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LOADED4X4.COM.AU
OPINION: STEANE KLOSE
sense, it makes sense, but only
if you are comparing apples to
apples or should I say utes to
utes and not utes to wagons,
which would be apples to some
fruit that isn’t an apple. And they
aren’t comparing the same fruits.
Logic would therefore dictate
that you’d need to introduce
categories such as dual-cab 4WD
utes, ute based wagons, medium
wagons and large wagons, at the
very least. 4WDs have a broad
range of uses, way more than
your average poxy SUV (poxy
not boxy) that never leaves the
bitumen. 4WDs are bought for
off-road family touring, they’re
put to work on cattle stations,
they are hooked up to big vans,
and some are driven with gusto
up fire trails or along desert
tracks. These wildly varying uses
mean that two 4WDs can be
poles apart in their construction
and engineering; some have
a separate chassis, live axles
and leaf sprung rear ends, and
some don’t. Categories are
therefore a must, but there’s a
flaw in this categories idea as
well. If you automatically include
last year’s winners for each
category and put them up against
competitors that were either new
or significantly revised during the
year, you will be left with more
than one category that has only
one contender - the previous
year’s winner. In the grand
scheme of things, only a handful
of 4WDs are new or significantly
revised in any one year.
“This award would be
as irrelevant as any of
the others in existence
but would have the
advantage of being,
easily and cheaply,
decided over a goon
bag and a couple of
doobies.”
You could, as one media
outlet has - and I love the illogical
logic of this one - suggest that
you are judging each vehicle in
the competition against a set of
criteria, rather than against each
other or in other words judging
them in isolation. Now that is
awesome! But let’s apply some
‘circus logic’ to this concept. If
you judge, against the same set
of criteria, five jugglers, from five
different circuses and award
each of them a score out of 100
and then determine that the ‘best
juggler of the year’ is the one with
the highest score, haven’t you just
compared them? FFS, of course,
you have!
Alternatively, you could take
a more relaxed vibe towards
the award – at least behind the
scenes - and determine that the
‘4WD of the year’, is just the one
that is nicest to sit in while you
tick the boxes on the scorecard.
This award would be as irrelevant
as any of the others in existence
but would have the advantage
of being, easily and cheaply,
decided over a goon bag and a
couple of doobies. Unfortunately,
a genuine 4WD of the year
award, one where the process is
logical and ultimately produces
a meaningful result that can be
relied upon by the consumer,
is all but an impossibility. The
Tek screw in the tyre for the
concept is the reality that there
is a fair to reasonable chance
that you would know more about
the average 4WD than most
motoring journalists, many of
whom have next to no interest
in 4WD vehicles. Their opinions
Three 4WDs new to the market
or significantly revised in 2017
and we all know they can’t
logically be compared. Right?