That’s the difference between life and death, that is…”. This is, I discover later, the Fish River Canyon, the world’s second largest after the Grand Canyon. By clicking below you agree to receive news, promotions and offers by email from Top Gear and BBC Studios. Adding complication to a desert-bashing pickup might seem a recipe for disaster, but VW says the auto ‘box actually adds, er, simplicity: because eight ratios can cover such a wide spread, it negates the need for a low-range ‘box.
Even the name sounds like it was dreamt up by a nine year old: the VW Amarok ‘Beast Conversion’. Leaving the khaki crew to their tiff, I snuck off to buy gallons of drinking water and a few kilos of biltong, a tough, jerky-like southern African snack made from the meat of cows raised exclusively on a diet of Jeremy Kyle reruns and Daily Mail comment pieces. is part of Haymarket Automotive, a division of Haymarket Media Group © Haymarket Media Group 2019.
All those tests that inspired Top Gear to declare the Hilux the Most Indestructible Car in the History of Ever - the fact it’ll keep going whether drowned, burned or crushed under hundreds of tonnes of rubble - are exactly why Africa loves it so, why 40-year-old examples are still creaking round the deserts, savannahs and jungles after a lifetime’s abuse.
All models also have an eight-speed automatic gearbox and permanent four-wheel drive, although, if you do decide to buy one, you will have at least two decisions to make. I know this is how his name is spelt, because he wrote it down and ordered me to mention him. You’d never mistake it for a silky BMW six, but by the standards of ute engines, it’s a muted, smooth thing - and, most importantly, seemingly unflustered by its 50°C roasting. There’s no mobile phone signal here: even if there were, what would you tell the rescue services? Probably a good thing I didn’t mention our Amarok was packing not only a faddish turbodiesel but, even worse, an automatic gearbox. Just another thing to break. So if we, photographer Wycherley and I, were to become separated from the Amarok now, within a few hours we would, quite literally, be cooked through. He gestured towards his battered Land Rover Defender 110, every panel of which appeared to have sustained a significant but very localised accident.
I like that. Of course, not all of Africa is as dry and desolate as southern Namibia, but this is true of much of it: the roads are harsh and occasionally non-existent, and if you break down, it’ll take the AA a very long time to find you.
Apparently, the ‘box has just five moving parts (which surely doesn’t seem enough), and, because it can keep the diesel in its sweet spot, reduces wear on the engine. What are you gonna do when you run out of fuel in the middle o’ nowhere? Especially big, no-nonsense pickups like this one.
At least you’re unlikely to be savaged by lions or leopards out here. But rural Africa is a rather slower nut to crack. The Ford Ranger might have the same limitations as all pick-up... A worthy contender in the pickup class, but no front-runner. The profits we make from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes. You’re proud of sh*** consumption. Feel the grip shifting from tyre to tyre, gently coax the truck back into line, don’t jerk the wheel. Over the rise, and from nowhere, the most astonishing vista unfurls before us: a monstrous, half-mile-wide chasm slashed straight across the landscape, dropping 500 metres vertically to a snaking river below. Prove you can take a beating, VW, then we’ll admire your smart leather and dual-zone climate control. Germany wants you to know that America does not have a safe monopoly on turning humble pick-up trucks into butch, high-riding symbols of virile masculinity and brawn. This is not for want of trying. On these roads, the factor limiting your speed isn’t avoiding licence points, but a desire for self-preservation.
Which means that - outside the big cities, at least - the car world’s relentless march of fashion, of newness and of technology all counts for bugger-all. And while we might not be able to save you any cash on a commercial vehicle at present, you'll find some fantastic deals on regular SUVs over at our New Car Buying pages.
If you want to conquer the toughest of the inhabited continents, this is what your vehicles have to survive.
Because they simply refuse to break. Bentley Mulliner review: an extra-posh Continental GT.
Forget traffic alerts or DAB radio. What do people here do if they want, y’know, stuff?
Europe’s biggest auto maker is quietly taking over China, and South America too. What do you need to know about Delta4x4? The Amarok handled both with unblinking, camel-like resilience. The cambered surface shifts second by second, deeper sand dragging the wheels off the road, hard ruts bouncing the tyres from the ground. “She’s got a turbo, and she’s gone half a million kilometres, no problems.”.
Bumping along at, ahem, enthusiastic speeds, coolly cocooned within the Amarok’s air-conditioned cabin, I wonder if its temp gauge might be exaggerating. Your information will be used in accordance with our privacy policy. BBC Studios is a commercial company that is owned by the BBC (and just the BBC). For all those out there that grew up as kids with bloodied noses and scraped knees.”. Albertus told me - matter-of-factly as reciting a bus timetable - that his parents had both died, and he was supporting his sisters by collecting waste paper from around the town for a dollar or two a day. Short of tipping it off a cliff or getting dictatorial on it with a Kalashnikov, we have done everything in our power to break this pickup. “Hi, Namibian RAC? That’s the problem with you Toyota lot. No running water, no sanitation, just basket-huts and few tin-shack shops - including, most interestingly, the ‘LIVING2GETHER BAR AND DRIVING SCHOOL’, unquestionably the most dangerous dual-function establishment since Barry’s Firearm and Magic Mushroom Mart. Breaking down now would definitely equal lightly browned, charbroiled death. You can just pay €2,000 for the lift kit, or €4,500 for the wheels and not bothering spending €1800 on the Bilstein shocks.
