2022 RAM 1500 TRX review (inc. 0-100) in right-hand drive!

  • last year
You should see the smile on my face as I watch this review. The 2022 RAM 1500 TRX is a car nobody needs, but pretty much everybody wants. Join me for a review of this absolute beast of a ute!

Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE

More RAM content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ram
More RAM 1500 content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ram/1500

Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 01:03
Interior 06:12
Infotainment 08:41
Safety Tech 11:24
Practicality 12:41
On Road 16:13
0-100 km/h 18:36
Off Road 23:02
Verdict 29:12

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#ram #trx #review #ram1500trx #1500trx
Transcript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. So there are some cars on the road that make you look tough without needing to go to the gym,
00:04 although for some of us it does come naturally. This is one of those. It's called the Ram 1500 TRX.
00:10 It is the Hellcat-powered
00:12 Ram 1500 and I'm extremely excited to drive it because, I don't know, just look at it.
00:17 Now this competes with things like the Ford F-150 Raptor. These are only built in left-hand drive,
00:23 so they're converted to right-hand drive in Australia and because of that they're pretty expensive.
00:27 Pricing for this kicks off at around the $200,000 mark before you put options on and also before on-road costs.
00:34 Now if that is too expensive, the entire Ram range is converted in Australia as well.
00:38 So there are some more affordable options if you don't necessarily require a fire-breathing,
00:43 supercharged V8 under the bonnet. Today we're going to do a detailed review of this car.
00:48 So if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of the review,
00:50 you can use the time codes up on the screen there or if you're on YouTube, scroll down and use the chapters below.
00:55 And if you haven't done so already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon
00:58 so you can find out every single time we drive a car with nostrils.
01:01 Now before we go through the exterior, I just wanted to give a big shout out to these guys, OzMV.
01:08 They are the mod that does the conversion of these from left-hand drive to right-hand drive in Australia.
01:13 They come with a five-year warranty and you can service them at over 200 places in Australia.
01:17 The official importer of the Ram products, Ateco, is also going to be converting these soon.
01:22 But these guys have been doing it for a little over 12 months now,
01:25 so they are well and truly ahead of the game here in terms of supply in Australia.
01:29 You can get this in six external colors. I quite like this white.
01:33 There's also a couple of colors that are specific to the limited edition.
01:36 That was the first batch of cars that came out with a few extra bells and whistles.
01:40 And as I mentioned before, depending on what options you get, that will dictate the price.
01:44 But they all sort of pretty much look like this.
01:47 So that means you're getting this giant grille here with Ram lettering on the front.
01:52 I love with the TRX that you get these decals on the bonnet. You get 6.2 litres supercharged along the edges there.
01:57 But in addition to this air intake, you've got these LED lights.
02:00 So this kind of signifies this looking like T-Rex.
02:04 You can see it coming at night time and you'll definitely hear it as well because it has the most epic
02:08 supercharger whine I've ever heard on a production car.
02:11 You've got real vents over on the side there too. And then down the bottom here,
02:15 you've got recovery hooks, front parking sensors, and then all of this is metal instead of being a plastic setup.
02:21 That means you get a little bit of flex between the body and the bumper there as well.
02:25 So if you are doing some serious off-road driving or have it in the Baja mode where it can go
02:29 fast on rough terrain, it means that you're not going to get any impact on the body there with that spacing in between.
02:34 Over on the side here, you've got a set of LED headlights with LED daytime running lights and then this.
02:40 So if you look closely in there,
02:42 it's actually an air vent that runs down the side of the car and exits out the back there.
02:46 And if we come around to the side here, I'll show you the wheels and tyres.
02:50 We've got a set of 18-inch alloy wheels and these chunky all-terrain tyres. The big difference here between this and the Silverado
02:57 1500 that we tested recently, the Silverado in Trail Boss trim has mud terrains.
03:01 These are far more quiet on the road. It means it is going to be a little bit more civilised.
03:05 Of course, being an off-road vehicle, you've got these wheel arch protectors. Now in terms of the brakes,
03:10 this is a little over two and a half tons.
03:13 So it is a big truck and it means it needs to have big brakes. Up the front here,
03:17 you've got a 378 mm rotor with twin piston caliper. At the back, it's 375 mm disc brake as well.
03:23 So you are getting a proper braking package and it means that if you do need to pull this up in a hurry,
03:28 it's going to get the work done. Over on the side here, you've got the indicator, but this is where that
03:31 exits from the headlamps. So it comes out the side here. Ram lettering along the side there. A big wing mirror.
03:37 Part of the reason this has such monstrous dimensions, and I'll run through those in a second,
03:41 especially the width is these wing mirrors.
03:43 They stick out heaps because you need to be able to see down the side of the car.
03:46 So you not only get the big section of the wing mirror, you also get a smaller mirror built into it as well.
