Best 4WD SUV off-road: Top 12 4WD SUVs compared - some fail to make it! - video Dailymotion

CarExpert

Have you ever wondered what the most capable 4WD SUV on the market is today? No need to wonder any more - Paul Maric puts 12 4WD SUVs to the test off-road to see which is best! To be included in our test, each 4WD SUV needed to have seven seats, along wth the availability of low-range.  LDV declined to be involved in the test with the D90, while the Discovery and big daddy Range Rover were unavailable.  4WD SUV towing test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzCXHYL_R58 MEGA 4WD SUV drag race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugmmUpfdGNA  If any of this 4WD talk doesn't make sense to you, check out this video that explains it all: https://youtu.be/A94wOxIUpLM  Full results: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-comparisons/best-4wd-suv-off-road-revealed-mu-x-vs-landcruiser-vs-patrol-vs-defender-vs-everest-vs-lx600-vs-fortuner-vs-pajero-sport-vs-prado-vs-grand-cherokee-l-vs-rexton  Our competitors include:  2023 Ford Everest V6 2023 Ford Everest four-cylinder 2023 Lexus LX600 2023 Toyota LandCruiser 300 Series Sahara 2023 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport 2023 Toyota LandCruiser Prado Kakadu 2023 Toyota Fortuner Crusade 2023 Isuzu MU-X LS-T 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee L Summit Reserve 2023 Nissan Patrol Ti-L 2023 SsangYong Rexton 2023 Land Rover Defender 110 diesel  MEGA 4WD SUV drag race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugmmUpfdGNA MEGA 4WD SUV towing test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzCXHYL_R58  Read the full review: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-comparisons/best-4wd-suv-off-road-revealed-mu-x-vs-landcruiser-vs-patrol-vs-defender-vs-everest-vs-lx600-vs-fortuner-vs-pajero-sport-vs-prado-vs-grand-cherokee-l-vs-rexton  Skip Ahead: Intro: 00:00 Test Explainer: 00:30 Land Rover Defender 110: 04:05 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport: 12:50 Toyota Fortuner: 19:28 SsangYong Rexton: 25:07 Ford Everest V6: 31:08 Lexus LX600: 37:44 Toyota LandCruiser 300: 45:06 Nissan Patrol: 51:49 Jeep Grand Cherokee L: 56:07 Isuzu MU-X: 01:02:53 Toyota LandCruiser Prado: 01:09:17 Ford Everest 4-cyl: 01:15:51 Summary & Winners: 01:22:44  We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.  Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.  Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1  You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.  Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!  Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!  CarExpert: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au  Paul Maric: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric  #suv #offroad #comparison

Transcript

00:00:00 G'day, I'm Paul, welcome to Australia's most comprehensive four-wheel drive SUV test.

00:00:05 We've done drag races, we've done some towing, but today is all about seeing how they perform

00:00:10 off-road. We've got the whole crew getting everything set up before we actually get started.

00:00:14 If you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this video, you can use the time codes on the

00:00:17 screen, or if you are on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below. And if you

00:00:21 haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon, that'll tell you every

00:00:25 single time one of these mega tests go live. Let's get started. Okay, so I want to run you

00:00:31 through the tests, and if you did watch our ute comparison video, some of you complained about

00:00:37 the tyres that we used on these vehicles. Just to be 100% clear, we are using the tyres that

00:00:42 come on these vehicles out of the factory. The whole point of this test in these light

00:00:46 off-road conditions is to get an understanding of the vehicle that you're buying and whether

00:00:50 it can actually do some of the light off-roading that we're doing. If you are going to do proper

00:00:53 off-roading, you're probably going to go down the path of fitting all-terrains or a more aggressive

00:00:57 tyre. We did ask the manufacturers that supplied these vehicles to make sure that they were fitted

00:01:01 with an all-terrain tyre if it's available. So you can see here on the Defender, this has the

00:01:05 off-road pack with the all-terrain tyres as well. So there will be a little bit of variance with

00:01:09 those around the test, but we'll see how we go. This is our first test. This is what's called the

00:01:13 Park Brake Hill at this proving ground. It's a set of rollers here, and what it's designed to do is,

00:01:19 it's designed to see how well the traction control system works when we drive onto it,

00:01:23 and the whole point of that is it gives you an idea of what this vehicle is going to be like

00:01:26 in the snow or when you have minimal traction and how well the car is able to deal with it.

00:01:31 We're going to run all the vehicles in just the standard on-road mode here. If the vehicle has

00:01:35 two-wheel drive, such as some of the ute-based SUVs, we'll run it in two-wheel drive first,

00:01:39 and then attempt it in four-wheel drive as well. This is very tricky, so only the ones with good

00:01:44 traction control systems will actually make it up here without rolling all the way back.

00:01:48 Once we're done with the Park Brake Hill, it's over to our Offset Mogul. Look,

00:01:52 this one's pretty straightforward. What this is going to test is our chassis flex. I'm going to

00:01:57 try and open and close the door of each of these cars as we get that full flex situation. Then,

00:02:02 in addition to that, we're going to do this a little differently to last time when we did this

00:02:06 in the ute, because what we're going to do now is forwards and backwards. So,

00:02:10 we're going to get different lift as we go through this different ways. So, it'll really

00:02:14 just test out, again, how well the traction control system works when this is in four-wheel

00:02:18 drive. If the vehicle does have a mud/rut setting available, we will try it here in high range only,

00:02:24 and also if it is one of those vehicles that has two-wheel drive low range, we're going to have it

00:02:28 in four-wheel drive high range to try and tackle this. So, it'll be a really good test to see

00:02:32 exactly how these things hook up and get us out of this little Offset Mogul.

00:02:36 Now, this is where things start getting a little trickier. Vehicles are all going to

00:02:40 arrive to this spot, and this is where we have our Mogul Hill Climb. So, this is a bit of a

00:02:45 dodgy surface because it's been wet at the moment, the clay will fill up the ruts in the tyres

00:02:50 nicely, and as they progress to the top of the hill, there's going to be a set of moguls that

00:02:53 they have to overcome. This is really going to challenge the four-wheel drive systems because

00:02:57 they have to be able to shuffle torque around the front and rear axles as they go to make it all the

00:03:01 way to the top without stopping. We're going to put the vehicles into low range in their most

00:03:05 aggressive setting here, so that we can actually see how they traverse this terrain. But, if they

00:03:11 do pass this hill, it's not over just yet. I have a slightly trickier setup just over here.

00:03:17 This is what I'm talking about. We go from a 30% grade with moguls to a 45% grade with shale,

00:03:26 and just a really loose surface beneath. This is really going to be the ultimate test for these,

00:03:32 and I wouldn't want to be going any further off-road than this in a standard vehicle before

00:03:35 you have to start modifying ground clearances and also changing tyres. As they get closer to the

00:03:40 top, it gets looser as well. So, any four-wheel drive SUV that's able to conquer the 30% and the

00:03:46 45% is a proper bonafide four-wheel drive SUV. Once we get to the top as well, we're going to

00:03:53 turn around and test hill descent control to see what the rate of descent is and how much control

00:03:58 the vehicle has over this super loose and steep descent. So, I think we need to get started.

00:04:05 Okay, let's kick off with the Land Rover Defender. I get the feeling this is probably going to ace

00:04:11 most of these tests because this has the optional off-road packs. We've got a centre diff lock,

00:04:15 rear diff lock, height adjustable suspension. This one's also running all-terrain tyres as well.

00:04:20 Before we kick off with the Defender though, I just want to call out the cars that are missing

00:04:23 here. So, LTV D90 isn't here. They didn't want to be part of the test, unfortunately, so not here.

00:04:29 We're also missing some other Land Rovers. So, Land Rover Discovery and the big daddy Range Rover.

00:04:34 Basically, this test was constructed so that they had to have low range and also seven seats. So,

00:04:39 we did want to have those, but Discovery is at an event. Range Rover was at an event,

00:04:44 so this is our only Land Rover product, unfortunately. So, all right, what we're

00:04:47 going to do for this particular test, I'm going to leave this just in its standard road mode. So,

00:04:52 this is all in automatic. Roll onto the rollers here and we'll see how it goes in terms of

00:04:58 traction control. So, there are the rollers there. We'll come to a stop. I do like here in the centre

00:05:03 how it actually tells you whether the diffs are open or closed. So, you can see now that is open

00:05:09 on both. So, I'll now roll onto the throttle and see what happens. That is so cool. They literally

00:05:14 just locked immediately and it just pulled itself up. So, look, I think that is such an impressive

00:05:22 system and they've unlocked again there. So, it really does show you that they have tuned this to

00:05:26 perfection. If you've got differentials like that, they can just unlock and lock at the drop of a

00:05:30 hat. I think it just shows you they really have thought about every application of this doing its

00:05:35 day-to-day thing. Okay, it is mogul time. So, I'm going to put the Defender into mud ruts mode. So,

00:05:41 you press this button here. It brings up all your terrain response modes. I'm going to press

00:05:46 mud ruts. So, that's going to adjust the traction control and just give it a little bit more slip

00:05:51 as required. I'm also not going to raise the suspension height. So, we're just going to go

00:05:55 through in normal height here. We might do a run again later on in higher suspension. We're going

00:06:00 to go forwards and then backwards as well. So, just keep an eye on this screen here. You can see

00:06:05 what those centre and rear diffs are doing. We'll also do our door flex test as well here.

00:06:11 Dropping that in, I can hear the rubber around the doors there making a bit of noise.

00:06:15 I'll come in here and get it into that full flex situation which is about there.

00:06:21 Make sure we can open and close that door. Yeah, no dramas. I love this. It shows you the level of

00:06:30 articulation you have here. Because we have air suspension, this actually is afforded a huge

00:06:34 amount of articulation. I'm going to roll onto the throttle now and we'll just see what it does.

00:06:38 It's kicking a little bit sideways there but just walking through that

00:06:48 without any dramas at all. That is seriously impressive. All right, let's turn around. We'll

00:06:54 go through in the opposite direction and see what this is like. Okay, in this opposite direction,

00:06:59 the grading is just slightly different. So, we should see maybe a bit of tyre lift at the front

00:07:04 there and we'll see the traction control doing its thing. See if it bottoms out here as well on

00:07:08 the lane. A tiny little touch there, nothing too bad. It's a little sideways there.

00:07:15 But again, no nonsense. It is just doing what it's meant to be doing which is sensational. So,

00:07:22 all right, let's turn around. We'll give this one more crack in off-road height

00:07:25 and just see if it makes it any different at all.

00:07:27 Okay, let's give this another shot here. This really just gives you that little bit of extra

00:07:34 ground clearance so you don't knock the front end there. Probably not going to make too much

00:07:38 of a difference here because this is pretty light off-roading but we'll see how it goes anyway.

