The Isuzu D-Max Arctic Trucks AT35 is the sort of car that you’ve very probably got no need for but you just want for the hell of it. It’s just so much fun and has the potential to convert indoor types like your correspondent into a backwoods person. Based on the fairly cheap, useful and innocuous Isuzu D-Max range of pick-ups, it’s rendered massively more imposing, and a bit more able through a collaboration with Artic Trucks of Iceland, specialists in hardcore off-roading – icebergs, volcanos, that sort of thing.

So naturally, I took it to… Birmingham. Specifically, off-roading on a small but demanding course at the National Agricultural and Exhibition Centre nearby. I learnt a few things. First, that making progress in any 4x4 requires patience and a steely nerve, and it reminded me how enjoyable it is; just a recreation, a hobby like golf or windsurfing, though sadly not that easily accessible. Second, I learnt that the Isuzu has a rather traditional way of getting around hills and mud, which is the optional differential lock, still engaged by the driver rather than by onboard electronics.

 

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My 1•9 smartcab is fine for Thailand, low insurance, low rod tax good on diesel kilos.