Isn't it time expensive utes were actually all-wheel drive?

Thursday, 6 September 2018

OPINION: There's no doubt that utes, pickup trucks, one tonners - whatever you want to call them - are now completely mainstream passenger vehicles  in New Zealand.

Year to date, utes account for 25 per cent of new-vehicle sales. The Ford Ranger is the top-selling vehicle of any kind in the country and four out of the top five sellers are also one-tonne pickup trucks. 

It's well-established that these vehicles are often dual-purpose work/play machines and even serve as substitutes for SUVs. One-tonne trucks have come a long way… in some ways.

In other ways, not so much.

**READ MORE:

* Ford makes Ranger more city friendly

* Utes outpaced passenger cars for the first half of 2018

* Who's buying all these pickup trucks?**

The fact that so many double-cab utes are used primarily as roadgoing machines (just like so many SUVs) leads me to what might seem like a dirty little secret: these '4x4' utes are not actually all-wheel drive.

I'm not talking about the very popular genre of high-riding 2WD utes (which alone make up 10 per cent of the market) - the likes of the Ranger Hi Rider or Toyota Hilux Pre-Runner. They are what they are and more importantly, most people know exactly they're buying.

I'm talking about the utes that are '4x4' but really aren't… which is most of them.

Because utes are based on the old-school concept of a ladder chassis and hard-core off-road ability, most 4x4 models are actually rear-drive on the road.

The 4x4 bit only comes for off-road use, when you select '4 High' and the centre differential gets locked. Most also have a '4 Low' setting for really serious mud-plugging.

This is often called a 'part time' 4x4 system and it means you can't drive a ute thus equipped in 4H on the road, because the locked differential means all four wheels must turn at the same speed - which is what helps you off road, but can cause the car to bind up at higher speeds or when you try to turn a corner.

Being able to turn a corner is quite handy.

For example, Ford recommends that the Ranger's 4H setting is not intended for road use, even though you can shift 'on the fly' from 2H to 4H at up to 110kmh (as long as the accelerator pedal is released).

The company does not quote a maximum speed for 4H… so maybe it's okay as long as you're going in a dead-straight line. It's similar for other part-time 4WD utes.

You can easily get lost in semantics and argue that '4x4' actually means part-time 4WD, or that 'AWD' means full-time 4WD. But the key thing is that these utes are called four-wheel drives when they're actually no such thing on the road.

What's the big deal, you say? After all, lots of SUVs are 2WD.

Yes they are, but the problem is that utes are large, heavy (bit wobbly even) commercial vehicles designed to have weight in the back of them. Unlike most modern SUVs, which are just tall road cars with road-car construction.

So on wet or even windy roads, an unladen ute can be quite a handful. The back end can lack traction and most deliver a lot of torque at low revs, producing wheelspin that the traction/stability control struggles to contain.

Utes are not as dynamically sound as SUVs and while many ute-savvy people who buy 4x4 trucks know all about the chassis and powertrain configuration - what it can and can't do - there are many others driving around in these 'lifestyle' trucks who think they have the safety and traction of AWD under them. And they so don't.

Of the top-selling utes in NZ, the 4x4 versions of the Ford Ranger, Toyota Hilux, Holden Colorado, Nissan Navara, Isuzu D-Max and Mazda BT-50 all have part-time systems.

The only exceptions in the one-tonne genre are the Mitsubishi Triton and Volkswagen Amarok.

Top Triton models have a long-running Mitsubishi technology called Super Select-II, which allows you to choose between 2WD, 4WD for on-road driving and 4H/4L for off-roading.

The Amarok 4x4 is a straight full-time AWD system (VW calls it '4Motion') that works on or off-road. 

The problem is, what utes used to be has dictated the technology that they employ. But what they used to be (workhorses and off-road vehicles) is not what they are now (family vehicles).

If light trucks are going to continue to grow in favour as SUV substitutes, the 4x4 models should be all-wheel drive on-road as well as off - for the sake of both safety and comfort.

Mitsubishi and VW show it's not that hard technology-wise. The Ford Everest SUV is actually based on the Ranger and that's full-time AWD, not part-time like its ute cousin. Go figure.

When high-end utes are now costing upwards of $60k, $70k and even $80k and spending more time on the road than off it, they should be full-time 4WD.

But that's not likely to happen until other countries catch up with the Kiwi lifestyle-ute obsession.