00:07:44 Okay, so roll onto the throttle. That's interesting. It is having to work a little

00:07:49 harder there on the entry. That's okay. Cool. All right, we'll turn around and I'll run through

00:07:57 that one more time. It's interesting, just in the normal height it actually seemed to be doing a

00:08:01 good enough job there. So, maybe this off-road height is more just if you know you need to be

00:08:06 clearing taller objects but it sort of doesn't make too much of a difference. So, come through

00:08:13 again. I'll drop this into here. There it is. Yeah, front didn't touch then so that was a little

00:08:22 better. Still kicks a little sideways coming out of that but not the end of the world. Yeah,

00:08:29 a lot of flexing around this here with this rubber seal so probably needs just a little bit of

00:08:34 greasing I reckon. Okay, so it is time for the 30% hill. Like I said when we explained all of this,

00:08:42 I'm going to stick this in low range. So, I'll leave it in mud ruts mode and then we'll pop it

00:08:47 into low range as well. So, you go into neutral, hit low range, it flicks into low range, tells

00:08:53 you that it's done that. It's also lifted the suspension to off-road height as well. And then

00:08:58 for the rest, I'm just going to leave it pretty much where it is. So, we'll see how this goes.

00:09:01 I have high confidence that this will make it but you never know. So, let's see what happens.

00:09:06 All right, here we go. See, they're quite deep ruts when you get up to them.

00:09:11 Oh, it's just walking up here without any dramas. You can hear the relays here doing all their

00:09:26 stuff for the traction control and it just feels incredibly effortless walking up there. So,

00:09:32 that is a really good setup and I love the way that that has just

00:09:35 gone up there without any dramas. Now, before we try and go up the 45 percent,

00:09:39 we're going to try our descent. So, it's a button here for hill descent control and the good thing

00:09:44 is you can actually set the speed that it's going to run here using cruise control switches and then

00:09:49 it'll crawl over the edge. You can also pop the camera on as well for this view because you can

00:09:55 actually see through that which I like and you can also see through this as well. So, they really

00:10:00 have thought of everything here when it comes to off-roading and these camera angles. So,

00:10:03 there's our line just there. I'll just let go of the brake, send it over the edge and see what

00:10:07 happens. Yeah, nice. That is doing a really good job controlling that descent beautifully. Yeah,

00:10:19 I just feel like it is fully in charge of all that. So, yeah, excellent hill descent control

00:10:23 there. That is a really nice setup. Okay, so time to try this. Now, this is the first car we've

00:10:27 tried here. I don't even know if it's going to make it up, so we'll see what happens. I'll just

00:10:31 stay on the mud rut setting and we'll see what happens there. I've got the suspension lifted.

00:10:36 Let's see how we go. With all of these, I'm just going to try to keep a uniform

00:10:40 throttle level as well just to see how it climbs and that'll give us a good indication of how they

00:10:46 perform. All right, we're already starting to slip there. I'm going to stop there because we're

00:10:51 just digging a hole. So, I'm going to roll out of that. Like I mentioned earlier, it is super

00:10:56 sketchy here, so I don't really want to dig a massive hole if we don't have to. So, I'm going

00:11:02 to try that once more with just a little bit more pace and a little bit more throttle. We'll see how

00:11:07 it goes. If this doesn't make it up here, I'm suspecting the rest of them won't. So, let's try

00:11:12 a bit more throttle, a bit more pace. Oh, let's go, let's go. All right, that's it. It's kind of

00:11:24 just digging itself a hole there. I'm going to try one more thing now, which is lowering the

00:11:30 suspension. It might just be that it's on its tippy toes there and not really progressing as

00:11:35 much as it should. The hill descent control works in reverse as well. Okay, here we go here. So,

00:11:41 pop that back into drive. We'll just lower the suspension a little bit. Let's see how this goes.

00:11:47 Here we go. Same story again, a bit more aggressive with the throttle, lower suspension height.

00:11:54 Ah, there we go. That's made a massive difference. I don't like that though. It is being really

00:12:02 fussy with the gears there. So, right as we got to the top, it decided it wanted to drop down a gear

00:12:07 and it really killed our momentum. And that is the last thing that you want when you're trying

00:12:11 to get up a grade like that. So, yeah, I think I probably should have just gone in and held the

00:12:16 gears on my own, but without paddle shifters, there is a bit of faffing to make that happen.

00:12:20 So, yeah, look, Land Rover Defender, immensely capable and you can see there that you just need

00:12:26 to be in the right setting and sometimes the setting that it tells you to be in isn't the

00:12:30 right setting. So, you should always, in a situation like that, try and just change some

00:12:34 of these settings for yourself just until you get to the point where you're comfortable with it. So,

00:12:38 yeah, I'll be interested to see how the rest of the SUVs go here, given this has the all-terrain

00:12:43 centre and rear diff locks. I think some of the lighter terrain vehicles are going to struggle,

00:12:48 but that is what this test is for, I guess. Okay, so, Pajero Sport. This is an interesting one

00:12:54 because you can run it in two-wheel drive high range to save fuel. You can also run it in four-wheel

00:12:59 drive high range on sealed surfaces. With some of the ute-based SUVs, you can't actually do that,

00:13:04 so this is kind of unique in the segment. If you do want to understand why you can't actually run

00:13:09 some of these on sealed surfaces in four-wheel drive high range, click up here to watch the video

00:13:14 we shot previously that explains it. But we're going to do two-wheel drive high range first,

00:13:17 then we'll come back again for four-wheel drive high range to see how it goes. So,

00:13:21 all right, we are on the rollers, we'll come to a stop, just there. Okay, roll onto the throttle.

00:13:29 Rolling back a little bit, but I can feel traction control biting. You can see that

00:13:36 light flashing there. And then away it goes, nice and easily. Okay, so we'll switch over to four-wheel

00:13:44 drive high range. You can see it doing its thing there. We'll just wait for that to complete.

00:13:48 Sometimes it takes a little while. There we go. Okay, so same story again. We'll come on,

00:13:53 come to a stop, and then roll onto the throttle.

00:13:58 Oh, that's excellent. That has barely even moved. That's just moving along really nicely. So,

00:14:05 yeah, really good demonstration there of how good the traction control system here is. That is

00:14:10 excellent job for Pajero Sport. Let's head over to the Moguls. Now, Offset Mogul. I'm going to

00:14:15 leave this in four-wheel drive high range, just the road setting. I'm not going to lock

00:14:19 the centre diff. We'll see how it goes first. If it does struggle, we can lock the centre diff,

00:14:24 or even go down to locking the rear diff on this as well if we need to. But we'll see how it performs.

00:14:29 Okay, so I'll do that flex test. Switch off our parking sensors as well.

00:14:39 Put that into that spot just there. See what this feels like.

00:14:43 It is catching a tiny bit there. So the body is flexing a fair bit there once we're in that

00:14:52 little seesaw condition. I'll roll onto the throttle now. Let's see how it goes out of here.

00:14:57 A little bit more throttle. Nice. So traction control intervened there, gave us everything

00:15:03 that we needed, and then just walked it out. So, yeah, it is a really good traction control

00:15:08 system. We actually found with the Triton when we tested it here that it was just really confident

00:15:13 through this sort of stuff as well, and that's without the centre diff being locked. So,

00:15:16 tell you what, maybe we'll go back through it this way and then lock the centre diff just to

00:15:20 see if it does feel any different. Okay, so I'll flick that around, wait for centre diff to lock.

00:15:26 The only downside to this system is it does take a little while for all this stuff to

00:15:31 engage. It sort of doesn't happen right away, which is a little bit annoying. There we go.

00:15:36 Okay, that's on. It actually has different modes here as well that you can select. So let's go

00:15:40 through to mud. We'll see how that assists with the traction control. All right, we'll drop it

00:15:47 into here, see if that front end touches down. Oh, nice. That is even more effortless now with

00:16:00 that centre diff locked. So, yeah, this is such a good setup. They've done wonders here with the

00:16:07 traction control system. It is a really impressive way to do things. So, yeah, good job, Mint's

00:16:11 Official. I'm excited to see what it does down here in our gradients. Okay, so it is time for

00:16:16 the gradient. I should probably call out as well, this is on highway terrain tyres. So,

00:16:20 in terms of the other modes we have, we have rear diff lock, we have the centre diff lock,

00:16:24 we have low range, hill descent control, and also a couple of drive modes here as well. So,

00:16:29 now I'm going to pop this into low range now. We twist that around,

00:16:33 wait for that to enter low range. So it actually disables that forward collision warning there

00:16:39 and traction control. So let's see what happens. That's left in mud and snow.

00:16:42 All right, let's do our climb. I've left the rear diff unlocked for the moment just to see

00:16:46 what happens. But, yeah, I have high hopes given what

00:16:51 transpired earlier. So here comes our first mogul.

00:16:54 Oh, nice. Stay in that. Nice, nice, nice, nice. Excellent. All right, good job,

00:17:17 Padget Sport. Very nice. Okay, hill descent. So we had a complaint from a couple of commenters

00:17:22 that hill descent controls in some of these vehicles need it to be stopped before you roll

00:17:26 over. And it wasn't the case in the Ranger and that sort of stuff, but maybe in some of these

00:17:30 older ones it is the case. So we'll do that. Turn hill descent control on so it's active.

00:17:36 I'm going to roll out of the brake now and let it just go over the edge and we'll see what happens.

00:17:41 So it is going pretty slowly there.

00:17:42 Here we go. So dropping into that. I'm just wondering if I can control descent speed using

00:17:52 cruise control. So I'm flicking up and it doesn't seem to make much of a difference,

00:17:57 but this descent speed is very slow and it is very controlled. Like there's no dramas there at all.

00:18:03 I go a little on the throttle and then roll out of the throttle. It allows it to pick up a bit of

00:18:07 speed, but it all feels very controlled without too many issues there. So yeah, good job with

00:18:14 hill descent on Pajero Sport. Okay, so 45 percent gradient. I'm going to give this the best chance

00:18:20 it can get by locking the rear diff. I'm going to wait for that to engage. It takes a little bit of

00:18:25 time for it to do its thing. There we go. I did notice on the 30 percent grade that it was flaring

00:18:30 as we were getting closer to the top there. So we'll see what happens when I sort of leave it

00:18:35 here and drive and just keep that throttle nice and gradual. Yes, I'm not getting any higher than

00:18:45 there, so we'll go back. All right, this time around I'll just have a little bit more pace.

00:18:50 I'll get on the throttle this time.

00:18:52 Yes, it's flaring for some reason and it's really quite annoying, but I think we're going to make

00:19:03 it up here. Oh, sensational. Awesome. So I don't know whether the flaring is intentional or not,

00:19:10 but it kind of hindered and helped. So I was able to just stay in the throttle a little harder and

00:19:14 to be honest, this actually felt like it walked up there better than the Defender did. So I just

00:19:19 got to give it to Mitsubishi. They've done such a good job with this four-wheel drive system.

00:19:23 I'm just really impressed with how it's all come together and how user-friendly it all is as well.

