#Offroad

Moneyed types in this country who’ve been pining for the spiritual successor to Land Rover’s old-school Defender will be gratified to learn the first series production Grenadier models for North America have started rolling off Ineos Automotive’s factory floor.

While the side-by-side world isn’t our standard fare, the latest bonkers creation from Can-Am is too good not to share. For 2024, the Maverick will be available with a gobsmacking 240 horsepower from its 999cc turbocharged triple.

This isn’t usual fare for news around these parts but the ever-expanding market for UTVs and side-by-sides is notable – especially as they become more like road-going pickup trucks than ever before.

The slow drip of information about the upcoming square-as-a-box Toyota Land Cruiser continues with the teaser photo you see above. 

If you’ve been an automotive enthusiast since childhood, there’s an extremely good chance that a portion of your early life was dedicated to building Tamiya models. You may even have owned some of their RC cars, perhaps assembling or modifying one with your own children years later.

For many, Tamiya kits served as a precursor to full-size vehicle projects that would be attempted in adulthood. But things have come full circle now that The Little Car Company has built a version of the 1985 Tamiya Wild One RC off-roader capable of holding two grown adults.

It’s a great time to be fans of burly midsize trucks: the simultaneous existence of Ranger Raptor, Tacoma TRD Pro (plus Trailhunter), and the ZR2/AT4X duo at The General means there is ample choice on the market for shoppers in this segment.

Chevy went one step further by ‘roiding their already ‘roided Colorado ZR2 and creating the ZR2 Bison. Now, GMC dealers get a variant of their own in the new Canyon AT4X AEV Edition.

It’s an open secret that the Big T is on the cusp of returning this storied nameplate to North American showrooms, meaning the release of a shadowy teaser image isn’t a huge surprise. Still, it’s neat to see what’s in the hopper for this off-road brute.

It’s a great time to be a fan of midsize trucks with an off-road bent. Ford has finally Raptor-ized the Ranger, we know Toyota has tricks up its sleeve for the next-gen Tacoma, and General Motors has numerous dirt-road variants of its Colorado/Canyon cousins.

The latest? What appears to be an AEV variant of the already-capable Canyon AT4X.

It’s been at least five minutes since Ram has rolled out a special edition for one of their trucks, meaning the time is right for yet another one. This time around, they’re reading from the TRX handbook and gifting the Havoc trim to its half-ton Rebel.

Where’s the line between off-road side-by-sides and on-road pickup trucks or SUVs? That’s a boundary explored by the nation’s powersports companies, one which is being pushed even further with the spellcheck-vexing Polaris Xpedition.

It’s an open secret that most of us here are fans of the new Defender. Comfortable, capable, and shod with boxy good looks, the off-roader checks many boxes on our list – except one: Wrangler- or Bronco-style open-air wheeling.

A custom shop in The Netherlands has changed that with a new creation called the Valiance.

It’s the week to write about truck teasers, it seems. Perhaps tired of Toyota getting all the digital ink about shadowy references to future product, Ram dropped a post on Instagram suggesting they also have something up their sleeve.

Like a petulant child who won’t share their toys, Ford has released a handy smartphone app filled with crowd-sourced and professionally curated tools such as trail maps for off-road journeys – but the only ones who can use it are Bronco owners.

Talk about walling off your garden. Or off-road trail, in this case

We’ve spilled innumerable gallons of digital ink on the forthcoming Tacoma, partly thanks to an incessant stream of teaser photos but mainly because it is a hugely important product in a hot segment. But still – Toyota, if you’re listening, hurry up with the real thing, will ya?

This time around, we learn of a neat option ripped straight from the Book of Wrangler.

It hasn’t been too many flips of the calendar since Jeep rolled out their 4xe sub-brand, a moniker that denotes rigs as having a plug-in hybrid powertrain. Whilst more than one dusty corner of the internet figured Jeep-type customers would turn up their noses at such a proposition, recent sales numbers suggest the effort is actually doing quite well.

So long as one frames those numbers through a very specific lens, of course.