Your shiny new 4x4 ute can go off road too

Sunday, 30 September 2018

If you own a 4WD ute and have never taken it off road, you really should ; it's one of the best reasons to own one.

Let's imagine for a minute that, like a LOT of other people, you have just bought a brand new 4WD ute.

Be it the ridiculously popular Ford Ranger, the venerable Toyota Hilux or a lower priced Chinese new entrant like a Great Wall Steed or LDV T60, it is a big vastly-capable ladder chassis-based 4x4 that, in all likelihood, will never go terribly far off road.

And that is not having a go at anyone who buys a new ute either, because there are many other uses for them, but the statistics simply back it up - the majority of private buyers of new 4x4 utes (who aren't farmers) never actually take them very far off road.

It might be shiny and new, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't get dirty.

Which is a shame, because they are missing out on one of the best reasons to own one in the first place.

**READ MORE

Shallow soft sand with a hard-packed and rock-strewn base was no match for the Navara.

* Changes to Nissan Navara will carry it through 2018

* What's in a name? American pickup or Aussie ute?

You don't need to engage low ratio and get waist deep in mud to enjoy your 4WD ute off road. And you will enjoy it.

* Utes and more utes: what's on offer in the class of 2018**

A lot of people may be put off heading off the sealed stuff by the idea of the more extreme conditions their vehicles are capable of dealing with, such as deep mud, big rocks and extreme slopes that a lot of people associate with 'going off road', and while a modern 4WD ute is extremely capable of tackling the more extreme ends of things (at least as far as unmodified vehicles go), it does requires experience from the driver.

One of the best parts of going off road is washing the dirt off the fun way. Providing the river comes at the end, that is.

But it is very possible to get a great deal of enjoyment in a 4x4 without actually even engaging low ratio and we recently did just this in a Nissan Navara in Western Australia.

The Navara recently underwent a substantial overhaul in terms of its suspension - which you can read all about here - and while nothing has changed since we first drove it in February this year, the original launch event was all about loads - in the tray and towing them - this time, however, it was all about what most utes do most of the time - driving unladen on a variety of road surfaces.

A fun drive with a spectacular view at the end. Well, the middle; we still had to get back out.

Plus a bit of off roady stuff for good measure.

Nissan Australia has seriously improved the rear end of the Navara with the latest suspension developments, and not just for loads and towing either, with a significant improvement to ride quality, as well as a far more settled and confident feel to the rear end when cornering.

This means the Navara's biggest weak point in relation to its closest competition has been eliminated, leaving the somewhat raucous engine note to be the Nissan ute's major downside. Power's good, torque's excellent, but it is a coarse warbler when you climb up in the revs…

While the first day offered nothing more challenging than some muddy bush tracks and a bit of beach driving, it was the second day that would have been the real eye-opener to anyone who has never taken their shiny 4WD ute off road, particularly if they were intimidated by the idea of 'proper' off roading.

After a night in tents at Margaret River, the next day saw us heading south and towards the coast to Boranup and a massive 'coastal dune blow out' known, in a wonderfully understated Aussie fashion, as the 'Boranup sand patch'. Once off the main roads we slipped steadily down ever-increasingly narrow gravel roads until we eventually branched off onto a sandy, rutted track through the rolling, scrubby dunes of the 'sand patch'

The track eventually widened back out and the pace slowed as the terrain became more challenging, with rocks (finally) coming into play.

There are a few basic, common sense rules to driving off road, and one of the big ones is to follow the tracks of vehicles that have gone before you. This usually means the safest, easiest path, but caution is still advised - they may have been in a more extreme vehicle than yours and were looking for a challenge, so always keen an eye on what is ahead regardless.

It is, of course, easier if the preceding vehicle is directly in front of you, so if they get through with no problems, follow their tracks and you will be fine. You can even see what they did wrong and avoid their mistakes.

Even going slowly you will almost certainly hear (and feel) a few bumps and scrapes under your vehicle. Don't panic, it is built to handle this, although anything too loud or jarring would suggest a quick visual inspection to make sure nothing vital has been knocked off.

About 30km of this got us down to the coast and an utterly spectacular view of the Indian Ocean. A stunning location like this is inaccessible in a 2WD vehicle, but none of the trek in necessarily required the use of low ratio, although I will admit to engaging it on a few downhill sections, just because I prefer using low gears too crawl down in a low gear, as opposed to using the brakes (which you should never use in more extreme conditions anyway) or hill descent control. But that was just personal preference, rather than necessity.

If you are an urban dweller who owns a 4WD ute that has never been off road, you really do owe it to yourself to at least entertain the idea, after all, it's not like we are short on similarly spectacular and remote locations here in New Zealand.

There are a large number of dedicated 4WD clubs around the country and while most are more interested in the extreme end of off roading, a lot regularly run 'shinys', or trips that don't require you to put the paint and panels of your shiny urban-based 4x4 in peril, and allow you to enjoy more of what it is capable of.