00:19:28 So we are in the Toyota Fortuner. So just as a friendly reminder, this uses a full-time

00:19:34 two-wheel drive system on sealed surfaces. So that's stuff like your standard road. You can't

00:19:40 run it on four-wheel drive high range unless you're on an unsealed surface. So this test is

00:19:44 going to be done in two-wheel drive, then four-wheel drive as well. There's no real sort of

00:19:48 other fancy stuff here outside of rear diff lock, low range and a hill descent as well. So let's see

00:19:55 how we go. And by the way, this is on highway tyres as well. It'll be interesting to see how

00:20:00 it performs in the off-road portion of this. Okay, we're on the rollers now. We'll come to a stop

00:20:05 and I'll just roll onto the throttle. Here we go.

00:20:07 Only a little bit of roll back there and then traction control is doing its thing to get us

00:20:15 out of here. Very nice. Yeah, very nicely done. Okay, we will head back down and give this a

00:20:23 crack in four-wheel drive high range. Okay, let's try 4H here. See how that fares. Wait

00:20:29 for that to activate. There it is. Line up our roller. Okay, come to a stop. Okay, here we go.

00:20:37 That's great, didn't even move there. So in this 4H mode, it's basically sending 50% of

00:20:44 torque to the front axle and 50% of torque to the rear. So in theory, you have double the ability

00:20:49 to get traction and it means that it should make stuff like that much easier if you ever encounter

00:20:54 it. But even in two-wheel drive there, it did a perfectly fine job without any dramas. Now for

00:20:58 the offset mogul, I'm going to leave this in four-wheel drive high range, even though it does

00:21:02 have a rear diff lock, we'll just see how it goes on its own. Test these traction control systems.

00:21:07 We'll see what our flex is like as well for the door. Drop that into just that spot right there.

00:21:20 Yep, really nice and solid. So roll onto the throttle now.

00:21:23 Okay, traction control light is flashing.

00:21:30 Excellent, very nicely done. No problems there at all. So yeah, traction control bit, it did

00:21:37 exactly what it was meant to do. Really nicely tuned system. We'll turn around and head in the

00:21:42 opposite direction, see if we can catch it napping, but I'm pretty sort of confident it should be

00:21:47 fine. Okay, drop her in. Bang, there it goes. Any touching? No, that felt good. Roll onto the throttle.

00:21:57 Very nice. Piece of cake. Very good. I don't know, when we did the ute test here, we were pretty

00:22:12 surprised by how well the Hilux Rogue did, and when they share the same platform beneath the skin,

00:22:18 and it just seems all pretty straightforward to me. So let's head over to the gradients and see

00:22:23 how it goes down there. Okay, 30% hill. So we're going to drop down into low range now. We're

00:22:30 going to leave the rear diff unlocked just to see what happens. We will give it another crack with

00:22:35 the rear diff locked if it doesn't get up there, but let's see how we go. So there it goes, tapping

00:22:42 off nice. So you can see traction control is off. Forward collision is off.

00:22:46 Cannot believe how easily this is walking up.

00:23:00 Yeah, really nice, really nice attempt there, and no dramas, no fussiness with the transmission,

00:23:10 and we are on highway tyres as well. So yeah, that's awesome.

00:23:14 Okay, so hill descent control. This has a 360 camera, so I'm going to activate it by pushing

00:23:21 this. Quality is not amazing, but it kind of gives us an idea of what's happening,

00:23:24 and then I'm going to engage hill descent control. Same story again. I'm going to just

00:23:29 get to the crest of this hill, and then I will basically make sure we've come to a stop,

00:23:34 and then let it roll down. So there's a stop. Off the brake.

00:23:37 I can't change speed with cruise control.

00:23:42 Yeah, it's probably a tiny bit quick for my liking. I'm getting down there, but I would

00:23:51 love to just be able to vary the speed a little bit. That'd be my only complaint with that.

00:23:55 Okay, 45 percent grade. I'm going to lock the rear diff for this one. Press that,

00:24:01 wait for it to activate. Taking its time. There we go. Okay, that's activated. Let's

00:24:06 see what happens now. Here we go. These highway tyres probably aren't going to love this, but

00:24:10 see how it goes.

00:24:12 Okay, we're kind of stuck there. I'll go back down.

00:24:19 Here we go. So a little bit more pace this time.

00:24:27 Okay, it's really starting to slip a little bit there.

00:24:30 Oh, come on, come on.

00:24:37 All right, bang, we made it. Fantastic. All right, so it really just did need a little

00:24:44 bit more pace. This kind of falls into the same category as Pajero Sport.

00:24:48 Bit of a mountain goat. It'll just climb up there, and it shows you that even with these

00:24:51 highway tyres, it is such a good four-wheel drive system that's willing to send torque

00:24:55 where it needs to go to get it up a hill like that. So yeah, really impressive this. And

00:25:00 again, just throwing back to Defender, you have to really work Defender to get up there,

00:25:03 whereas this has actually did quite an impressive job.

00:25:06 SsangYong Rexton. Look, it could be a car that some of you may never have heard of,

00:25:11 but I'll be interested to see how it goes here on our little setup, because this is

00:25:17 one of those SUVs that has two-wheel drive high range permanently, and then four-wheel

00:25:21 drive high range for unsealed surfaces. So it'll be interesting to see how it actually

00:25:25 fares here, but there's only one way to find out. It's in eco drive mode at the moment,

00:25:29 so I'll just leave it there. Let's see how it goes. We'll roll onto our rollers,

00:25:34 and come to a stop. Okay, so onto the throttle.

00:25:38 Ah, okay, there we go. So this has one of those auto-locking rear diffs. Basically,

00:25:47 when you get a delta between one side of the rear axle and the other, it automatically

00:25:52 engages the rear diff lock. I don't love these because you don't actually have any control over

00:25:57 it, but you can see there in that situation where you have one of your wheels slipping,

00:26:01 it basically fires that diff lock immediately to get you out of that situation.

00:26:05 So now what we'll do is switch this over to 4H, line up our roller. I'll be interested to see if

00:26:11 it actually does the same thing here and auto-locks the rear. So come to a stop there,

00:26:16 get onto the throttle. Yeah, there it is. It just locked the rear immediately. So yeah,

00:26:22 look, it achieves the goal of being able to get out there and do that side of things, but it's

00:26:27 just not a system you have any control of as a driver, so not the best setup in my opinion.

00:26:33 Okay, muggle time. Let's see how we go. So in addition to that auto-locking rear diff,

00:26:38 it also has a hill descent control, so we'll test that out shortly.

00:26:41 So I've left it here in 4H. We'll do our little flex test first. Get it into that spot just there.

00:26:50 No dramas there at all. Very nice. And roll onto the throttle now.

00:26:53 Nice. That was the rear diff locking.

00:27:00 It's quite unsophisticated because it locks, you finish what you're doing, then it unlocks,

00:27:10 and then when you need it again, it has to re-lock. So I can just see that not being

00:27:16 overly useful when you actually need it to just be locked. So yeah, all right,

00:27:21 let's give that one more shot in the opposite direction. Pop it into here.

00:27:25 Okay, let's see if it touches down on that other side.

00:27:29 We'll call that parking sensor. Okay, here we go.

00:27:34 There it is. That's locked. Kicks it a little sideways.

00:27:43 Move that front wheel in the air. Get it back down.

00:27:46 Yeah, it really is just quite clumsy, the way that it's locking and unlocking there. I'm

00:27:54 starting to see why I can't just have a button that says lock and then it just takes care of it

00:27:59 feeling like that. But look, it did get through that without any dramas. No

00:28:03 overt flex either. So yeah, win-win. Okay, so come up to our gradient.

00:28:09 So worth calling out at this point as well, we've got highway tyres on this car,

00:28:13 but this car also has aftermarket suspension. So it's using an Ironman

00:28:17 suspension setup. So it's a nitro gas setup, lifts the body by 40 mil, and I'll be curious

00:28:22 to see how it goes on here because I think this will give it that sort of clearance that it really

00:28:26 needs. So I'm going to pop this into low range. I'll put this into power mode as well, just to

00:28:31 see if that makes much of a difference. Given it has an auto locking rear diff, this should

00:28:35 kind of just do everything on its own. I am concerned about it kicking us sideways though,

00:28:39 so we'll see what happens as we climb.

00:28:42 Oh, it's going, that's all right, it's getting there.

00:28:56 Yeah, nice, excellent. So it really wasn't hyperactive there. It felt like the rear diff

00:29:02 engaged and then it stayed engaged, and that kind of meant that it could just crawl up there

00:29:06 without any problems. And yeah, so I don't know, I'd still love the ability to lock it myself,

00:29:11 but the fact that it got up there without any dramas, I think is definitely a good sign.

00:29:15 Okay, so time to test out hill descent control. We'll get to the top of the hill here.

00:29:21 Love this camera, the quality is fantastic. I can clearly see where the car's going over.

00:29:26 I'll press the hill descent control button, so it's active down there,

00:29:29 and again, roll out of the brake there. It doesn't feel like I can use cruise control to slow it down.

00:29:37 This is, yeah, quite sloppy. It's going way too quick for this descent.

00:29:43 Yeah, that's really not a very good system. It just randomly brought us to a complete stop down

00:29:51 the bottom and then started going again. So yeah, that just felt really clumsy, and I really want

00:29:56 to be able to have that granular speed control. It really didn't feel like I had any control over

00:30:00 how fast that was going to go down the hill. I'm noticing this steering just goes randomly heavy

00:30:05 at times, and I don't know whether that is the steering motor just not having enough grunt, but

00:30:11 yeah, okay, we'll see how it goes up here. But I've left that in low range,

00:30:15 rear diff will lock on its own, just gradual throttle now just to see how it climbs.

00:30:23 It's really struggling now. I'll go back down. I'll try just a little bit more pace. Okay, here we go.

00:30:30 A little bit more pace now.

00:30:34 No, that's not going anywhere. I'll try just one last time,

00:30:43 see if we can get it to progress any further. If we can't, we'll call this one a fail. So in theory,

00:30:49 I could probably just keep the throttle all the way in and it would just cause a big old mess here,

00:30:53 but I don't really want to have to do that. That's a no-go. So look, it was a commendable

00:31:01 effort so far, but yeah, it was our 45% gradient that killed it here for the Rexton.

00:31:06 Okay, Ford Everest V6. This one's running the 21-inch wheel, which is a highway terrain tyre,

00:31:13 so it'll be interesting to see how that goes when we go off-roading. But what we're going to do here

00:31:18 is run this in two-wheel drive high range first, and then we'll switch it over to four-wheel drive

00:31:22 automatic to see how it goes. Outside of that, we have a four-wheel drive high range, four-wheel

00:31:26 drive low range, rear diff lock. We also have a hill descent control as well, plus some off-road

00:31:30 modes. We'll play with those shortly. Okay, we are on our rollers, come to a full stop,

00:31:37 and then just roll onto the throttle.

00:31:39 Back a little bit there, picks up the traction control.

00:31:48 And away we go. Very nice. All right, we'll go back down and try 4A.

00:31:52 Okay, switch this into 4A. It's a pretty seamless process, it all happens nice and quickly. Okay,

00:31:59 we're on our rollers and come to a stop. Okay, here we go.

