“Nothing to get excited about if you want a vehicle to transport sheep or hay bales but more than adequate for a vehicle that might be called on to rescue a sheep from a snowy hilltop,” we concluded.
The Jeep Laredo (CJ-7) was a mixed bag: “It coped well with conditions on the farm, traversing our test field with scornful ease and leaping playfully up ridiculous inclines.
It proved one of the better towing vehicles and with automatic transmission was without doubt the easiest to drive.
It let us down only when required to start in thick, greasy mud at the foot of a steep ascent. However, it loses out on the farm due to its relatively small load area.”
We also had to remove its rear-mounted spare wheel in order to access its towbar.
Still, at £8499 (£29,735), “it deserves consideration for anyone wanting something prettier than a Land Rover but not quite as big and upmarket as a Range Rover [at £14,260]”.
For a few quid less, you could buy a Portaro Pampas, a Portuguese version of Romania’s ARO 24 (which incidentally had also spawned the original Dacia Duster of 1980).
We expected its steel bodywork to preclude that – indeed, our test car was already rusty – but the farmers didn’t care, noting that fertiliser would corrode aluminium anyway.
Its seats and ride were comfier than the Landie’s, its Daihatsu diesel four was impressively torquey and we barely even needed to engage 4WD when off-roading it.
All this plus its large load space – seven calves, eight sheep or nine bales – made it the farmers’ pick.
We preferred the £4485 (£15,690) Subaru MV (or Brat) pick-up, it being derived from an actual car. No leaf springs for us.
“This is the [4×4] that the farmer’s wife will love to drive into town,” we said, and despite its low ground clearance and fairly normal-looking tyres, “it simply flew through the glutinous mud”, thanks to its “light weight and high power” – of 79bhp…
