In these days of fashionable 4x4s and 'lifestyle' cars, many manufacturers (and customers) put appearence above performance, forgetting that 4x4s are designed, in theory at least, to drive off-road. We put the theory into practice and set up a 'real world' off-road test on a private estate in Wales, subjecting the current generation of 4x4s to a 'no frills' examination. There was only one aspect of the cars we were interested in: their off-road ability. When the going got tough, leather seats and in-car DVDs would count for nothing. On carefully measured obstacles, set out amongst some beautiful Welsh scenery that was ours for the week, we pushed 10 4x4s from nine different manufacturers, based on three continents, to their limits. The precise and mud-free concrete ruts and ridges of the test track went out the window. In came the slippery hillsides, collapsed fifty-year old stone walls and awkward sheep tracks of the real world. This wasn't about driving the vehicles through the biggest mud hole we could find. With a spirit-level , protractor and a tape measure, it was about measuring their competence in a true off-road environment. The results should come as a surprise to you, not least because they came as a suprise to us.

Spurred into action by the ascendancy of the high-fashion four-wheel drive, the Germans have included the SUV field and raised their hi-tech flag on the off-roading beachhead