Approach Angle 16.2
By Budd Stanley - Photo courtesy Icon 4x4
When people ask me what I do for a living, they tend to get quite excited when they hear the answer. It is to a certain extent, a guys dream job. I get to drive around in the latest and greatest new vehicles, testing them at their limits in the name of giving you the reader/consumer accurate information for your next big purchase. Yes, I did get to live a bit of the playboy lifestyle when I was involved with the sports car side of the business. Yes, I have had my fair share of rips in some truly exotic machinery like Porsche’s 911 Turbo S, the Audi R8, BMW M cars, a Nissan GT-R, a Lexus LFA, Lotus Exige and Ariel Atom.
Now, while you may be drooling at that list, and I don’t blame you as each car holds a special experience in my heart, my emersion into the new car world has left a bitter taste in my mouth. Cars like the LFA, R8, 911 Turbo and GT-R are all about technology, power, performance and out right speed. However, the endless quest to produce record breaking numbers for the bench racers who buy these cars has seen them become empty shells in terms of character, and dare I say down right boring to drive.
A perfect example happened last summer. I was scheduled to drive Porsches latest Cayman S. Now, I love this car, always have. Except, while driving through the mountains, I needed to be going triple the speed limit to find its limitations. You’re not having fun unless you’re pushing the limitations of both man and machine, be it sports cars or 4WD’s. I couldn’t help feel that I would have been having more fun in my ratty old Toyota MR2 that I bought for $300 than I was currently having in an $80,000 technical marvel. Was the Cayman S a bad car? No, absolutely not. However, while all the safety systems and equipment, automatic flappy paddles, electronic aids, stupid fat tires and computer systems made this car far faster and elegant than my little MR2, it didn’t communicate to the driver like the old classic. Modern cars disconnect the driver from the mechanical operations; they take the drivers skill and intuition out of the equation in an effort to be safer and faster. But that’s what makes driving fun, that is why we are gear heads.
This is happening because the automotive world is moving forward at an incredible pace, so fast that even the purists in each company are already forgetting the pleasure and worth of a simplistic, bare bones automobile. And while I thought this trend was only killing off the sports car, I’ve now come to realize that the true purist 4WD is equally in peril.
So I say to you, my off-roading brethren, do not treat your vehicles with rampant disrespect as if its lifespan will soon meet its end. The proper 4WD is an endangered species, and like classic old rally cars and drift machines, our sport is hazardous to the health of the dwindling supply of proper off-road machinery. In the very near future, 4WD’s with two solid axles will become a rare commodity. Trucks with manual gearboxes and transfer cases will become antique. And an SUV that isn’t laden down with airbags, plastic aerodynamic bumpers and electronic gadgets will be considered obsolete.
Like the Porsche 918, La Ferrari and McLaren P1, the Mercedes G-wagon, Land Rover Defender and Jeep Wrangler will soon morph into what the corporate bean counters and marketing specialists think off-roaders should be. All the corporate manufacturers that used to build pure driving sports car have all lost their innocence to corporate greed and board member satisfaction. The only companies building true driving sports cars anymore are small niche operations working out of industrial units. Companies like Ariel, Caterham, Morgan, Eagle and Singer still build modern cars the way they did back when computers didn’t rule the world. Yet they still build their vehicles with state of the art materials, design programs and engineering.
I foresee the same thing happening to the 4WD sector. Already, Icon 4x4 is reviving the Land Cruiser, Jeep CJ, Bronco and even an early 50’s Chev pickup. Like the bespoke sports car builders, these vehicles are finely crafted and cost as much as a house, but its good to know, there is still someone looking out for the pure 4WD. As proper 4WD’s start to fall, more and more companies will start to see that Icon is on to something. Unfortunately, building vehicles without robots is expensive, so the niche companies will have to rely on those with deep pockets. For the rest of us, I give you the old adage that the classic car world has been using for decades, “don’t wreck’em, restore them.”