suit your tastes. The actual show is actually now eclipsed by the atmosphere in the campground which is probably not what the organisers intended.
Just a very tiny part of the whole camp
People do the Panamerican Highway on pushbikes and you don't need to have 4wd to do it provided you pick your weather conditions. There is also Ruta 40 which is the iconic Argentinian highway running along the eastern side of the Andes. That goes to 5000 metres - 16400 feet so the air gets a bit thin and cold and VERY windy
We didn't linger as we had to get down far enough to sleep for the night so we didn't end up with altitude sickness. As it was, it wasn't a very pleasant night waking up every few minutes gasping for breath - called Cheyne-Stokes Respiration.
We didn't linger as we had to get down far enough to sleep for the night so we didn't end up with altitude sickness. As it was, it wasn't a very pleasant night waking up every few minutes gasping for breath - called Cheyne-Stokes Respiration.
Yes, every vehicle has limitations of on and off-road performance and the bigger the vehicle the more limitations it probably has. Conversely the bigger it is the more long term comfort is possible.
Obviously, I wasn't able to get the optimum vehicle in every situation because that takes time and you need to be on the spot and since I bought three of the five current vehicles off the internet sight unseen, it was an even bigger gamble than usual.
Still, we managed pretty well. The Airstream Class A has got me places and roads where many wouldn't go from bottom of Mexico to Alaska, The F350 does pretty well on average in South America, and the Hobby is pretty standard size in Europe.
If I had to have just one vehicle to handle all those situations, it would be the OKA. No question.
One thing about those expedition trucks that is hard to change though is the fact that they are trucks with suspensions to match and even with expensive air seats, a few hours on the road can be very hard work. Thankfully ride comfort is one thing the OKA designer got exactly right.
The Mecedes team made one huge mistake. They thought they knew better than the locals. Standard procedure is to lower tyre pressure so the tyre becomes a very useful part of the suspension and SLOW DOWN. Feel the tyres and the shocks at each stop and adjust speed to suit. Pretty simple really and foolproof as well.
We had a couple of high-end large 4WD towing high end Kimberly Campers come up very fast behind us on the Canning and they radioed to ask if they could get past. I replied sure, we'll dawdle along behind and pick up the pieces. Got a big ha,ha,ha in reply. We've got racing shocks on everything. If you went a bit faster, you could ride on the tops of the corrugations. Blah, blah, blah And they blasted past in a shower of sand and dust.
We caught up with them at well 33 the next day - bashing and hacksawing away bits of steel making up extra brackets to keep their fancy campers from falling apart. One of those satisfying schadenfreude moments that got more intense every time he broke one of his rapidly-dwindling supply of hacksaw blades. I did think of ambling over and offering him the use of my electric tools, but figured he needed to do it the slow way for once..
Caught up with another fast mover halfway down a dune transferring all the contents of his brand new roofrack toinside the vehicle and trying to wire the rack onto the roof to take it back home for repair. These scalloped dunes (with the bumps on each side out of phase causing violent sideways rocking at speed) plus speed were the reason. Go slow and the track ends up better than when you started. Go fast and it and the vehicle get worse.
It isn't all sand though and there is a lot of rocky stuff to test out the tyres
Obviously, I wasn't able to get the optimum vehicle in every situation because that takes time and you need to be on the spot and since I bought three of the five current vehicles off the internet sight unseen, it was an even bigger gamble than usual.
Still, we managed pretty well. The Airstream Class A has got me places and roads where many wouldn't go from bottom of Mexico to Alaska, The F350 does pretty well on average in South America, and the Hobby is pretty standard size in Europe.
If I had to have just one vehicle to handle all those situations, it would be the OKA. No question.
One thing about those expedition trucks that is hard to change though is the fact that they are trucks with suspensions to match and even with expensive air seats, a few hours on the road can be very hard work. Thankfully ride comfort is one thing the OKA designer got exactly right.
The Mecedes team made one huge mistake. They thought they knew better than the locals. Standard procedure is to lower tyre pressure so the tyre becomes a very useful part of the suspension and SLOW DOWN. Feel the tyres and the shocks at each stop and adjust speed to suit. Pretty simple really and foolproof as well.
We had a couple of high-end large 4WD towing high end Kimberly Campers come up very fast behind us on the Canning and they radioed to ask if they could get past. I replied sure, we'll dawdle along behind and pick up the pieces. Got a big ha,ha,ha in reply. We've got racing shocks on everything. If you went a bit faster, you could ride on the tops of the corrugations. Blah, blah, blah And they blasted past in a shower of sand and dust.
We caught up with them at well 33 the next day - bashing and hacksawing away bits of steel making up extra brackets to keep their fancy campers from falling apart. One of those satisfying schadenfreude moments that got more intense every time he broke one of his rapidly-dwindling supply of hacksaw blades. I did think of ambling over and offering him the use of my electric tools, but figured he needed to do it the slow way for once..
Caught up with another fast mover halfway down a dune transferring all the contents of his brand new roofrack toinside the vehicle and trying to wire the rack onto the roof to take it back home for repair. These scalloped dunes (with the bumps on each side out of phase causing violent sideways rocking at speed) plus speed were the reason. Go slow and the track ends up better than when you started. Go fast and it and the vehicle get worse.
