Adventure Reviews

Nissan Australia has answered the call in the most gung-ho way possible by handing responsibility for the entire process of creating a halo-grade Navara N-Trek over to Aussie company Premcar, a highly-regarded automotive product development and engineering mob.

Mitsubishi's Pajero is a seven-seater 4WD wagon with a lot of substance and little in the way of pretence. It's functional without being at all flashy and that suits plenty of people - real people - but the Pajero's traditional styling and paucity of driver-assist tech, compared to some of its rivals, are factors enough when combined to keep its fanbase, only medium-sized but still very loyal.

The new Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon is arguably one of the best factory-prepped off-roaders on the market. It's a real 4WD with a proud hard-core heritage, and the assumption is that the new version, the JL, is a very capable terrain tourer, straight out of the showroom.

Utes dominate the sales charts and top-spec premium dual-cabs rank among the most popular with ute buyers.The Mazda BT-50 Boss is one of the more recent in a long line of accessorised dual-cab utes. The problem is: these utes are often a triumph of style over substance, more flash than functionality.Is that the case with the Boss? Read on.

In the grand hierarchy of off-road adventures, few reach a pinnacle quite like the Big Red Bash.It’s the “worlds most remote music festival” according to the event organisers, and you'd better believe it. The town of Birdsville, a last pit stop before the expansive Simpson Desert, is more than 1500km from Brisbane to the east, and more than 1800km from Adelaide in the south.Yet an increasing number of off-road enthusiasts make the pilgrimage to the famed 40-metre-tall dune, the Simpson Desert's tallest dune.How many days this trip will take you depends on where you’re coming from and how many drivers you have to work in shifts. The festival is three main days, and you’ll need to tack on at least an extra two days if travelling from Brisbane, three days from Adelaide, and four days from Sydney.

Subaru is synonymous with bringing effective – and popular – all-wheel drive wagons to market. And its Forester has done pretty well in the past as a comfortable and capable dirt-road tourer, more than appropriately equipped to tackle low-intensity off-roading. But has the company now tipped too far in the direction of style over substance? Has the Forester lost its way as a bona fide campsite conveyance?Read on.

The Toyota LandCruiser is a deadset off-roading legend, its reputation built on a lifetime of reliability, toughness, capability, not to mention the availability of Toyota parts Australia-wide.The 200 Series has been around for more than a decade and, until the 300 Series arrives here in about two years, it's your only option if you want to climb into a brand-new Cruiser.Toyota reckons the 200 is the “King off the road” so we took it into the bush to test that claim. Is the 200 actually still any good? Or does it now rely too much on technology, rather than old-school mechanicals?Read on.

The Jeep Wrangler is a very capable 4WD with real bush credibility, there's no disputing that, but just how much does something like the line-up's mid-range variant, the 2019 Overland, rest on the laurels of the brand's 'Trail Rated' heritage?

Automotive journalists are normal people, just like you. (But maybe not like that weird bloke sitting across from you on the train, right now. Don't look at him!) We car journos laugh, we cry and we're also prone to becoming caught up in nostalgia-fuelled fever dreams when the likes of something like the Suzuki Jimny pops up on our reportage radar.Yep, most of us were fair dinkum guilty of jumping on the bandwagon when the Jimny first lobbed, largely due to the fact that it brought back happy memories of rough-and-tumble camping trips of the past (whether they actually happened or not) and the little Zook also happily flew in the face of current SUV trends that err on the side of sleek, modern and safe rather than boxy, bouncy and, er, safe-ish.We were willing to initially overlook the Jimny's flaws, mostly because we hadn't spent a lot of time in it at that stage and we were also viewing everything through a glaze of that aforementioned nostalgia.But now that I've spent more time in it, I'm ready to face the cold hard facts: while it's a charming little off-roader, and more than capable in an off-road setting, it's far from perfect as a daily driver or, indeed, even as a 4WD.Have I got your hackles up? Great. Read on.

Unraveling Tasmania's mysteries via a series of off-road tracks and stunning vistas.