Tis the season for handing out trophies. At about the same time we gave the new Jeep Wrangler our 4x4 of the Year award, our sister magazine Four Wheeler also named the new JK its Four Wheeler of the Year. Popular Science magazine, too, recognized the Wrangler in its annual "Best of What's New" roundup.
Not to be outdone, Chevrolet has won some significant iron for its Silverado pickup truck. Motor Trend magazine named it Truck of the Year, as did the journalist panelists voting on the North American Truck of the Year award.
Trent McGee fans, rejoice: The four most recent seasons of the Superlift's Off-Road Adventures TV show are now available in a four-DVD set. Each season includes 13 half-hour, commercial-free shows featuring trail rides, hands-on tech, vehicle buildups, four-wheeling tips, and more. Sate your need for McGee by logging on to www.superlift.tv.
The Nevada Trophy, an off-road competition that combines 4WD driving skills and Camel Trophy-like tasks with GPS navigation and geocaching, was won for a second time by Team Walker from Los Angeles. Doug Walker and his navigator, Deakin Hodges, in a 5.0L TVR-powered Land Rover Defender 110 (seen here), and Adam Walker and Jason Walker in a '95 Range Rover Classic, took the overall honors for 2006 in an echo of their overall win in 2004.
Michael Green and John Gulliford of OffRoadExperience.com started the Nevada Trophy in 1996. The two-day race, run in the northern Nevada desert, is open to any 4WD vehicle, though Land Rovers have won every event so far. Some 18 vehicles, including Rovers, Toyotas, and a couple of Hummers, participated in the 2006 running. For more information on this year's event, log on to www.offroadexperience.com.
As of this writing in early January, competitors in the 2007 Dakar Rally had completed six of the rally's 14 stages. Volkswagen, which fielded several Touaregs in the race, occupied the first three overall positions, with the team of Carlos Sainz and Michel Prin leading the rally overall. American driver Mark Miller (seen here) finished the sixth stage with his Touareg in eighth place overall.
Further down the pack but finally running strong was Robby Gordon and his trophy-truck Hummer. After some problems with fuel early in the race, Gordon moved up from 77th to 36th position after a very fast Stage 5, and then won Stage 6 outright, the first Dakar stage victory for an American-made vehicle, and the first stage victory for Toyo Tires, Gordon's tire supplier and one of his sponsors. The win bounces Gordon's team up to 19th place overall.
At this rate, Gordon's Monster energy drink-sponsored Hummer could be knocking on Miller's Red Bull-sponsored Touareg before much longer. We wanted to make a joke here about the relative size of Gordon's and Miller's cans, but we'd rather not get our own can kicked, so we'll let it go....
Ford Motor Company may be having its financial woes, but there was one bright spot at the end of 2006: The F-Series pickup is still the best-selling truck in America. According to data published in Automotive News, Ford sold 796,039 F-Series units in 2006, which was down 11.7 percent but still strong enough to hold the sales title. (The entire pickup segment was down nearly 10 percent.) The Chevy Silverado was second with 636,069 units sold, followed by the Dodge Ram, which sold 364,177 units. The GMC Sierra and Toyota Tundra rounded out the top five.
Industry watchers think Ford will have a hard time keeping the truck sales title in '07. The all-new Silverado is bound to be tough competition, and the all-new Tundra could take sales away from the F-truck too. On the other hand, the new Super Duty pickups, including the new F-450 dualie model, should help retain the Ford faithful.