Fancy that – turns out the new Toyota Prado is indeed better off-road than a Renault Sandero

Land Cruiser Prado. (Photo: Toyota South Africa)

By Alexander Parker

21 Apr 2021

More than a decade ago, I was an editor at the local incarnation of an international motoring magazine, TopGear Magazine SA, where I explored the great 4x4 debate.

First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.

The magazine was a franchise of a giant global motoring TV show produced with eyewatering discipline and presented by three knowledgeable motoring journalists and broadcast professionals disguised as jackasses. It was called TopGear and, for a few years, it was the best thing on television.

In the spirit of general jackassery, at TopGear Magazine SA we were once inspired to tackle one of my personal bugbears – the lie about how you really need a 4x4 to access the best parts of our national parks and beautiful places. It has always riled me and, at TopGear, I had the opportunity to prove its nonsense. We saw that an off-road, 4x4ing magazine title had run a feature about the Richtersveld.

In their story, they had worn a lot of khaki and had discussed tyres earnestly and engaged their hydraulic locking differentials and had tested their Old Man Emu modified suspension kits fitted to their already expensive off-road behemoths. As a result of such impressive manliness, they had made it all the way to a campsite in the heart of the Richtersveld National Park.

At TopGear, we decided that we would follow their route, except we would do it in a Renault Sandero.

To prove the point we even had fake 4x4 stickers printed and fixed to the back of the car to get it past the park officials who did ask, as we feared they would, whether the Sandero was a 4x4 before allowing us access to the park.

Motoring journalism doesn’t win serious awards and there is an avalanche of the most disgraceful bilge masquerading as motoring writing out there. I am perfectly aware of how little all this matters. But let me tell you how proud I am of that time we took the Renault Sandero to the Richtersveld, because that little front-wheel-drive hatchback performed like a champion, scarcely broke traction at any point, let alone got stuck. It soaked up an absolute hammering on the corrugations but didn’t miss a beat. What a great little car.

More importantly, what the Sandero did was prick a hole in a giant bubble of exclusive bullshit that reserves beautiful and precious publicly owned spaces for people with the money required to own serious 4x4 equipment. The fact is that you can get to most places in a Renault Sandero or a VW Polo or even – in fact, especially – a CitiGolf, due to its excellent ride height and the fact that it weighs less than a bag of air.

Take it easy, be careful, take no risks and, possibly, take an extra spare tyre, but really. Don’t not go to Namibia or the Richtersveld because you don’t have a Land Rover. That’s what they want you to think.

Memories of TopGear’s Richtersveld triumph resounded around my brain recently when I was looking at a map of the Karoo National Park. It told me in no uncertain terms that the road from Afsaal to Kookfontein and from Kliplaatsfontein to De Hoek was 4x4-only access.

Pah, I thought, I’ve seen this nonsense before. After all, I pompously told myself, this is a man who’s been to the heart of a remote and arid desert armed with little more than a cheap hatchback and an opinion. They could, I thought, stick their 4x4-only signs where the sun doesn’t shine.

Thing is, I was driving the latest Toyota Prado, a body-on-frame 4x4 of the oldest-school variety. It has huge knobbly tyres and a proper low-range gearbox. It has rear and central locking differentials and enormously impressive approach, departure and breakover angles. It has seven seats and is now fitted with the Hilux’s 2.8-litre turbodiesel engine, which is more reliable than the sun. I had accidentally come on holiday in the Khaki Boys’ wet dream. As such, regrettably, we had not been seeing completely eye to eye.