00:32:04 Yeah, nice. Just watching that out the side window there, it hooks up and

00:32:09 away we go. Yeah, very seamless stuff. Okay, over to our Mogul. So I've left it in four-wheel

00:32:17 drive automatic. We might switch this over to mud ruts. That's one of the modes. So we've got

00:32:23 slippery mud ruts and sand. Pop it into mud ruts. Actually switches it to 4H. We'll leave it in 4A

00:32:31 just because we did that with the Pajero Sport. Want to make it nice and even. Actually, yeah,

00:32:37 okay, so it's telling me here the selected four-wheel drive mode is not available because

00:32:40 it locks the rear diff in mud ruts. So I'll take that out of mud ruts and just go back to normal

00:32:46 and pop that into 4A. Rear diff unlocked. We'll see how we go with our flex test first.

00:32:52 Okay, so we'll go into here and then just into there. So let's see that.

00:33:01 Nice, nice and strong and then roll onto the throttle.

00:33:05 Yeah, very good. I can feel the traction control working quite hard there.

00:33:13 A bit of a touchdown on the way down.

00:33:14 Excellent.

00:33:15 Yeah, very good. That traction control system is fantastic. All right, let's pop it into mud ruts,

00:33:26 but I will disengage the rear diff lock and we'll just see what that feels like in four-wheel drive

00:33:32 high range. Here we go. So difference between 4A and 4H is that in 4A can apportion different

00:33:39 amounts of torque to the front and rear. In 4H, you can actually just pull the front wheel off

00:33:43 and you can just pull the rear wheel off. So you can just pull the front wheel off and you can

00:33:46 just pull the rear wheel off. So you can just pull the front wheel off and you can just pull the

00:33:49 rear wheel off. So you can just pull the front wheel off and you can just pull the rear wheel

00:33:52 off. So you can just pull the front wheel off and you can just pull the rear wheel off.

00:33:54 So you can just pull the front wheel off and you can just pull the rear wheel off.

00:33:56 So you can just pull the front wheel off and you can just pull the rear wheel off.

00:33:58 So you can just pull the front wheel off and you can just pull the rear wheel off.

00:34:00 So you can just pull the front wheel off and you can just pull the rear wheel off.

00:34:02 So you can just pull the front wheel off and you can just pull the rear wheel off.

00:34:04 So you can just pull the front wheel off and you can just pull the rear wheel off.

00:34:07 Touching down on the bottom there so clearance might be a little bit of an issue.

00:34:10 Beautiful. Outside of that, excellent tuning there on the traction control system. Really cool.

00:34:17 And I love this display that pops up here when you change into that mode as well. Kind of just

00:34:21 gives you an overview of what's going on around the car. 30% gradient. All right, so I'm going

00:34:27 to leave this in mud ruts mode but I will slot it down into low range. So you just press 4L.

00:34:34 It says 4x4 shift in progress. So that is engaged. I'll leave the rear diff unlocked for our first

00:34:41 attempt to see how it goes. I'm hoping that this will be able to use all of its traction

00:34:46 controls and stuff to make this as effective as possible. So here we go.

00:34:58 I'm struggling here a little bit but I can hear it working.

00:35:01 I've literally just kept throttle in the same position and it has done all of that work for me.

00:35:17 So yeah, it wasn't the prettiest thing in the world but we got there in the end.

00:35:21 Yeah, it took a lot more effort than it did in stuff like the PadSport and the Fortuner as

00:35:28 well. So yeah, and that could be down to these highway terrain tires. Might be the Fortuner was

00:35:33 on literally highway tires. So yeah, look, didn't love that but we'll see how it goes as we get a

00:35:39 little bit harder. So hill descent, you activate that here on the screen. You push that just there.

00:35:45 I think we can actually adjust the speed of this using cruise control. Maybe we can't. No, we can.

00:35:50 Cool. So I'll line this up. I've got this screen running as well so I can see what's happening

00:35:55 over the edge. It's one of those ones that you don't have to come to a full stop to actually

00:35:59 use the hill descent control. Another kilometre an hour there. We'll see how it goes.

00:36:06 This is a really good system. I like that. Lots of control over the descent speed here.

00:36:13 I can then dial it in and out as required with cruise control. So yeah, it is really,

00:36:18 really good there. Quite impressed with that hill descent control.

00:36:21 Okay, so time to try and go up the 45%. I'm going to lock the rear diff here.

00:36:26 It actually engages and disengages really quickly, which I like. We're in low range.

00:36:30 Let's see how it goes. This is pretty much the most aggressive setting that it has here for this

00:36:35 climb. Okay, let's dig in there. Pop it in reverse, head back down. Give that one more shot,

00:36:46 just a little bit more throttle this time with a bit more pace. Okay, here we go. Pop that into

00:36:51 drive. A little bit more pace here. Digging us a hole there. Come back down. Give it one last

00:37:08 attempt here. Just a little bit more pace and we'll see what happens. All right.

00:37:13 There is no height adjustable suspension here either, so I think it could be these highway

00:37:21 terrains just giving us a bit of grief. No, the second it falls into that little divot there,

00:37:25 it just doesn't go anywhere and we end up just digging a hole. So, all right, that is a fail for

00:37:31 V6 Everest. I'll be keen to see whether it performs better with the four-cylinder,

00:37:36 given that it's got the proper sort of neater all-terrain tyres on it. So, let's see how we go.

00:37:40 I'm excited for this. This is the big bus, the Lexus LX. The reason it's in this test is because

00:37:48 it shares a platform with the Toyota Land Cruiser 300 series. It's available with seven seats,

00:37:52 so it meets the criteria. And in Australia, this is the only version of the 300 series platform

00:37:58 that actually has a petrol engine, so we're really keen to sort of have that involved as well. So,

00:38:02 full-time four-wheel drive, we're going to attack our roller just in four-wheel drive high range.

00:38:08 There are a number of other settings that we're going to play with here. So, we have height

00:38:10 adjustable suspension, we have a centre diff lock, but no rear diff lock. It does have a limited slip

00:38:15 differential on the rear axle, and then you also have a number of drive modes as well. So,

00:38:19 here comes our roller,

00:38:22 and then onto the throttle.

00:38:31 It's getting there. It didn't roll back, which is good. It's just very gradual in terms of how

00:38:36 quickly it leaves. Yeah, nice. No dramas there at all. So, pass on our roller.

00:38:42 Okay, muggle time. So, we have a number of drive modes for on-road driving, but I'm going to press

00:38:47 the MTS button, which lets you select off-road modes, and I'm going to go over, so you've got

00:38:53 auto, dirt, sand, mud. We'll go over to mud. So, that's jacking the suspension up to the off-road

00:38:59 height. See how that goes. It's also disabled traction control. It must just be changing the

00:39:04 traction control so that we do have a little bit more slip when needed. Let's see how we go here.

00:39:11 So, we'll drop it in. It's such a big bus, this thing. Okay, so do our flex test.

00:39:25 Yeah, it's fine. That is all good. Okay, here we go. So, I'll roll onto the throttle now.

00:39:30 See how the traction control works.

00:39:32 It's getting there. It's getting there. All right, cool. That's the back wheel off the ground.

00:39:38 All right, and then onto the throttle here.

00:39:42 Nice, very good. So, decent traction control system there. It seemed to sort itself out

00:39:50 pretty nicely. Go back again and give that one more try in the other direction. Okay, here we go.

00:39:57 Yeah, the extra height you're afforded here when it is in its higher off-road setting really gives

00:40:02 it a decent amount of clearance. We're not touching really anything there as we move through this,

00:40:07 so we'll see how it feels now. Yeah, the traction control is doing a really good job here at just

00:40:13 managing all of this and just making sure that we don't have a situation where, you know, it's out

00:40:18 of control. I can see there that back wheel is pretty much off the ground. That is a lot of

00:40:22 articulation it's getting there, which is cool. Just on the throttle. Very nice. It's actually a

00:40:27 bit of a surprise package. I think I'll walk through that without any problems at all.

00:40:31 30% gradient time, so I'm going to leave this in mud rust, but what I am going to do is drop it

00:40:36 down into low range. So, I'll put that back into neutral, flick this switch here into low range.

00:40:42 That is done. Let's see how it goes up here. I have a lot of confidence in this. I haven't

00:40:46 actually locked the center diff yet. That'll be our next step if we can't make it up here,

00:40:50 so we'll see what happens. Yeah, so far so good.

00:40:53 It is a piece of cake. You really can see all of that 300 Series heritage under the body here. This

00:41:08 is remarkable how well this is going off-road. That was incredibly effortless on highway tyres

00:41:14 as well. All right, let's see how we go with a bit of hill descent. So, hill descent control.

00:41:21 This is an interesting system. So, this has basically a crawl control that works downhill

00:41:25 and uphill as well. So, you push this button here and then you have five different levels

00:41:30 of crawl speed that you can use the mode select switch for. So, let's go to level three. A little

00:41:36 bit of vision out the front there as well. See how this goes. Those cameras are fantastic,

00:41:40 so you can clearly see what's going on out front there. Line up these ruts.

00:41:45 Drop that down a touch.

00:41:49 Yeah, very good. I'll increase the speed on that.

00:41:55 Yeah, nice. That is going down here with nice prowess. So, very impressed with that. Very good.

00:42:07 I like that. I will point out as well, it actually has this turn assist function. We demonstrated

00:42:13 this when we shot the 300 Series Land Cruiser, but it allows it to do a much tighter turn

00:42:18 by locking individual wheels and basically sending it around a tighter turning radius.

00:42:23 Really cool feature, and if you do come across a path or something like that where you do have

00:42:27 a tight turn coming up, just a great way to get the car articulating around that turn without

00:42:32 having to go back and forward a thousand times. Okay, so 45% gradient. So, let's give this a shot

00:42:38 first with it in all of its aggressive settings. So, I'm going to lock the center diff here by

00:42:43 pushing that, and then we're going to see how we go up here. It is still in its high

00:42:49 setting in the mud mode. Let's stop there. Let me just go back and just have a little bit more

00:42:59 pace at that. Okay, here we go. So, a little bit more pace this time.

00:43:02 I don't want to dig a massive hole here, so we'll see how it goes. It is a big beast to be moving.

00:43:09 Nothing there. We'll go back and try it one last time just with a tiny bit more pace.

00:43:16 Okay, here we go. A little bit more pace this time.

00:43:24 Okay, that's definitely helping. Oh, come on. Oh, we're so close. We are so close. Come on.

00:43:34 Oh, there it is. Okay, we just made it.

00:43:38 All right, that was close. We literally just made that. So, yeah, let's go back down. I'm

00:43:49 going to try this crawl control going up the hill. See if I just leave it in the hands of

00:43:54 the vehicle weather. It actually helps it achieve exactly that goal. Right, so the whole idea here

00:43:59 is you can set the ascent speed and then the vehicle does all of the driving on its own. So,

00:44:04 I'm going to press crawl control. I'll set it to like speed two or something. I've got my foot

00:44:09 off the throttle. Actually, just get it to the base of the hill and then I'll let my foot off

00:44:13 the throttle. So, it's now crawling up in speed setting three. We'll see if allowing it to manage

00:44:18 the ascent actually lets it get past that spot where we couldn't go any further.