03:51 You've also got an indicator there and a camera for the 360 camera. You've got privacy glass. These awesome looking side steps.
03:58 So this reminds me of the Ford Ranger Raptor in terms of that side step arrangement.
04:02 And you do need these when you're getting in and out because it is a fairly big step up from terra firma.
04:06 And I find that getting up on that gets you into the cab far easier. Now along the side here,
04:11 you've got a ram bar and this actually follows the theme of some of the other crazy named things in here.
04:15 So ram bar, there's a ram charger inside for the phone charger. Now in terms of the dimensions,
04:20 it is just under six meters long, which is huge. A little over 2.2 meters wide,
04:24 thanks to those wing mirrors. But most importantly, the height. It is over 2.05 meters tall,
04:30 which means you're not going to be able to get this into a lot of
04:32 underground car parks in Australia because the top of that will hit as you come in.
04:35 So just keep that in mind. If you do buy one, you will have to park outside if you live in an apartment or
04:40 something else like that. You've got TRX lettering on the side and then around the back you have a set of full LED taillights.
04:46 Now this may look like an air vent, but that's completely closed off.
04:50 So you've got 4x4 lettering, TRX and then RAM here. You will have noticed with some of the lower RAM models,
04:55 this is actually like a chrome finish. So here it's black. Black bumper bar as well. That's steel.
05:00 You've got recovery hooks on the side there.
05:03 Now the interesting thing to note as well is when they are imported into Australia,
05:06 you come with your standard connectors here for the US, but then they are fitted with the Australian connectors as well.
05:11 So if you do need to do some towing, it fully covers you there. We'll drop that tailgate.
05:15 When that comes down, you can see your spray-in bed liner. You've got an LED light off to the side. You've got hooks.
05:21 That's where you can fit a spare tyre as well.
05:24 So there's currently one under the back,
05:25 but you can also fit one to the rear there if you need to.
05:28 You've got adjustable hooks along the side here. And then in terms of the dimensions,
05:31 it comes in at just under 1300 millimeters between the wheel arches.
05:36 1700 millimeters long and a little over 500 millimeters deep. And then importantly with the payload,
05:42 you've got 600 kilos available. Means you can actually use this as a ute if you need to. The tray itself is
05:48 hydraulically assisted, so that means getting it up and down is pretty straightforward.
05:52 Down the bottom here, you have a little over three and a half tons worth of braked towing capacity as well.
05:57 Now, let me know what you think about the design in the comments section below.
06:00 This is obviously a big truck and it might not be for some people,
06:03 especially if you're living in and around the city, but it is actually practical as a truck and you do get all of your off-road equipment
06:09 and a hefty supercharged V8 as well.
06:12 So we're inside the TRX and let's start off with the key. This is what it looks like.
06:16 It's a pretty meaty key which suits the car.
06:18 So you've got unlock, lock, a button here that you press twice to drop the tailgate, remote start and then panic.
06:25 Then on the back you have a RAM TRX. This is a proximity sensing key.
06:29 So you can just leave that in your pocket, grab the door handle and then once you're inside you have a start/stop button there.
06:34 So what about the design?
06:35 So I'll touch on the fact that obviously if you're watching this in the States, you're used to this thing being over there.
06:40 So in theory it is still over there because the steering column still runs down that side when they do the conversion here in Australia.
06:48 They attach a patented part that basically allows the steering to sit here and then get
06:53 translated down the back of the firewall and then down the steering tunnel as it normally would.
06:59 And to me this actually looks like a really decent conversion. I can't tell what's actually not standard here.
07:05 You do sort of notice a couple of things like over here the switch panel for the lights is a little bit loose,
07:10 but for the most part everything looks like it should be exactly where it is.
07:14 So,
07:15 really sort of impressed with the conversion job here and it really feels like they've gone to a lot of effort with it.
07:19 In terms of the presentation of the TRX in general though, so the DT got a pretty significant upgrade inside the cabins.
07:25 You've got this giant infotainment system down the center.
07:28 You've got this sort of leather stitch dashboard. You've got Alcantara along the top there,
07:32 along the top of the steering wheel. Really is quite nicely decked out. This is probably my favorite feature though.
07:38 You've got a plaque here that has TRX, shows you the engine, it shows you the size of the supercharger.
07:44 Designed by FCA, Auburn Hills, Michigan. Horsepower 702 horsepower.
07:49 You've got the VIN number and then you have the amount of boost that that supercharger provides. So, love this.
07:54 It's so American and I just love that that exists. The rest of the interior is quite practical.
07:59 So we'll go through all of the storage and that sort of stuff later. What about your touch points though?
08:03 So that is, it's a bit firm,
08:05 but it's good to sort of rest your arm on and you do kind of have that
08:07 rested position while you're driving. Same over on the door. It's sort of nice to sort of rest your arm on.
