Ezra Dyer|Car and DriverI was an off-roader long before I ever drove on pavement. That was a consequence of learning to drive out in the Maine woods, but even once I had my license, I gravitated to the thrill of the trail. And the trails were all the more thrilling given that I didn’t exactly have access to serious off-road machinery in my formative driving years. But I did find that a rear-wheel-drive Dodge Ram D-150 with a limited-slip rear end could make it through some serious terrain as long as you got a nice running start.Ezra Dyer|Car and DriverMy lifted XJ didn’t get stuck this day. But it was a possibility.The upside of off-roading in an unqualified vehicle is that if you do get stuck, it won’t be too difficult to extract your rig because you probably didn’t get very far, and damage ought to be minimal. The better your truck, the steeper the consequences. In high school, my friend Dan’s all-wheel-drive square-body GMC seemed unstoppable until he found something that could stop it, which was a pond. He had to pay a guy with an excavator $400 to drag his truck out. Later, in college, my friends and I completed the accurately named Bog Road trail, but not before I dunked my lifted XJ in a hole that caused water to wash up over the windshield and the 4.0-liter six to temporarily become a four-cylinder until it dried out. My buddy Dave made it through in his Ford Ranger, but with a bent connecting rod from water making it into the V-6. In the words of Ice Cube, the bigger the headache, the bigger the pill.Ezra Dyer|Car and DriverBelieve it or not, this was fun.Which brings me to the modern breed of ultra-stacked off-roaders, your Raptors and Trailhunters and ZR2s, your Rubicons, RHOs, and AT4Xs. None of these machines would have had a problem with the Bog Road, which was about the meanest terrain we could find. And that begs a serious question: What do you do with trucks like those? How do you challenge them without taking major risks, financial and otherwise?Car and DriverThis question was on my mind when I drove the 2025 GMC Canyon AT4X AEV Edition, a representative member of the modern super-off-roader class. The AT4X gets 35-inch-tall Goodyear Wrangler Territory all-terrain tires, triple locking differentials, and MultiMatic dampers. The AEV treatment further up-armors the underside with all manner of skid plates, adds a bed-mounted vertical spare tire carrier, and replaces the GMC wheels with delectable AEV Saltas. Of course, this Canyon also included a pile of fancy-truck options like a head-up display, heated and ventilated front seats, and Bose sound. All of which added up to an off-road beast that cost $70,350. I decided to take it to the beach.Ezra Dyer|Car and DriverNo need to air down a balloon like that one.By which I mean the kind of beach that has its own “Idiots of” social media pages because you can drive on it, and thus get stuck on it. In my case, that meant Fort Fisher on the North Carolina coast, a beach that regularly snares newbie off-roaders in its deep, powdery sand. Of course, sand driving depends as much on technique and preparation (air down!) as it does on hardware, but I figured that Fort Fisher would be a good place to put the AT4X in its element.Tuff trucks only!As I was on my way in, I saw a Ford Bronco Raptor on the way out, and I took that as a portent of serious terrain, but there’d been recent rain, and the deep ruts in the sand were relatively firm. The skid plates kissed the sand as the suspension cycled up and down, but there was none of that “Will I get stuck?” suspense that I’ve felt so many times. I did have to lock the diffs just to be on the safe side once I was out of the ruts and backing into my chosen parking spot at the high tide line, but I never even aired down. In that respect, the mighty Canyon bought me the luxury of convenience, I suppose. Ezra Dyer|Car and DriverI admit: getting here without any fear of getting stuck was nice. But a little fear would have been fun.I guess the reason to buy a truck like this is because your goal is to never actually get stuck. If you do lodge or mire an AT4X, then you’ve surely gotten into the position to severely devalue your $70,000 truck. And yeah, getting stuck isn’t fun, but the possibility of it is. I’d love to end up on an Idiots of Fort Fisher post, bombing along in something entirely un-badass than to casually post up in El Toro Loco, as I came to call the towering GMC.Near the time I was getting ready to leave the beach, I heard a high-pitched buzz, something whizzing along at the kind of RPM you wouldn’t expect from a truck. Then a tiny JDM Honda Z hatchback drove into view, its driver no doubt having a blast out on the sand. Respect. On the way out, I left the GMC in two-wheel drive, and I had no problem going on my way.More Off-Roads
- Best Off-Road Pickup Trucks for 2024
- Video: Ford F-150 Raptor vs. Ram TRX Comparison
Source: caranddriver.com