00:44:22 I don't really seem to make too much of a difference.

00:44:32 It is doing stuff, but I think we're just digging a hole here.

00:44:38 Try a bit more pace. No, try less pace.

00:44:47 No, no bingo.

00:44:48 No, no go. All right, so look, electronics are good, but I think when it comes to that crawl

00:44:58 control mode, you probably are just better off doing it yourself if you do really need to make

00:45:04 sure you want to make it up there. Okay, so we are in the Land Cruiser 300 series. So, like I said

00:45:09 before with the Lexus, this is only available with a diesel in Australia, a V6 diesel, and this here

00:45:14 is the Sahara. The whole reason we picked this is our requirement for this test was seven seats,

00:45:19 and that was our first port of call for any of these vehicles. The Lexus wasn't available for

00:45:24 us in seven seats, which is why we went with the top spec, but this one was. Now, this uses a

00:45:29 full-time four-wheel drive system. In addition to that, you also have centre diff lock and also that

00:45:34 turn assist function. You can also go into low range as well, plus a hill descent control,

00:45:38 and along with some drive modes as well that we'll run through when we go for a bit of a spin.

00:45:42 We're on all-terrain tyres as well, and it has just rained, so this is going to be interesting.

00:45:47 All right, we are going onto our rollers now. Let's line this up.

00:45:52 Okay, there they are, and then we'll move onto the throttle.

00:45:56 And not too bad. So, it's moving off slowly, but it is sort of pretty confidently sort of getting

00:46:07 the job done, so that's a pass there for the rollers. Okay, muggle time. So, in this particular

00:46:12 spec, we have no height adjustment for the suspension, but we do have the multi-terrain

00:46:18 select system. So, I'm going to move over to mud. Let's see how it goes. I'll be interested to see

00:46:23 how this is in terms of clearance and articulation compared to the Lexus, which had the whole shebang

00:46:28 there in terms of height adjustment. So, it's sort of bottoming out something there, which is

00:46:33 interesting. So, I'll come into our door flex, which is just there. Nice, that opens and closes

00:46:41 okay. Now, we'll roll onto the throttle and see how this goes. I can see that rear wheel turning,

00:46:50 but traction control is biting and letting us get out of that, which is great.

00:46:56 Back onto the throttle. Yeah, traction control is doing a good job here.

00:47:00 That's very good. Excellent. All right, let's turn around and

00:47:06 head back and give it another crack in the other direction. Okay, so line up our hole.

00:47:12 Okay, there it is.

00:47:19 All right, and come out of this.

00:47:21 All right, drop the rear end in there as well.

00:47:29 It's slightly seesawing there, and we'll just roll onto the throttle here.

00:47:34 It does feel like it is bottoming out a section of the car there as we come out of here.

00:47:39 That's not too bad. Excellent. All right, all done.

00:47:43 Now, I did notice when we were just leaving our mogul area here, this still has that knocking

00:47:48 sound. You can hear it just there coming from the front suspension. We first heard this

00:47:55 when we first started testing 300 Series LandCruise, and they clearly still haven't

00:47:59 fixed it. So, disappointed with that. Obviously, it's something that needs to be sorted and that

00:48:05 they haven't spent a great deal of time on actually sorting. Okay, we're at our 30% gradient now,

00:48:11 so I'm going to put this into low range. I'll leave the centre diff unlocked for the moment.

00:48:17 We'll just see how it goes. If I do need to come back and have another shot at it,

00:48:21 I'll then lock it, but see what happens here.

00:48:24 I like that view with the cameras. That's cool.

00:48:28 So, just gradual throttle application here.

00:48:34 It is getting up without any problems at all. Very, very impressed with that.

00:48:43 Nice, nice, nice. Excellent. Made it all the way to the top. Not a problem in the world.

00:48:48 Okay, so hill descent, just like the Lexus, this has crawl control, and you can use that

00:48:54 for downhill ascent. So, we come to a stop, press crawl control, and you can adjust the speed using

00:48:58 the mode switch here. So, we'll go to speed three, and then I'll press the camera view button as well

00:49:04 so we can see where we're heading. Here we go. Line up our ruts.

00:49:09 All right. That's doing a good job. Try to slow it down a touch. Very nice.

00:49:22 It's just a very controlled descent. Everything is happening

00:49:26 as it should. It's sort of, yeah, very straightforward. So, very cool system,

00:49:32 and I love that it is just super easy to use as well.

00:49:35 Okay, so having another crack now at our 45% climb, I'm going to lock the centre diff now.

00:49:41 There it is down there, and we'll see how we go. So, gradual throttle to start with. If we can't

00:49:45 get up, I'll have another bite at it. All right, here we go. Lexus couldn't make it up here. So,

00:49:52 here with gradual throttle, it's actually getting up without any issues at all. That is awesome.

00:49:58 So, I think it does show you there that the tyres make a difference. This is on all terrains. The

00:50:03 Lexus was on highway tyres, and this just walked up there without any problems. So,

00:50:08 again, I like how simple it is to use. Let's go back down. I might actually give this one more

00:50:12 crack with the sort of crawl control as well and see if it makes it up just as effortlessly.

00:50:18 Righto. So, let's see how it goes. It was pretty impressive getting up there just then. So,

00:50:22 I pop this into crawl, set the speed to that mid-speed. Let's see how it goes.

00:50:30 Yeah, so it did rain during our lunch break. So,

00:50:33 let's see if that potentially helps the Land Cruiser get up here where the Lexus couldn't.

00:50:39 Yeah, it looks like it's going to get stuck at that same spot. It's almost like it just

00:50:45 needs a stack more momentum before it actually sort of makes it anywhere. So,

00:50:50 I'm going to come back down and just try a higher speed there in crawl control just to

00:50:55 see if that helps at all. Okay, here we go. So, I'll go to the maximum crawl control speed.

00:51:00 See if that makes it any better. Yeah, I guess I don't actually know where you would use this

00:51:06 function where you would want the car to control everything that's going on because I just don't

00:51:11 know that it's going to do it as confidently as the driver would. Oh, here we go. I know we might

00:51:16 be getting somewhere here. Yeah, there we go. It's actually, I think we might actually make it all

00:51:23 the way up here. So, it just took a bit of pace. See, the Lexus wouldn't do that. So, that is

00:51:28 unreal. Awesome. So, crawl control actually works. So, I guess that shows you that these systems

00:51:33 have been tuned for this stuff to work in conditions like that. You just have to have a

00:51:38 couple of nibbles at it, but this is lining up to be one of the best here, I reckon. It really is

00:51:43 just idiot proof and I can just feel anyone being able to jump into this and just give it a crack

00:51:47 themselves. Okay, it is time for the patrol. I guess it is the arch nemesis to the Land Cruiser.

00:51:53 So, I'm excited to see how this pans out. It has started raining again, just our luck. This is on

00:51:59 all terrains. This also uses a full-time four-wheel drive system. You can lock it into four-wheel

00:52:03 drive high range. You've got four-wheel drive low range available to you as well. Rear diff lock,

00:52:07 a few drive modes and hill descent control as well. So, let's give the rollers a shot and see

00:52:14 how it goes. Okay, so, on the rollers there, we'll come to a stop. Okay, and then onto the throttle.

00:52:24 Very nice. Took off there without any problems. Locked up nicely. So, good traction control

00:52:33 system. Let's head over to our Offset Mogul. Rain is properly falling now. Okay, so, Offset Mogul,

00:52:40 we're just going to, there is no like mud mode. They've just got sand on road, rock and snow. So,

00:52:44 I'll just leave it in on road, I guess, and in auto and we'll see if it sort of runs into any

00:52:50 dramas. It seems that the longer wheelbase cars are favoured here just because of the

00:52:54 way these divots are set apart and the moguls are sort of distanced.

00:52:58 But we'll see how it goes. All right, so, that's in there. We'll check our door close.

00:53:02 Yeah, that is grabbing ever so slightly. So, the body is flexing

00:53:10 fair bit there. Roll onto the throttle now. See how this goes. Rear wheel is off the ground now.

00:53:20 A little bit more throttle. Yeah, it's a very active traction control system,

00:53:24 but it's quite effective in terms of doing what it needs to do there. So,

00:53:28 we'll spin around now and have another shot in reverse. Okay, here we go.

00:53:33 Pop it into here. No touching down either. So, in terms of ground clearance, it's actually

00:53:39 pretty impressive. Rear into here as well.

00:53:47 Okay, there it is. Okay, and then we'll roll onto the throttle again.

00:53:53 Yeah, very good. It's like a walk in the park for the patrol. Very nice. Okay, time for our

00:54:03 first hill. It's properly wet out here. So, I'm going to pop this into low range, so into neutral,

00:54:09 slide that over to 4L. Leave the rear diff unlocked just to see if it gets up here first.

00:54:15 If it doesn't, then we'll come back for another crack. Okay, so here we go.

00:54:22 Yeah, nice and smooth so far. The ride is fantastic in this.

00:54:27 Really don't get thrown around too much. I'm just keeping throttle gradual.

00:54:33 It is walking up here. This thing is an absolute beast. I love it. Okay, all right,

00:54:43 it definitely needs something harder. So, let's give hill descent a crack, and then we'll head

00:54:48 over and try to do some climbing. Okay, hill descent. So, I'll creep up to the start of our

00:54:54 descent here, and then I'll engage hill descent control. So, one push of that, and that's now

00:55:00 active. I'll just let go of the brake, see how it goes, see if I can find a throttle control here.

00:55:10 No, it doesn't look like it. It's actually going down at a pretty reasonable pace there.

00:55:16 Yeah, that's actually really nicely controllable.

00:55:20 Yep, no concerns at all. Excellent job, Patrol. All right, now it's time to see if we can actually

00:55:26 get back up the hill. Okay, for this run, I'm going to lock the rear diff, so we'll press that.

00:55:31 Let's see how we go. All right, so we'll go constant throttle just to start with,

00:55:37 and we can play with that if we need to.

00:55:39 You are joking. It is just walking up here like I'm not even trying. That is seriously,

00:55:53 seriously good. Wondering whether this has just dethroned the Land Cruiser as the off-road king.

00:56:01 It doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but it is just doing everything so effortlessly.

00:56:06 Awesome. Jeep Grand Cherokee L. So, we are on highway terrain tyres, and this is an interesting

00:56:13 car because here in Australia, this is only available with a naturally aspirated petrol V6.