08:12 How soft is it? Well, we've got our durometer.
08:15 We've tested the main surfaces in this cabin.
08:17 If you want to see how this car compares to others that we've tested before, have a look at the link in the description.
08:22 Now, what about build quality? So,
08:25 it actually all feels really solid. I've had a proper play with all this stuff and it feels really nice and solid,
08:30 especially given that this is a conversion done in Australia. And finally, our door test.
08:35 Sounds nice and meaty.
08:39 Let's talk infotainment. So, I'm talking to you back there because when that door's open, it just continuously beeps.
08:44 So, I've had to shut that. 12-inch vertical infotainment system.
08:49 It kind of gives me Tesla Model S vibes in terms of the way that it looks.
08:53 This was new with the DT and I think it really suits this. You'll notice with the 2022 version of the Chevrolet Silverado,
08:59 for example, they've gone for a widescreen setup and I'll explain why that's probably a better option soon.
09:03 But for the main part, you have AM, FM and DAB plus digital radio.
09:08 But keep in mind, DAB doesn't work here in Australia and it doesn't work in a lot of the
09:11 Chinese and American imported cars for some reason. On top of that, you have a standard nine-speaker sound system.
09:17 But this car has the optional Harman Kardon 19-speaker branded sound system.
09:21 It is a ripper of a sound system.
09:23 You've got a stack of different menus down the bottom here that you can access different controls.
09:27 So, you've got radio, you've got controls for the heated seats and also the cameras. Keep in mind though, for some reason,
09:34 they didn't switch this over. So, when you turn the driver's vented seat on, it actually turns on the passenger side in Australia.
09:40 So, I think they probably need to get that sorted out. In terms of your apps,
09:45 you have smartphone connectivity that I'll run you through in a second. But have a look at this TRX menu.
09:50 This is for your sports driving. So, this is your drive modes.
09:53 We'll talk about those when we go for a drive. But if you hit the performance button, it will actually load the performance pages.
09:59 So, in here you've got all sorts of fun things to keep you entertained. It gives you your 400 metre
10:05 timers for your quarter mile. You've got G
10:07 force metres, all sorts of gauges. You even have an ability to set up
10:12 cool down for the car as well if you're going for a bit of a drive. So,
10:16 really cool setup here. And I think that this is what owning a TRX is all about.
10:21 In terms of smartphone mirroring, your satellite navigation, it has inbuilt sat nav, but it doesn't work in Australia.
10:26 So, you have to do that through your smartphone. You have both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Both are wired.
10:31 I'll show you what Apple CarPlay looks like first.
10:33 Now, the reason I said the widescreen layout in the new Silverado is going to be better is because look how small CarPlay is
10:39 on this screen here. It's just really tiny and it looks kind of out of place.
10:43 And it is hard when you're using some of the apps. They don't give you the full
10:46 visibility of the app because it has to hide some menus because of the small screen.
10:50 So, a little bit disappointing, but I guess that is what you have to work with when it comes to a vertical screen.
10:55 And this is what Android Auto looks like. So, same story. You have that sort of segmented integration there.
11:01 But it is nice and fast though, which is a big bonus.
11:04 There is one more screen ahead of the driver. I'll run you through that quickly.
11:06 You've got just a whole heap of different features on there. Everything from the trip computer to another performance menu to an
11:13 off-road menu really is sort of fully featured with all of the gadgets and the tech that you need.
11:18 So, really nice setup there. Then, analog gauges on either side. Now, let's talk about safety tech. Some of it is
11:24 optional, which is a little bit confusing, but you can option this with autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian detection.
11:30 You also get blind spot monitoring built into that wing mirror.
11:34 You have a lane departure warning and a lane keeping assistant, adaptive cruise control.
11:39 And then in terms of parking, you have both front and rear parking sensors and a 360 camera.
11:43 I'll show you what the camera looks like. I'm going to switch the car on first.
11:46 Okay, so,
11:49 surround camera, there it is. So, the quality is actually pretty good. If I put that into reverse,
11:53 you can see that you actually get that top-down view. You can see out the back there.
11:57 You can then switch the views as required.
11:59 So, you're getting really decent visibility out of the car. So, really impressive setup.
12:06 That's going to be great for off-road driving and also trying to park this thing because it is
12:09 enormous. You also have, when it comes to parking, trailer steering. It's probably, I'll switch the car off,
12:16 probably one of my favorite features with the big Yank trucks because reversing a trailer can be hard work for some people.
12:22 This makes it easy though. So, using the trailer steering, it can manipulate the steering on its own
12:27 so that the trailer will go in the direction that you want it to go in.
12:30 It will then do the countermeasures with the steering that need to happen for the trailer to go where it needs to go.
