When recreating a famous SUV stunt in China goes wrong
- Thread starter JournalBot
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It’s odd how popular Toyota’s arguably-rather-ugly boxy new design language is with these Chinese SUVs
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Dang, I bet I know what happened.
Someone meant to install a safety line, but grabbed a danger line by mistake. Easy miss, really.
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I check out CarNews China every once in a while, and it's really fascinating to see what's on sale in a market (almost) none of us see on the daily. Generically boxy SUVs and really-pretty-sweet fastback sedans, sometimes with more of a crossover ride height, seem to be the popular choices for a more unique/non-mainstream vehicle, while most of the mainstream cars seem to be blobby crossover/hatchbacks. The boxy SUVs all generally appeal to me, and most of them are either PHEVs or BEVs, but they all kind of look like GTA cars - almost familiar, almost could be a Jeep or a Toyota or a Kia, but carefully anonymous. The Fulwin X3L that had some problems following the steps is cool-looking, actual colors are never not appreciated, and the front light signature is kind of cool.
I will say, though, holy shit cars in China are cheap for what you get. A PHEV SUV with 100 miles of EV range starts at like $25k. Amazing what a coherent industrial strategy and fat subsidies gets you, I guess, but goddamn are those prices tasty.
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Sort of like the WINGS FALL OFF button on a plane. Whom among us, right?
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My brother and his Kenyan wife run a lodge in the Masai Mara. He swears by the simplicity of the Land Rover in that most things can be fixed by local mechanics, with their ingenuity and metalworking, rather than having to send off for a part. I'm not sure he is so complimentary about the reliability, but I guess they throw a lot at them out there
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Thomas Cochrane
Ars Centurion
If you're OK with avoiding Sports or Utility, these vehicles are great value for the money.
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A Series Land Rover is sort of the perfect British vehicle; easy to fix as a post box, tough as Shackleton's feet, and reliable as Jimmy Savile around your kids. They're at their best when they've become kind of a SUV of Theseus and have been fixed, repaired, and part-swapped until everything kind of works, or has failed but isn't important enough to replace. If your local mechanics know Land Rovers, that's the best case scenario, but there's a reason most of the rest of the world has adopted the Hilux.
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There are different kinds of reliability - there's "rarely needs repairs" reliability and "still manages to limp back to the mechanic after something goes wrong" reliability. The former is more popular in developed countries; the latter is more popular in the bush. The latter is also why the Toyota Hilux is the choice vehicle of bandits and warlords everywhere (except the US, where it is not sold).
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
Which generally means low tech, low compression engines, straight axles, leaf springs, manual transmissions and no internet connections. I had an FJ-40 for the longest time. Some great times in it. But it would beat you to death even though you managed to get home.
An elegant vehicular concept for a less civilized time.
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The new Land Cruiser FJ is somehow both extremely cool in a cross-the-Serengeti kind of way and ugly enough to scare a warthog. Jesus Christ, those proportions just melt my brain.
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I dunno, that also describes the brand-new (literally, the seats still had the plastic) diesel Hilux I hammered around Greenland in. It was cool as hell even if it rode like a goddamn ox cart and did 0-60 in nope, this road is nowhere near good enough for 60, chill out. The workhorse is not dead, it's just reserved for the kinds of places where a truck is a tool, not gender-affirming care.
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Same goes for the Toyota Land Cruiser; when I lived in Africa in the 80's (my folks worked for the UN), all that UNICEF used for field work were Land Cruisers; they were durable AF and reliable (not so much the Land Rovers, TBH
), and easy to fix locally. That's why, as mentioned above by another poster, they were used in a lot of armed conflict.
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Well, hopefully they had a modicum of sense and were filming instead of trying to livestream it. Otherwise, that would be an impressive amount of hubris. Not everything need be performed live.
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
Well, those things will rattle your nuts off, so there is that...
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As one reviewer of a different car once wrote: it's a great way to get to know your car mechanic.
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Did you know that 98% of Land Rovers are still out on the road?
The rest made it home.
There’s a saying in Australia. If you want to get there, take a Land Rover. If you want to get home, take a LandCruiser.
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Huh, by now I figures somebody would have made the Fullose joke, but apparently it falls to me.
Also, Land-rover have previous on driving AWD vehicles up things.
View: https://youtu.be/qlEo8Ag330A
Also, Land-rover have previous on driving AWD vehicles up things.
View: https://youtu.be/qlEo8Ag330A
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The Cybertruck: give someone Ketamine, a picture of a dumpster, a crayon and a children's menu and ask them to draw you a truck.
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I'd venture that this specific climb is all a matter of preparation and the combination of a minimum of factors (tires sizes, gear ratios, central diff lock, at least some power), as opposed to a proof of some superior offroading abilities.
20 years ago when the Kawasaki KX450F was released the rear tire's knobs were spaced to mostly match the power strokes of the piston (at least when using the original sprocket sizes), in some important meat of the powerband/gearing. Little details can matter.
20 years ago when the Kawasaki KX450F was released the rear tire's knobs were spaced to mostly match the power strokes of the piston (at least when using the original sprocket sizes), in some important meat of the powerband/gearing. Little details can matter.
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I would wager there's a lot of work for the traction control to do, and a lot of shuffling power around - some locking or torque-vectoring diffs would probably be important, and a locking center diff.
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Didn't look like it. It climbed right up the stairs and didn't look like it was bottoming out.
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Safety lines you had ONE job! Or did they decide the truck itself is too dangerous?
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poke 532810
Ars Praetorian
This wouldn’t be the first time a historic site was damaged filming a commercial. In 2000, a crane smashed part of the Intihuatana stone in Machu Picchu while filming a beer commercial. When I visited the site in 2010, our guide was still upset when he mentioned it. Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t put historic and sacred sites at risk to film stupid stunts.
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It didn't look like there was any damage.
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/suvs/watch-range-rover-drive-999-steps-mountain
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That's not a very "capitalistic, make money at the expense of all else" world view!
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