Do you own an SUV, and do you like it?

Yeah nobody wants to see me in pics... that's why I'm always behind the camera, never in front of it. LOL

A mate, a long time Alfa owner, has just got a new Alfa Stelvio. He utterly loves it.

I've never doubted that my son is indeed mine.... but just to make it perfectly clear, he texts me this morning from school:

"We were watching a documentary in Contemporary World about the genocide in Rwanda. There were so many Land Cruisers. Also saw a 2nd gen 4Runner, 1st gen Pathfinder, and some Nissan Patrols."

Yes, he's my kid.

This is Jaguar's new all electric SUV, the I-Pace.

This is the kind of car we will ALL be driving in the very near future. Yes, gas fueled cars will still be around, but not in the city on a Monday morning crawl, more of a weekend toy.

There's some very interesting tech under the bodywork.

My weekend toy, that I drive every day...

(Monday we found the terrain limits of what it can do in it's stock configuration. The bottom of the truck bears the scars to prove it.)

As a life-long resident of Florida, I have terrain envy! Closest my 4R will ever come to that departure angle is the parking garage at the galleria mall...

Carl... that was nothing. You should see the part of the trail that eventually stopped us.

We just purchased some Honda Pilots for business use. Clearly not for off road but for hauling things and people. We love the safety features today's cars have on top of the build features and airbags, but wreck avoidance, things like Rearview Camera, Lane Watch, Honda Sensing, Blind Spot system. We've personally gotten use to them on a couple of Mercedes vehicles, especially on our Sprinter. They add a lot of cost and we get them on the other Honda Vehicles we use, but it doesn't take much of a sales pitch to sell me on safety. If over my lifetime these features save one life then I'll believe money very well spend.

I think sometimes we overlook how far auto safety has come in the last 30 or 40 years. The impact protection, the braking systems, the air bags and belts. Lives are saved. The cost of each improvement is always initially high, but comes down over time.

So, I know off road capabilities and towing capabilities are important to many, but I'm thrilled by the safety improvements.

Today I like my winch even more than my truck.

The road less travelled is paved with imperfections. I’ll take stuck in mud over stuck in traffic!

The new Land Rover Defender is released today.

It must have been hard to design a new one after the last one was such an icon.

Does it look better than every other Land Rover in recent times?

Yes, absolutely.

Does it look like it's worthy of the Defender badge?

No, not really.

Not sure if this link will work here...

https://www.instagram.com/p/B2KripyndQR/?igshid=1qq560bd7f1f2

Basically, this is how I spend a half dozen weekends each year... the first clip is the unfortunate entry, and the second is the quick extraction once we showed up on scene (grey truck is me). The competing teams are generally glad to know there's a team standing by to get them out of ditches, swamps, and other unpleasantries.

Yesterday I saw an old VW T4 camper that was not only a 4X4 but built with a lift and some serious off-road rubber on the wheels. Really liked it too.

There are more than a few people that have done the overland / van-life thing in a Syncro VW. Personally I don't think I'd want to travel the world with the 'reliability' of an old Volkswagen. LOL

Day out with my kid, first serious trail with his old truck. A little over 2 hours to get 15 kms up the trail, lunch at the summit. Pretty good use of a Thursday...