Marketing cars, and especially to blokes, is a very tricky affair. Despite the continual improvements in automotive engine design, where manufacturers constantly squeeze more energy out of smaller displacements, your typical Neanderthal will be resistant to change and thinking that anything coming in at two litres better be either a bottle of milk, or sauce. Above: How many times have you heard this about smaller capacity motors and milk bottles… sheesh! Two-litres will very shortly be the new-normal for plenty of 4WDs as manufacturers apply hybrid tech to their product line-up, the battery pa ..read more

Around six months ago I was having a conversation with a young product planner at Isuzu and we were chewing the fat about modern 4WD design and I decided to try wield some influence about the direction the company might take in the future and what could be added to its portfolio. My gaze was on wagons. The current Isuzu MU-X is obviously a very successful stablemate to the D-MAX, as the wagon variant of the pair has been consistently top of the sales sheets in its sector for ages, the best execution of utes becoming wagons. But even as a past MU-X owner, it falls short of what I really, really ..read more

Sometimes being stuck in traffic can be a moment of journalistic gold and being idle doesn’t necessarily mean being of idle mind. It was recently bumper-to-bumper and the Colorado I pulled up behind immediately got me thinking about how fashion dictates plenty of vehicle fitouts these days and for all the wrong reasons. Old mate ahead looked like he got the Meccano set out, because he had one of those idiotic tub racks, an assembly of slotted rails and zinc bolts, that looked like leftovers from a Dexion stacker-party and attended by a bunch of Toorak-Tractor outdoorsmen who clearly don’t know ..read more

Yep, call me Karen, because what I’m about to tell you likely will alienate me from a 4WD industry player who really isn’t using much nous. What’s nous you say? Nous is having a canny ear to the ground and reading what the market is telling you and unless I’ve been living under a rock in recent times, driving recklessly (and boasting about it) through a National Park doesn’t seem to ring true in a world that’s troubled by a collapsing environment and hates cars. I’m a South Australian boy and I’ve visited the Simpson Desert (Munga-Thirri) National Park, because it’s in my backyard. It is an a ..read more

The Toyota-heads in the world are currently chomping at the bit in anticipation of the world release of the new 250 Prado, because it will flag the direction Toyota will also be taking with the Hilux in 2025. If you thought supply constraints were bad over the last couple of years, wait until you see the bind that Toyota is about to make for itself, as all its hero 4WD nameplates clock up record sales in the coming years. Let’s take a look at that range. I don’t get why people want to buy any iteration of the 70 series. It’s junk in my humble opinion. Overpriced, underspecified, uncomfortable ..read more

As fans of Mitsubishi’s products over the years we’re pleased to see that the new 2024 Triton has finally surfaced in Thailand and we now have details of what to expect in our local market, in the first half of next year. It’s a bigger, bolder Triton, a new Triton that’s not shaking the foundations or utedom to the core, instead, another stready-as-she-goes improvement over the previous generation and addressing the shortcomings. Because it’s an all-new chassis it comes with some significant benefits over the previous generation with dimensions that now don’t make it an outlier. Gone is the n ..read more

In the second instalment of this epic tale of derring-do in the Victorian High Country we learnt that the secret-squirrel way to Lake Hovell is a whole lot more exciting than the bitumen and that it doesn’t matter what age of the girls and boys, they all love playing in the mud. This final third essay recounts a day in search of huts and gold. Day three’s dawn alarm signalled the start of a busy Friday and the other alarm that had been going off in my head overnight, was the pitter-patter of raindrops on my accommodation’s roof… enough to wake me twice. I’ve already explained my loathing of ra ..read more

In the previous instalment the I-Venture Club took in the wonders of the Blue Rag Range Track and summited at the Trig Point. Day two sees them going deeply bush and in search of Lake Hovell. I step outside my Bright apartment room just after the sun has come up and am pleasantly surprised because the forecast on Willy Weather was suggesting today we get some rain. It’s mild and whilst there are a few scudding clouds, nothing up there looks foreboding. As I’m an ombrophobian (look it up) when I’ve got my training hat on, the prospect of standing outside, in the cold, in the rain, with my wet-w ..read more

For something completely different you ought to try 4WDing in a cloud, or in a blizzard, with visibility just about non-existent. That’s been my lot now on two occasions when I’ve been trying my luck leading Isuzu’s I-Venture Club on their long-form journeys, the first time in Tassie on the Climies Track in 2020, and now, just last week, up in the Victorian High Country. In case you didn’t know about it, Isuzu Ute Australia has a 4WD customer retention program par excellence (a Froggie way of saying it’s the best), that’s the envy of other vehicle makers. It started way back in 2014 and I’ve ..read more

In plenty of recent articles I’ve been writing about the right way to go about selecting alternative rubber for your fourbie. I deliberately steered clear of touching on the mysteries of tyre pressure, because it’s a subject deserving of its own blog, so here it is. I’ll make my opening salvo a topical one, because I expect that Loaded 4X4 Media is going to be inundated with hate mail, as everyone will have an opinion. Sorry. Most of you will be wrong. I firmly believe…“The best starting point for on-road pressure advice for your 4WD will be found in your tyre placard”. BOOM! Above: This haple ..read more