00:56:18 So, I don't know how well it's going to go, but it made our test because it also has the ability

00:56:22 to do low range. So, to kick things off, I've just got it in all of its auto settings. We'll

00:56:26 run it over our rollers, and we'll see how it performs on the traction front. The Gladiator

00:56:33 Rubicon actually won our last off-road test, so I'm thinking this should do pretty well. It's

00:56:37 obviously not like an off-road version, but you know, being a Jeep, the traction control isn't

00:56:45 too bad. It was figuring out what it was doing, and then it got us off there without too many

00:56:51 problems. So, pass on our roller test. Now, one thing I'll point out is this has height

00:56:58 adjustable suspension, so we'll see how it fares here before I have to jack it up. I'll pop it into

00:57:03 mud mode. There we go, mud mode is now selected. I don't know what that actually does. We've got an

00:57:08 off-road display here that shows us exactly what it's doing. It's actually lifting the suspension

00:57:13 to our off-road height, which is probably going to be very welcome. It's left the transfer case

00:57:18 unlocked, so we'll see if that actually works for us here, or whether it actually

00:57:22 variably adjusts that as it goes, but we'll see what happens.

00:57:29 Door flex test.

00:57:31 Yeah, that's flexing. You can actually hear that hitting on the body there.

00:57:41 That's not very good. Okay, roll onto the throttle here, see how it goes.

00:57:58 Parking sensors off.

00:58:00 Okay, it's struggling, but it kind of got there in the end.

00:58:06 Okay, so, okay, but not amazing. It kind of just struggled a little bit there to do what it needed

00:58:16 to do. The car is also creaking as we're sort of moving over some of this uneven terrain,

00:58:22 which isn't really very impressive. So, we'll turn around now, have another crack at that in

00:58:28 this direction, and see how we go. See how it fares through here now. There's the front end,

00:58:35 but it doesn't touch down on the way through. Yeah, that rear door is creaking.

00:58:40 Okay, wheels off the ground there.

00:58:56 Oh, got there in the end. So, yeah, the traction controls are having to work fairly hard, but yeah,

00:59:00 we had so much body flex there. Now that door is just creaking as we're sort of moving along. So,

00:59:05 obviously, this doesn't feel like it's built for much off-roading. So, we'll see what it's like on

00:59:09 our gradients and see if it does improve with putting it into low range. Okay, so, it is time

00:59:16 to do our gradient climb. I'm going to pop this into low range, push and hold that, clunk there

00:59:22 as it locks the transfer case. There are some other sort of screens here as well that give you

00:59:26 an idea of what's going on. I might have it on the pitch and roll screen so we can see how this is

00:59:29 fairing. I'll leave it in mud mode. Suspension is still raised and let's see how it goes. So,

00:59:34 constant throttle first. I don't actually have any more settings I can engage here. There's no

00:59:38 diff locks or anything like that. So, if it doesn't get up here, I might give it one more shot and

00:59:44 then we can... I feel like we're kind of stuck here. More throttle.

00:59:55 Oh, it is just...

01:00:10 Alright. It is... Sorry, I couldn't really speak there. It was trying really hard there. I'm glad

01:00:18 we stayed in that because it got there in the end. But yeah, it was in struggle town getting

01:00:22 up there. So, it looks like it was the traction control that was doing all of the work there.

01:00:27 It was doing a really great job of just limiting wheel slip, especially on these highway terrains.

01:00:31 So, yeah, look, that's a pass but you had to really work for that. Okay, hill descent control.

01:00:37 One of the things I like here is you can actually select that forward-facing camera. It fills up the

01:00:42 whole screen, which is great. So, I'll turn on hill descent control. So, you use the paddle shifters

01:00:47 to adjust your descent speed. So, we'll see how that goes as we come across the top here. Did

01:00:53 find when we tested the normal Grand Cherokee, if you actually went down the hill in the lowest

01:00:58 speed setting, which jammed the brakes on and it kicked the car sideways. So, I'm just trying

01:01:02 not to have the same thing happen to us here. All right, we'll jack that speed up a touch.

01:01:08 Yeah, this is really good. So, you can see the Jeep has the electronics side of stuff

01:01:16 really well sorted. I can still hear that door creaking, so that's not great. But yeah,

01:01:22 electronics side of things are really sorted and it just does all that well. Just when you pair it

01:01:26 with an engine like this, it's just naturally not going to be able to achieve what it would

01:01:30 normally be able to achieve. So, let's see how it goes on that climb. It might make it up,

01:01:34 might not, but only one way to find out. Okay, so I've just left it in low range. It's the same

01:01:40 setting that we use for our 30% grade. So, gradual throttle to start with. Then we'll come back for

01:01:45 more if we need to. Yeah, it's really struggling there. Okay, so we will come back. I'll go for a

01:01:53 bit more throttle, see if we can get any further up. It's also starting to smell in the cabin as

01:01:59 well. So, that sort of engine is starting to emit a fair bit of smell inside here. We are working it

01:02:05 pretty hard. So, another crack at this. Okay, a little bit more speed this time. This will be

01:02:13 the third and last time I try this. So, here we go with a touch more pace.

01:02:24 No, not getting anywhere. So, all right, that is a fail for our hill. And look, it was only really

01:02:29 just a marginal pass on the Mogul climb there at 30% as well. So, yeah, look, I kind of was

01:02:36 expecting this result. Unfortunately, with this engine, it just really isn't built for this type

01:02:41 of off-road driving. It is good that it is there, but you'd only want to be doing some pretty soft

01:02:46 off-roading, and I wouldn't want to be relying on this to get me out of anything sort of too serious.

01:02:51 We're in the Isuzu MU-X. So, this shares a platform with the D-MAX, which means you get

01:02:56 two-wheel drive high range for sealed surfaces, four-wheel drive high range for unsealed surfaces,

01:03:01 four-wheel drive low range. You've got a rear diff lock that only works in low range,

01:03:04 and a hill descent control as well. But this has a button that we didn't have in the D-MAX when we

01:03:09 tested it here, because the D-MAX failed this test quite spectacularly. This is called a rough

01:03:15 road mode. So, I'm going to try and take this in two-wheel drive first, then we'll go to four-wheel

01:03:18 drive high range, and I'll try rough road mode as well, which is meant to adjust traction control.

01:03:23 So, let's see how it goes. We're on the roller just there, and I'll just move on to the throttle.

01:03:29 Yeah, not very good. So, it did the same thing that the D-MAX did last time, where it just

01:03:38 rolls onto the roller, and then it can't actually get traction. I've got my foot

01:03:43 most of the way down there. I've got full throttle now.

01:03:46 I'm now starting to actually get somewhere. Ah, there it is there. So, let's go back again.

01:03:53 We'll try it in four-wheel drive high range. Let's see how this goes. Move on to our roller,

01:03:58 and come to a stop, and onto the throttle.

01:04:02 Same thing again. Probably going to go all the way back in touch now.

01:04:09 So, while we're here, I'll just actually switch on rough road mode now.

01:04:22 So, that's now active. Let's see what it does. Rolling onto the throttle.

01:04:25 Oh, look at that. Now, that is how you do it. That is doing a much better job now. So,

01:04:33 I don't know why that mode just isn't standard. It just seems that would be the most logical way

01:04:38 to go about it. It literally just moves off like it should. So, yeah, awesome. So, rough road mode

01:04:44 actually does something, which is good news. Now, Offset Mogul, I've left that in four-wheel

01:04:49 drive high range without rough road mode. So, let's just see how it performs first in high range.

01:04:56 Okay, so I'll do a door flex test, which is just a little bit further in.

01:05:05 Now, there. Okay, that is fine, and then we'll roll onto the throttle.

01:05:12 Okay, that's just not getting anywhere. We'll try rough road mode. Now, that's engaged.

01:05:26 Oh, it's so close. There it is. Okay, got there in the end. Not very glamorous,

01:05:43 unfortunately. Rough road mode helps, but only to a certain degree. It kind of just gives that

01:05:52 traction control just that little bit of flexibility to do what it needs to do. It just

01:05:57 required a lot of persistence. So, let's go back and give that one more shot now. Okay, so heading

01:06:03 through in this direction. Nice and soppy in there now. Ground clearance seems good. We're not

01:06:10 really sort of touching down there, which is nice. Okay, good. Slippery through there, but we got

01:06:30 there in the end. So, yeah, rough road mode definitely helps. Could be just a little bit

01:06:34 better though, but it definitely makes a huge difference, especially compared to the D-MAX,

01:06:39 which didn't have it available. Okay, time for our gradient. I don't have the highest

01:06:43 confidence here, but we'll see what happens. I'm going to pop this into low range. Rough road mode

01:06:48 is active. I haven't locked the rear diff yet, so if we can't get up, I'll come back down and

01:06:52 lock the rear diff and see if it helps. So, constant throttle application through here.

01:07:00 Okay.

01:07:02 Oh, yeah, baby. All right. Feeling good about this so far. Nice. There it is.

01:07:17 Beautiful. Rough road mode for the win. Excellent. All right. Good job, MU-X. By the way,

01:07:26 I should point out as well, it just did that on highway terrains as well. So, yeah, pretty

01:07:30 impressive when you consider that it can do that sort of stuff with relative ease.

01:07:35 Now, one of the complaints that you guys had last time when we did D-MAX, and I complained about how

01:07:40 bad the hill descent control was, was that we weren't stationary. So, I've come to a full stop

01:07:45 now. I've pressed the hill descent control button. There it is. So, that's now active. It's gone

01:07:50 green. I'm just going to let go of the brake. I'm going to let it do its own thing.

01:07:54 Okay. This is actually descending at a much better rate. Look at that. This is actually

01:08:02 doing a pretty good job here. There you go. Okay. Well, I'm happy to admit I was wrong.

01:08:08 This hill descent control system only seems to work if you come to a full stop first. It's not

01:08:14 quite as advanced as the systems that we've seen in some of the more expensive cars where you can

01:08:18 just engage it and it will activate. Here, you have to be at a full stop, and then when it comes

01:08:22 down, it actually is going down at a pretty decent pace. Okay. So, what we're going to do now is lock

01:08:27 the rear diff just so we have this in its most aggressive setting. Looks like when the rear

01:08:32 diff is locked, rough road mode doesn't actually work, which is fine. So, we'll see how it goes.

01:08:36 Constant throttle to start with, and if we don't get up, I'll try having a bit more throttle.

01:08:41 Come on, baby.

01:08:47 Nice.

01:08:48 Sensational job for the MU-X. That is really good. I don't know. It just seems like it climbed that

01:08:59 far more confidently than it did when we were here in the D-MAX, which failed that. So,

01:09:03 yeah, really impressed with that. It could be the rain that's helped sort of the surface out there,

01:09:08 but I think that this straight out of the box is pretty damn impressive. So, yeah,

01:09:14 nice job there for the MU-X. So, it is Toyota Prado. Timer on all-terrains here. This uses

01:09:20 a full-time four-wheel drive system, shares an engine with the Fortuner, so 500 newton metres

01:09:25 of torque. It is fairly old, though, so I'll be keen to see how it plays out today.

01:09:29 Let's have a crack on the rollers here and see what happens.

01:09:34 Now, there, we'll come to a stop, and then on the throttle.

01:09:42 Now, it's got a noisy traction control system.

