Overlander 4WDOTY
By Dave Howard # 1228
Although it was brief , it will be a phone call that you remember for a long time . It was the guys from Overlander mag with an invitation to be one of the judges of a group of 8 vehicles for this year ’ s Overlander 4wd of the year . There certainly was a spring in my step after that conversation and then the reality hits . You start to think if you are qualified enough ! Are you going to be brand biased in the Comparo and will five days with the vehicles be enough to form an opinion of an outright winner ?
Of course I had heard about the award of Overlander 4WDOTY but never really thought about how the vehicles get judged or what the criteria is for the vehicle to be included . A bit or research on the internet put me into the understanding of how the awards are finalised and worthy previous winners . So , after a bit of homework , I felt I was ready to get out there and finalise what I thought was a deserving winner .
An early morning flight from Melbourne to Adelaide had me being picked up at the airport and taken out to Cotton Tyres out at Athol Park where all the vehicles were fitted with the new Cooper AT / 3 ( Disco 4 excluded due to tyre availability ) which I thought was great as not only will we be seeing how the vehicles performed , but we can also have a good look at these new Cooper tyres not long ago released . Here we met all the other testers and film crew and got a run down on what our obligations were in the coming days . A few final phone calls from the staff at Overlander and the sorting out of a few minor hiccups with windscreen stickers we were handed GME handheld radios to all drivers and we were finally on the road . With 500 klms to get under our belts and a late leaving time from Adelaide it was a mission to get to Mt Ive station before sundown . With 9 new vehicles ( 8 being tested and one support ) and pretty much all drivers being unfamiliar with the last 126 klms of dirt roads in the dark , admittedly there was not much chatter on the radios as I ’ m sure we were all concentrating on getting the vehicles to Mt Ive station without damage . I was in the new NW Pajero that had arrived in the country four days earlier and the first to arrive in Australia so I am sure Mitsubishi would not have been impressed if a tree or livestock had jumped out in front of me on the way there . Actually it was a good opportunity to test the headlights / high beam on the vehicles so in a sense driving the last leg in the dark was the first test of the vehicles in the environment we would be judging them in . I can tell you now there was a fail there , and that was on my behalf for being last in a convoy of nine vehicles on dirt roads that have not seen rain for a while . Damn that was a dusty road . Oh well it was a good chance to see how well the Pajero was sealing the dust out as well .
We all arrived safely around 8 pm with Mt Ive staff waiting to serve us a fantastic dinner and give us our allotted rooms each . We all hit the cot around 10.30 that night with me thinking that it was a long day and the next few should be a bit easier . How wrong was I !
With three days of testing in front of us it was early start to the days and late finishes . We drove the vehicles over corrugations , in sand , over rocky tracks , swapped vehicles every couple of hours and learnt how all the controls on the vehicles worked . How to engage and dis- engage 4wd on the various vehicles and summarise how they performed under the different conditions all the while taking notes as we went as well as having filming segments in the mix .
After three full days it was late afternoon that we judges sat down and awarded points to all the vehicles . These tests really gave us a good indication of how all of the vehicles perform and compare to each other in an on road and off road environment and with some of the latest technology in 4wd systems within these vehicles it really makes you think about where the driver input is needed in some situations .