10 off-road vehicles that made car design history

As seen with the Jeep CJ, it was only after World War II that off-road vehicles became popular in the private sector. In 1941, on the other side of the Pacific, the Imperial Japanese Army had seen Jeeps running in the Philippines. Impossible not to be amazed, so an example was promptly shipped home. The Japanese worked hard on reverse engineering to figure out all its secrets, but then, in 1951, the US itself ordered a hundred vehicles with Willys specifications from Toyota. The so-called Toyota Jeep BJs were crucial to the Korean War. It was from here that a new icon was born, beating Jeep in its field: the Toyota Land Cruiser. Throughout its history, the off-road vehicle would become increasingly “civilised”, losing the toughness of its beginnings and embracing the soft curves of today, but its soul would remain pretty much the same. Even today, it is impossible not to find it in every context, from the humid tropics to the African deserts and the Australian Outback, in the hands of tourists, regular armies and militias.

Let’s go back to the 1970s to meet the Range Rover, another model that became a symbol of the entire sector. Launched in 1970 as the more road-going and luxurious son of the Land Rover (more on this later), it was immediately acclaimed for its design. In fact, it was the first car ever to be exhibited at the Louvre as an “exemplary work of industrial design”. Beyond its aesthetics, the Range Rover was also tested in the field, by participating and winning in the first Paris-Dakar in 1979 (a feat repeated two years later). Now over 50 years old and still in production, the British icon has so far appeared in almost 1,500 films and TV series (including four James Bond films), and its owners include Queen Elizabeth, Paul McCartney and Tom Cruise.

The utilitarian nature of off-road vehicles could not go unnoticed in the Soviet Union. In 1976 a car, the Lada Niva, was presented at the 25th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. It certainly did not stand out for its minimalist aesthetics, but for two aspects. It could be seen as a proto-Suv, a rather small and versatile all-terrain vehicle that could be used on blacktop, land or snow. Moreover, it was (and is) totally manual and repairable with very few tools. Its production began in 1977 in Togliatti, the city known in Italy as Togliattigrad, where the communist regime and Fiat had built Vaz in the 1960s, a huge five-million-square-metre plant with 270 kilometres of assembly line and a production capacity of almost a million cars a year. The aim was, after all, gigantic: to motorise the Soviet republics.

Many off-road vehicles have survived over the years, but very few have remained as true to themselves as the Mercedes-Benz G-Class did. Let’s play a game: look at the first model, from 1979. Now take a look at the current version and find the differences. There are a very few. In the case of the G-Class (the letter stands for Geländewagen, off-road vehicle) we can truly speak of a timeless design. Here, too, the birth was a mixture of civil and military use, luxury and performance. The three-pointed star wanted to demonstrate its ability to make a car that could be used from one pole to another, passing through all the climatic zones. And it succeeded. Generation after generation, the G-Class has also become one of the most popular off-road vehicles for developers, who have let loose in extreme conversions. An example? The Mercedes-AMG G63 six-wheel drive and 700 hp.

Thirty-eight years later, they are still around. There is no better advertisement for the first Panda 4x4. A model launched in 1983 that managed to offer people living in the countryside and mountains a low-cost alternative to expensive off-road vehicles. One hundred per cent mechanical, austere and basic, it was as reliable as a clockwork and could be repaired by literally anyone. Its crude appearance was softened by later additions such as the Sisley. However, its peak came when Gianni Agnelli showed off his metallic silver Panda 4x4 Trekking around St Moritz and Cortina. That same model was recently restored by Garage Italia of Lapo Elkann (Agnelli’s grandson) and auctioned for 37,000 euros.

“If you are undecided about a car or an off-road vehicle, buy both”. The 1980s would have been less colourful without the Suzuki Vitara, a miniature off-road vehicle offspring of the popular SJ. Also called Sidekick or Escudo, it played everything on the size. At 3,650 mm in length, it brought to Europe an element that was little treated by continental brands, a car with a high seat but that could be used in the city, a spacious car with no parking problems, a real off-road vehicle with manually engageable all-wheel drive and a gearbox with reduction gears suitable on blacktop (albeit very slowly). And then, there was the convertible version, a real must-have, perhaps with the obligatory surf.

Muscular, enormous, allergic to European roads, the Hummer H1 is an off-road vehicle that has managed to make no small cultural shift. It has, as usual, military origins, but the road-going version had a sponsor of excellence, Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was 1992 and Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf had spread the images of those huge US Army Humvees around the world, overcoming rocks like pavements, speeding through the desert and launching missiles. “I needed a vehicle that reflected my personality”, the future governor of California said, who became the first owner of the proto-H1, practically a Humvee with a number plate and no camouflage paint. At 4,686 mm long (almost as long as two Smart cars) and 2197 mm wide (just under the length of a Smart car), the Hummer H1 managed to embody the dream first of the Terminator and then of hip-hop culture. Among its biggest supporters was rapper Tupac Shakur, while Schwarzy recently had one electrified. Eminem, Coolio and Dr. Dree, on the other hand, preferred the “baby” of the house, the H2.

If the Terminator drove the H1, Rambo preferred the Lamborghini. Sylvester Stallone was one of the best-known owners of the LM 002, the off-road vehicle from Sant’Agata Bolognese that started way back in the 1970s as a proposal to the US Army for a new all-terrain vehicle. The order was won by Am General and its Humvee, but the LM 002 managed to propose a true family-sized supercar, with a top speed of 210 km/h and a 0-100 km/h speed of 7.8 seconds. The Rambo-Lambo, as it was nicknamed, was produced between 1986 and 1993 and its buyers included Uday Hussein, Saddam’s son, and a host of Saudi Arabian scions who used it to speed through the desert where other Lambo cars dared not. Moreover, it is Urus’ grandmother, Lamborghini’s current SUV with 650 hp and a top speed of 305 km/h.

We said we would go back to Land Rover and here we are. Among the iconic off-road vehicles, we could not fail to mention the Defender that accompanied Prince Philip’s earthly remains to Frogmore Gardens in Windsor on 17th April. Commissioned in 2006, the Land Rover Defender 130 Gun Bus is a special version of the vehicle created to meet the Prince’s wishes. Deep Bronze Green in colour, it has been generously lengthened to accommodate a new passenger cabin with large windows, LED lighting and a green leather interior with French oak trim. A touch of style and elegance inside a muscular and definitely British vehicle.