Between the scalding sun, the invasive dust, the dead earth, it’s tough to imagine how humans survive here. They are quite literally lifelines. It’s quiet and passably sophisticated, holding pace on motorways without reducing your ears to pulp. “No turbo on that, 750,000km, tight as a duck’s arse.” Few great romantic poems have been written in Afrikaans. Tackling these roads at a decent lick is not a relaxing job.
Fine as flour, the stuff gets everywhere, wedging its way into any nook or crevice, binding with any moisture to create gummy, grating paste.
No chance of another car springing up on you: you can see vehicles coming the other way from 10 miles off, kicking dust plumes high into the air. Volkswagen Reviews. Seven electric motors and a taste for drifting - the Mach-E 1400 likes to smoke. Cars aren’t a luxury here, a convenient alternative to catching the train or slipping into the Lycra for a bracing cycle. Land Rover Defender 90 review: the Defender to have? But, as Top Gear proved in 2007, getting across the frozen wastes of the Arctic is considerably easier if you take a car. And if your car has any propensity towards mechanical failure, these roads will find it: loose-dirt tracks that veer in an instant from thick sand to rock-hard corrugation, with nausea-inducing humpbacks and dog-sized boulders thrown in for good measure. Land Rover Defender 90 review: the Defender to have? Welcome to Africa. No, it doesn’t mean ‘People’s Car’, it means ‘Properly Built Alternatives To Contemporary Brit Tat’.
And this, boys and girls, is the Germans’ idea of a lifted, toughed-up bro-dozer. It’s a great, gruff rhino of a thing, roaring lustily on the move, its utilitarian cabin designed to be wipe-clean in the event of, say, having to bludgeon a bloodthirsty leopard to death against the steering wheel. Progress report: 2020 Skoda Octavia vs 1964 Octavia Super, The Daewoo Bucrane was the budget V6 coupe we never got, Six reasons why the Giulia GTA is the mad Alfa we’ve been waiting for, Ford Fiesta Ecoboost Hybrid review: the best small car money can buy, Ford Transit Custom PHEV review: a plug-in hybrid van.
Enter VW. Local wisdom dictates there are two strategies for avoiding this. It’s available with Volkswagen’s latest, quietest diesels and a posh eight-speed auto ‘box, as well as the firm’s full road-car options list. Hardly even huts, most of them, just flimsy windbreaks, a crude screen to keep the worst of the sun out.
It’s also, as meat enthusiasts will attest, the temperature at the centre of a medium-rare steak.
Get Top Gear news and reviews in your inbox, Enter your email address to receive regular Top Gear newsletters. Yesterday, I drove up the side of a 1-in-1 rubble canyon wall, breadknife-edged stones pinging off the tyres and clattering into the Amarok’s underbody.
Where are we? A week of patented TG pounding across even the harshest desert can’t replicate 20 years and half a million miles of abuse at the hands of Namibian farmers, but this thing feels as indestructible as they come, capable of surviving whatever the continent can throw at it.
BBC is a trademark of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Land Rover gives Bowler permission to use Defender shape for rally-raid racers. He boasted a Seventies moustache and a strong Afrikaans accent, which makes even the most innocent utterance sound like you’re trying to start a fight. Then there’s the predictable light bar and “side bars made of the finest stainless steel.” The finest.
If you get it wrong - sneeze and veer off the road, catch a rogue rock - you’ll flip for a few hundred yards, and then you’ll die. BMW M340d Touring xDrive review: secretly the best car BMW makes? Just to make things interesting, a 50mph crosswind whips sand across the road and batters the Amarok’s bluff body. So far we have failed.
There are no signs, no noticeboards, no warning you’re about to plummet into one of the world’s natural wonders, or even that it’s there. Beware, too, the kudu. What do you need to know about Delta4x4? “Just popping out for some milk, darling. This service is provided by Disqus and is subject to their privacy policy and terms of use.
The kudu is a large, well-built deer with twisted, razor-tipped horns a metre and a half in length. And, between the boulder-scrambling and the dune-sliding, thousands of miles of the sort of slippery, bumpy track we’re piling along now, vapour trails of dust billowing a mile behind our truck. Seven electric motors and a taste for drifting - the Mach-E 1400 likes to smoke. - two or three thousand tiny reed huts perched against a scorched, dusty hillside. A male kudu can weigh nearly 300kg, with all its weight balanced at windscreen height atop a set of long, spindly legs.
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