It isn't all sand though and there is a lot of rocky stuff to test out the tyres
Tony,
As an aside, I take our off-road pickup truck on roads like you show - and sometimes on no roads - doing volunteer work in the wilderness.
Some of your photos above remind me of where one of the posters in these very forums take their good old U.S. truck camper. Following is a photo of one adventure they went on out in the middle of nowhere right here in the American West near the Cosmic Ashtray - probably getting nicely pinstriped in the process:
As an aside, I take our off-road pickup truck on roads like you show - and sometimes on no roads - doing volunteer work in the wilderness.
Some of your photos above remind me of where one of the posters in these very forums take their good old U.S. truck camper. Following is a photo of one adventure they went on out in the middle of nowhere right here in the American West near the Cosmic Ashtray - probably getting nicely pinstriped in the process:
My research was incomplete. This is a Rotel dating back to 1962 on the way to India.
From http://www.rotel.de/
Perhaps a bit upmarket from the Bedford truck with canvas top and bench seats that the hoi polloi had to make do with.
From http://www.rotel.de/
Perhaps a bit upmarket from the Bedford truck with canvas top and bench seats that the hoi polloi had to make do with.
The old Bedford trucks might have rusted away, but not their modern equivalent
see http://been-seen.com/travel-spots/truck-hotel and there are others. We have come across them in South America at Ushuia and Iguazu. Also told they are still big in Africa.
One of the main rites of passage for British and Australian adventurers - overland on or in any vehicle that could move from Australia to Britain without breaking down more than 50 times (a day) - is sadly no longer possible now that previous exciting and interesting countries on the route are permanent war zones. Even so, there is a steady stream of assorted vehicle and assorted people making the trip, albeit with some pretty major detours to avoid most of the danger zones.
As for rampant consumerism giving the poor people a wrong impression of the rest of the world, we certainly did our best to avoid that tag.
Our thoroughly-battered Iveco 4 x 4 got a lot of attention, but not because of its beautiful lines and smart appearance, and an objective assessment of the type of vehicle used by the average traveller further south than the usual haunts of US Class As would show that our vehicle was much closer to the average than any of the super trucks.
Yes, the super trucks are the stuff of boys' toys dreams, but there are very few places they can go with impunity. All of the little tracks in the jungles of Brazil and Bolivia would shred the sides of these superwides, and the so-called highways in the Andes would rip the tops off them on overhangs, assuming of course they could negotiate dozens of hair-pin bends. Even in Australia with plenty of wide open spaces, they could not get along ANY of the iconic desert and red-centre tracks without severe damage.
For instance -
Canning Stock Route
OKA is 2100mm wide and the vehicles that keep the track open are much narrower so it gets extensively pin-striped all along the sides.
Hay River Road
30km along a river bed with overhanging river red gums and the only bypasses available are driving through mature Spinifex grass which is roughly similar to driving over a heap of 50 gallon barrels lying on their sides.
and while they may not seem too difficult, those track conditions go on for tens of miles and there is NO alternative route other than to return 50 or 100 miles and stick to the sealed roads.
As they say - Horses for courses.
see http://been-seen.com/travel-spots/truck-hotel and there are others. We have come across them in South America at Ushuia and Iguazu. Also told they are still big in Africa.
One of the main rites of passage for British and Australian adventurers - overland on or in any vehicle that could move from Australia to Britain without breaking down more than 50 times (a day) - is sadly no longer possible now that previous exciting and interesting countries on the route are permanent war zones. Even so, there is a steady stream of assorted vehicle and assorted people making the trip, albeit with some pretty major detours to avoid most of the danger zones.
As for rampant consumerism giving the poor people a wrong impression of the rest of the world, we certainly did our best to avoid that tag.
Our thoroughly-battered Iveco 4 x 4 got a lot of attention, but not because of its beautiful lines and smart appearance, and an objective assessment of the type of vehicle used by the average traveller further south than the usual haunts of US Class As would show that our vehicle was much closer to the average than any of the super trucks.
Yes, the super trucks are the stuff of boys' toys dreams, but there are very few places they can go with impunity. All of the little tracks in the jungles of Brazil and Bolivia would shred the sides of these superwides, and the so-called highways in the Andes would rip the tops off them on overhangs, assuming of course they could negotiate dozens of hair-pin bends. Even in Australia with plenty of wide open spaces, they could not get along ANY of the iconic desert and red-centre tracks without severe damage.
For instance -
Canning Stock Route
OKA is 2100mm wide and the vehicles that keep the track open are much narrower so it gets extensively pin-striped all along the sides.
Hay River Road
30km along a river bed with overhanging river red gums and the only bypasses available are driving through mature Spinifex grass which is roughly similar to driving over a heap of 50 gallon barrels lying on their sides.
and while they may not seem too difficult, those track conditions go on for tens of miles and there is NO alternative route other than to return 50 or 100 miles and stick to the sealed roads.
As they say - Horses for courses.