01:09:45 That is funny. All right. Yeah, cool. Noisy traction control system, but it kind of just

01:09:52 works as it should, which is good news. This also, in addition to high-range four-wheel drive,

01:09:58 has low-range four-wheel drive, a centre diff lock, a rear diff lock, and also a

01:10:02 hill descent control as well. So, let's head to the Moguls and test those out.

01:10:06 So, offset Mogul. We're going to leave it in high-range four-wheel drive, see what happens.

01:10:12 Okay, we'll do our door flex first. Drop it into here. Oh, bottoming out there.

01:10:19 All right, I'll just stop there.

01:10:23 Yeah, it is kind of, that's okay. Sort of felt like it was grabbing, but it's not. So,

01:10:35 all right, roll onto the throttle. Let's see how it goes. There's a noisy traction control system.

01:10:42 It's kind of not really going anywhere. More throttle, more throttle.

01:10:47 It's not doing anything. It's turning that rear wheel, but nothing is actually happening.

01:10:55 I'll go full throttle now.

01:11:01 Nothing is happening at all. So, all right, that is a fail. We'll try one more time.

01:11:08 Let's just see if we can get it to inch up before it starts.

01:11:13 No, it's just sitting there with traction control flashing.

01:11:21 Try switching traction control off just to see if that helps at all.

01:11:27 No, it's now just spinning the wheels by the look of it. I'll stay next to it a little bit.

01:11:32 Nothing. All right, so that is a fail for the Prado in our pretty basic offset Mogul.

01:11:46 So, yeah, it mustn't share a traction control system with the Fortuna. It wasn't able to do

01:11:51 that. So, I'll try going through in the opposite direction and just see if that is any better. But,

01:11:55 yeah, so far not so good. Okay, we're going to go back in the opposite direction. I've switched

01:12:00 traction control back on just to see what the go is there, but we'll try this way.

01:12:05 Let's see if that makes any difference at all.

01:12:07 It doesn't have a great deal of clearance there either. It's sort of bottoming out.

01:12:12 Oh, it's so close. Yeah, so this side seems to be okay, but we don't have as much resistance

01:12:22 through here. Let's see how I think it is. Just a traction control issue there,

01:12:29 which is preventing it from actually being able to proceed with any great pace. So, yeah,

01:12:33 a little bit disappointing there. I would have thought the Prado would have done okay. We can't

01:12:36 just see what it does down here when we go attack the other Moguls. Okay, so gradient time. I'm not

01:12:43 full of confidence here, so we'll pop this into low range. What I'll do for the first run is leave

01:12:47 the center diff and rear diff unlocked just to see how it goes. All right, here we go.

01:12:53 So, constant throttle again.

01:12:56 It seems to have disabled traction control in low range, so I'll be interested to see

01:13:06 what it does here. Oh, come on.

01:13:10 Yeah, there is still traction control because you can hear it going crazy there.

01:13:15 All right, it's not loving that, so we're going to go back down. I'm going to inch it back down.

01:13:25 This time around, I'm going to lock the center diff to see whether that helps us climb out of

01:13:30 that. All right, there we go. It's locked now. Let's start climbing here. So, now with that

01:13:39 center diff locked, it's going to be sending 50% of torque to the front axle, 50% to the rear axle.

01:13:44 Oh, it's really struggling here.

01:13:48 Oh, come on, come on.

01:13:57 All right, finally got there in the end. A bit of a hairy experience. It really doesn't

01:14:04 fill you with confidence. Yeah, so far out of all the cars we've driven up there,

01:14:10 this is probably lineball with the Jeep in terms of that lack of confidence feeling behind the

01:14:15 wheel, which is not something I thought I'd be saying about the Prado. Okay, hill descent

01:14:19 control. Let's see how this fares. So, same story. I'll come up to the top here. I went to a stop,

01:14:25 got a camera view out the front there. Not the best camera view though, but you can kind of make

01:14:29 out what's going on. Turn on hill descent control, so it's gone green up the top there.

01:14:36 Foot is off the brake.

01:14:38 The noise in here is out of control. Sounds terrible.

01:14:44 Speed is good though, so no issues there, but the noise in here is just so ridiculous.

01:14:51 You can tell it's quite an old system because it just feels very uncivilized and, yeah,

01:14:58 not really overly impressive. So, all right, let's turn around and have a crack at this hill.

01:15:04 Okay, so now what we're going to do is lock the rear diff. So, that red light is flashing. That's

01:15:09 now active. All right, let's give this a shot. So, constant throttle here, first run. We'll see

01:15:13 how far it goes. Okay, that's feeling much more civilized there. Very nice.

01:15:22 Okay, so all the Prado needed was to have every single button pushed inside the cabin for it to

01:15:31 actually sort of work. So, it does feel like it is the traction controls that are limiting this from

01:15:36 actually getting anywhere. It's kind of like the D-MAX in the sense that they didn't really do the

01:15:40 traction controls very well and that is the limiting factor. When you switch all of this

01:15:44 stuff off and it's down to just the four-wheel drive system, it actually works pretty well and

01:15:48 does what it needs to do. So, rounding things out with the Ford Everest, this time it is the

01:15:53 four-cylinder version. It effectively runs the same way that the V6 does in terms of these four-wheel

01:15:58 drive modes. You've got two-wheel drive high range, four auto, four high, four L. We have a

01:16:03 rear diff lock and we also have an off-road camera as well that was part of an optional pack. So,

01:16:07 let's go two-wheel drive high range first and see how this performs compared to the V6.

01:16:13 Okay, so there's our roller. Get onto the throttle.

01:16:23 Yeah, moves back a little bit but then it sort of hooks up and gets moving without too many

01:16:31 dramas. So, let's go back and give that a crack in 4A. We'll come on to our rollers again.

01:16:36 Okay, and then come to a stop. Here we go.

01:16:42 Tiny little roll back and it gets on and moves without any problems. So, very good. All right,

01:16:52 off to our Mogul. Okay, Mogul time. So, same story as the V6 Everest, we're going to run through in

01:16:58 4A, just regular mode, see how that goes and then we'll come back in mud ruts where it switches it

01:17:03 over to 4H. So, let's bring this across a little touch down there, get this into our flex position.

01:17:12 All good there. Roll onto the throttle.

01:17:21 Oh, come on. Struggling a tiny bit there. That's okay, got there in the end.

01:17:26 Turn this around, touch down there as well. Yeah, clearance doesn't seem huge with this compared to

01:17:35 the others. It's sort of touching down a whole lot more than we were in the likes of the Fortuna. So,

01:17:40 not sure what the deal is with that. We'll come back around now, we'll give it a shot

01:17:46 in mud ruts mode and then I'll also switch the rear diff lock off just so we can try it without

01:17:52 that first. Here we go. So, this just adjusts the stability control there a little bit just to give

01:17:58 us a bit more leeway. We'll see if it actually makes a difference in the four-cylinder version.

01:18:02 Okay, rolling into that now.

01:18:11 Okay, drop into that hole, I don't want to slam the car down. Okay.

01:18:19 Yeah, cool. Okay, cool. All right, got there in the end. Yeah, it seemed to have a bit more slip

01:18:27 there than it did in the V6 but that could come down to it just being a lot wetter now than it

01:18:31 was just before but we got through it all in the end. Okay, time for our climb as it gets dark.

01:18:38 I'm going to pop this into low range, leave the rear diff unlocked for the moment, we'll just see

01:18:43 how it goes in mud ruts mode without that. It has a pretty meaty set of tyres on it too so I'm

01:18:50 suspecting it will just walk up here. The V6 struggled a bit here but we'll see how it goes.

01:18:56 It's a constant throttle through here.

01:18:59 All right, that is not working. So I'm going to go back down, I'm going to try locking the rear

01:19:04 diff this time, just see if that helps us. Yeah, it felt a little bit sketchy climbing up there so

01:19:10 let's try with rear diff lock this time. I'm going to try to lock the rear diff this time.

01:19:18 I'm going to try to lock the rear diff this time.

01:19:20 I'm going to try to lock the rear diff this time.

01:19:22 Okay, so pop that into drive, gauge the rear diff lock. All right, give that a shot.

01:19:34 So same thing again, I'm just going to keep the same level of throttle in there and just see how

01:19:43 it goes. As this gets chewed up it does become harder to climb here but given this does have

01:19:49 the all-terrains it really should be doing a much better job. Yeah, that's a problem. We're kind of

01:19:54 getting into a position now where if it gets a little bit out of shape we can end up rolling

01:20:01 the car on the way back down. So I'm going to try it one last time but to me this is

01:20:07 feeling like a fail. So we'll give this one more crack here, see how we go.

01:20:14 Tiny bit more pace this time.

01:20:16 No, it's just not getting over that little section there.

01:20:26 Yeah, we're just not getting past that and if I keep going here there's a good chance we'll end up

01:20:39 putting this thing on its lid. So all right, that is a fail for the Ford Everest

01:20:43 four-cylinder which means it doesn't get to graduate to our big hill but we can do a hill

01:20:49 descent just to make sure that all looks good. Okay, hill descent is probably going to be pretty

01:20:53 much the same as the V6 one but you click on that just there, tells you that hill descent control

01:20:59 is ready and I'll see if we can control it here using cruise control. Yes, I can speed up and

01:21:06 slow down using cruise control and I've got vision out the front there too which is nice. Okay,

01:21:12 there we go. Yeah, nice. Very nice and controlled descent and I do love the fact that you can

01:21:20 control the actual descent speed really easily using the buttons on the steering wheel there. So

01:21:25 Ford's obviously put a fair bit of work into that and it all works well but

01:21:28 fortunately didn't really work well for our regular hill.

01:21:32 Okay, so last thing we're going to do because in our last video a lot of you said that by the end

01:21:37 of the day maybe the hill would have been better or worse depending on the conditions. So what we

01:21:43 thought we'd do is run our first car through which was the Defender one last time just to show that

01:21:47 it could still get up these obstacles especially since the Everest struggled so much here. So

01:21:55 let's see how it goes. All right, so it's climbing up no dramas there at all. So even with the rain

01:22:06 it all stayed sort of fairly decent there. So let's head back down and we'll do our 45% climb

01:22:12 now as well. Okay, so time for the 45. Same story again I'm just going to roll into it the same way

01:22:20 that we did earlier. Just make sure that it will get up there. Yeah it is still doing this annoying

01:22:27 flaring thing but it's getting up here perfectly fine. So hopefully that answers the question of

01:22:33 whether the first car is better or worse depending on where it was run. I think that shows you that

01:22:38 the terrain changes a little bit throughout the day but not enough to significantly change the

01:22:42 results. So we are back in the studio. I just want to give a big shout out to all of our staff for

01:22:49 standing out in the rain while I stayed inside the car along with our competition winner as well

01:22:54 for helping take down notes and stuff like that. Now results are on the screen. Igor has stuck them

01:22:58 up there. If you do want to pause the video at this point you can get your chance and digest all

01:23:01 the results. Let's get into some of these results and just before we do I want to run you through a

01:23:05 couple of caveats. So let's talk about tyres. So this came up in our last Ute test and if you do

01:23:10 want to watch that you can click up here to check that video out. But when we did our Ute off-road

01:23:14 test a lot of you spoke about tyres and why all of the vehicles should have been on the same tyres

01:23:19 to test everything out. I disagree with that and the reason we didn't bother going down the path

01:23:24 of having the same tyres is we're doing light off-roading. The stuff that we're doing really

01:23:28 isn't that scary or bad and you should be able to do that in a vehicle out of the factory. So we are

01:23:34 testing how well these vehicles perform out of the factory on factory tyres. The second you start

01:23:39 changing tyres you're taking the car outside of its engineering parameters and you are going to

01:23:43 affect a lot of other things outside of just the way the vehicle performs off-road. So that's why

01:23:48 we stuck with the stock tyres. In situations where there was a better all-terrain tyre some of the

01:23:53 manufacturers chose to fit those while others just stuck with the standard highway terrain option.

01:23:57 Tyre pressures likewise we stuck with placarded tyre pressures. If you are going to be doing some

01:24:02 serious off-roading you obviously need to reduce your tyre pressures and look at how that actually

01:24:06 affects the way the vehicle performs off-road. But again for consistency we're just stuck with

01:24:10 the standard tyre pressures. The hill surface, so one of the things you guys complained about last

01:24:15 time was that the hill surface perhaps degraded and made it better or worse for cars depending

01:24:20 on where they were within the test. That's why we chose to run the Defender again at the end

01:24:25 just to show that the hill surface, yes it changes throughout the day with the rain and those types

01:24:29 of conditions but ultimately it didn't affect the vehicle from being able to pass at the start or at

01:24:35 the finish regardless of where it ended up in the middle. And the final caveat I'll point out as

01:24:39 well is we tried to do the same thing here that we did with the ute test in terms of climbing the

01:24:43 terrain. I kept the same throttle application, I then gave it another couple of shots with a bit

01:24:48 more throttle application. That was again a bit of feedback that you guys had on our last test so

01:24:52 that's how all of that came together and hopefully you guys liked it. Now let's talk about the

01:24:57 results. So I'm going to start off with the four-cylinder vehicles and I guess the high lights

01:25:03 and the low lights and I think we'll start off with the MU-X. So this is one of those vehicles

01:25:08 and you saw it on the rollers there that the standard traction control just doesn't seem to

01:25:12 work at all for the type of vehicle that it is. You would think that a city vehicle or something

01:25:16 like that with this type of traction control application would be perfectly fine but when

01:25:21 you have a four-wheel drive SUV that is meant to be able to go off-road and you have traction

01:25:26 control that won't even allow it to go up the rollers which seems to be the most basic task of

01:25:30 a traction control system, shows you that they need to work on it. On the upside though it did

01:25:35 have that rough road mode and that made all the difference. The second you activated that it

01:25:38 actually became far more confident, it was able to climb terrain better and just overall it improves

01:25:43 the way that the vehicle performs off-road. Hopefully they put that mode on the D-MAX as

01:25:48 well so they have the the same outcome there. Outside of that it actually did a pretty good

01:25:52 job with the rest of the test. It was able to climb things even on the tyres that it was on so

01:25:56 good job Isuzu. Ford Everest, four-cylinder, I mean that was pretty disappointing in my opinion so

01:26:02 did okay on the rollers and the chassis flex test and the offset mogul but when it came to climbing

01:26:08 our offset mogul hill really did just struggle being able to get up there with any form of ease

01:26:14 and that also had the optional all-terrain tyre so it does show you that I think some of these

01:26:18 traction control systems might work well in some situations but here they relied a bit too much on

01:26:23 the traction controls and it just wasn't able to climb that terrain where a lot of other similar

01:26:27 vehicles were perfectly capable of climbing it in a much better fashion. On the upshot though with

01:26:32 both Everest I really like the hill descent controls and how you can adjust the speed on

01:26:36 those I thought that system was really nice. The other four-cylinder combo Fortuna did really well

01:26:40 across all the tests but then we came to Prado and that was just a bit of a disappointment. I feel

01:26:45 like the Prado is using an old version of Toyota's traction control systems and perhaps the Fortuna

01:26:50 has got a newer version and it's better developed and it is worth pointing out this could even be a

01:26:55 caveat the Proving Ground we did all our off-road testing at is actually used extensively by Toyota

01:27:00 in the development of things like Land Cruiser and the next generation of Prado so I think they had a

01:27:05 hometown advantage and clearly it shows you that perhaps they haven't put as much work into Prado

01:27:10 for quite some time and it really does need that little bit of work but when you did switch off a

01:27:14 lot of those systems it actually performed much better once you lock that centre diff, lock the

01:27:18 rear diff, it really just starts climbing the way that the Fortuna does so it does show you that

01:27:23 it just takes a little bit of button pressing to get things to work with the Prado. And I'll just

01:27:26 quickly touch on the Rexton, look I think that self-locking rear differential stuff just has to

01:27:31 go it really just it's just so all over the place it's sometimes on sometimes off there's no way to

01:27:36 control it or predict when it's going to kick in and if it does kick in when you don't want it will

01:27:40 kick sideways violently which is just nothing that you want to catch you unaware so that is worth

01:27:46 keeping in mind. Okay let's go to our six and eight cylinder vehicles I'm going to start off with the

01:27:51 Grand Cherokee L. Recently we published our towing test and if you haven't seen that you can scroll

01:27:57 down to the link in the description below. The Grand Cherokee L showed us why you shouldn't fit

01:28:01 a naturally aspirated petrol V6 engine to a large SUV for the purpose of towing. Same story here when

01:28:06 it comes to off-road driving I think that that engine is perhaps the limiting factor to why this

01:28:11 thing just can't perform as well off-road. I mean and then the chassis flex we couldn't sort of open

01:28:16 and close the door properly after we went through the Mogul the rear door was rattling for the rest

01:28:20 of the day. I think it just shows you that the Grand Cherokee L perhaps is better suited to

01:28:24 driving in and around the city and has kind of lost that off-road credential that Jeep has built

01:28:29 its brand over and certainly in comparison to the previous generation of the Grand Cherokee which

01:28:34 you could kind of go anywhere in the new Grand Cherokee L just doesn't seem to be as off-road

01:28:39 capable so a little bit disappointing there and I think Jeep can probably do a fair bit of work

01:28:43 on that to improve its off-road credentials. Ford Everest V6 look I think the highway terrain tires

01:28:49 were probably a bit of a limiting factor there but again just like the four-cylinder it didn't

01:28:53 really blow us away with the way that it performed off-road certainly feels very different to the

01:28:58 Ranger in terms of the off-road performance and perhaps a bit of work needs to be done there to

01:29:02 the traction controls did struggle a bit on that 30% climb and then it failed our 45% climb as well.

01:29:07 Okay off to the big boys the Land Cruiser and the Nissan Patrol. Look they are both fantastic

01:29:14 vehicles when it comes to off-roading because you have so many settings you can choose from

01:29:18 but I think the Patrol PIP, the Land Cruiser there you can climb any terrain with that Patrol it is

01:29:24 an absolute beast and you didn't really need to set any of the things you can just climb and it

01:29:29 did everything you can lock the rear diff you had a few other sort of drive modes there but

01:29:33 I just reckon it could attack any terrain that was thrown at it didn't really even have an

01:29:37 aggressive off-road tire either so it does show you that they have years of experience here and

01:29:41 both Toyota and Nissan have done a great job with those big SUVs. Finally before we jump over to the

01:29:47 winners the Land Rover Defender. Now when we were editing this video we were playing back some of

01:29:53 the footage and I complained when we went up that 45% climb the first time that it was doing some

01:29:58 weird stuff at the top of the hill where it was flaring and just I don't know just being very

01:30:02 fussy and then in the footage you can actually see the brake lights come on so I wasn't touching the

01:30:06 brakes at all so I don't know why the brake lights were coming on maybe it was like an over rev

01:30:10 reduction or something like that but it was definitely killing its momentum and whatever

01:30:14 that feature is I reckon it needs to go because it is impeding its ability to drive off-road

01:30:19 and it was funny when it was in its highest setting it just didn't really perform that well

01:30:23 I felt like it was on its tippy toes and really scrabbling for traction and perhaps that setting

01:30:27 is best suited for water forwarding and those times when you actually need that extra ground

01:30:31 clearance if you're doing this type of light off-roading it seemed to perform well in its

01:30:35 I guess normal height setting where it can really sort of just dig in and get moving so I really

01:30:40 did like with that optional off-road pack how the center and rear diffs can variably lock that gives

01:30:45 you just the ultimate control over wheel slip and just gives you the confidence of climbing the

01:30:50 terrain you need to climb. Oh and the other two I forgot to mention there the LX600 the Pajero Sport

01:30:55 both did really well LX600 obviously based on the 300 series Land Cruiser same type of off-road setup

01:31:01 with the exception of it being a petrol instead of a diesel and Pajero Sport I love the fact that

01:31:06 you can adjust all of those drive modes have it in a permanent four-wheel drive while you're on

01:31:10 sealed surfaces and unsealed surfaces really gives you a whole bunch of control over that

01:31:14 four-wheel drive system. Now on to our winners so we split this into two categories we have the best

01:31:20 four-cylinder and then we have the best overall four-wheel drive SUV when it comes to off-road

01:31:25 driving. The best four-cylinder award goes to the Mitsubishi Pajero Sport this really is an

01:31:31 impressive vehicle that can kind of go anywhere and we did see that with the Triton as well

01:31:35 despite not having a massive price tag and a litany of drive modes and other features it's

01:31:40 able to do what it does really well and that is just climb terrain that really it shouldn't be

01:31:45 able to climb as well as it does really just gives you all of the confidence you need behind the

01:31:49 wheel I love that super select four-wheel drive system that lets you just lock it into four-wheel

01:31:53 drive high range while you are just driving on sealed surfaces so good job Mitsubishi

01:31:57 congratulations on that and drumroll please our overall winner Nissan Patrol. I just think that

01:32:04 this thing despite its age is an absolute trooper it is just showing that you don't need all the

01:32:10 latest whiz-bang gadgets for this to go anywhere it was just able to be pointed at a hill bit of

01:32:15 terrain you press the throttle and away it goes you're gonna love that naturally aspirated v8

01:32:20 sound as well so congratulations Nissan and Mitsubishi on taking out our two awards there.

01:32:25 Now what did you think of our test I'm always keen for your feedback is there anything you liked

01:32:29 didn't like anything you thought we did wrong or did really well let us know in the comments

01:32:34 section below like I said we couldn't have every car in the segment but we covered off most of them

01:32:39 now if you did enjoy this video please make sure you like it and you share it with your mates that

01:32:43 will help us grow if you haven't done so already subscribe to our channel press the bell icon let

01:32:47 us know in the comments section below what should we be testing next I am very keen to find out but

01:32:52 until next time take it easy.

Best 4WD SUV off-road: Top 12 4WD SUVs compared - some fail to make it!

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