12:35 So, love that setup and it's good to see that it's standard here on the TRX. Let's talk about practicality.
12:40 We'll start with your connectivity options. So, down here, you've got a USB-C, a USB-A, an auxiliary, another USB-C,
12:46 another USB-A port. You've got a 12-volt slot up the top here. Within the center console,
12:52 you've got another USB-A port and if you go one step deeper, you then have an additional power outlet as well.
12:58 So, there really is a stack of connectivity options here, but I love this.
13:02 I mentioned earlier that you have some funnily named stuff. You've got the RAM charger, which is your wireless phone charger.
13:08 So, yeah, really cool stuff. Now, in terms of your phone, where can it live?
13:13 Well, you've got stacks of options. You can slot it down there, you can put it in the RAM charger,
13:17 you can put it in the cup holder. It really can live anywhere. And in terms of your bottle, same story,
13:21 that lives in there without any problems. Rubber teeth on the side,
13:24 so that grips it nicely and it won't be going anywhere. This can also live with inside the door.
13:28 There's two slots there in terms of the bottle size that you want. So, being an American truck,
13:33 it's going to fit all sorts of different bottles, which is good news. Other storage,
13:36 you've got this center console with enough room up the top there. Then has a second layer that's nice and deep
13:42 with another little Easter egg there. You can see a Tyrannosaurus Rex. You've got a box over here,
13:48 but because this is a right-hand drive conversion, you've got to lean all the way over to open that
13:52 glove box down the bottom there. You've also got a sunglasses holder up the top here. And finally, storage
13:58 on either side of the center tunnel as well. In terms of your comfort, you've got dual zone automatic climate control.
14:05 You can control that on the sides here or you can go to the climate menu
14:08 and then control it all through here. This is also where you'll find the controls for your seats. So I mentioned earlier that
14:15 controlling your cooled seats requires you to go to the passenger menu, not the driver menu,
14:20 but you do get a heated steering wheel and heated and cooled driver and front passenger seat. In terms of the seats themselves,
14:26 they're built for Americans. So you've got plenty of room on the side. They're electrically adjustable.
14:31 So you can go forwards, backwards, backrest goes forwards, backwards.
14:34 You can lift the seat front and the back and then you also have
14:38 bolster adjustment as well. Both the driver and front passenger seats are electrically adjustable.
14:43 Steering is manually adjustable and you have both tilt and reach adjustment on the wheel. And then in terms of our reach test,
14:50 it's actually not too bad to reach all of this stuff while you're driving from this driving position.
14:55 Okay, back seat. If you're sick of complaints in the back of Australian dual cab utes,
15:01 here is the solution for you. Now, I'll run you through the space in here in just a second,
15:05 but in terms of your versatility, you can lift both sides up and you get under floor storage.
15:11 And you've also got that over on the other side as well. I'm going to hop in. So using our sidestep and our grab handle,
15:18 look at this. There is just acres of knee room there.
15:23 I have heaps of toe room. Headroom is excellent too. It really is very spacious back here.
15:29 You could have three adults side by side without any dramas at all. In terms of your other creature comforts,
15:34 you've got air vents, heated and cooled seats for the two outboard seats, USB-C, USB-A charging.
15:40 You've also got another power outlet there rated at 400 watts. Matte pockets,
15:44 bullet holders, pen holders, I don't know what they are.
15:48 You've got a centre armrest here that drops down like this.
15:51 So you've got a little bit of storage there, two cup holders so you can slide your bottle into there.
15:55 You've got grip teeth. You've got another two cup holders just here and then also storage inside the doors.
16:02 You've got this cool window so this can be opened from the front there.
16:05 It just gives you a little bit of airflow and then this big panoramic glass roof as well. So awesome place back here.
16:10 So we have hit the road in the TRX. I'll run you through the engine specs first.
16:18 So this has the Hellcat engine and for those of you who are unfamiliar with that, that is a 6.2-litre
16:23 supercharged petrol V8 engine. It makes 523 kilowatts of power and almost 900 newton metres of torque.
16:32 And it's all mated to an eight-speed torque-flied automatic transmission and also goes through a permanent four-wheel drive system.
16:39 So it's not like some of the other pickup trucks in this segment that are rear-wheel drive and then can be all-wheel drive.
16:44 This is just always all-wheel drive and depending on the drive mode that you're in, it can go anywhere from
16:49 predominantly 50/50 all the way to sending most torque to the rear.
16:53 It really is quite a clever setup and comes with all the four-wheel drive controls you need as well,
16:57 which I'll run through a little bit later on.
16:59 Okay, so what's it all like behind the wheel?
17:03 I've got to tell you this thing puts a massive smile on my face.
17:06 So it's got a 2.4-litre twin scroll supercharger and the best thing about that is it makes an incredible noise.
17:14 It has so much whine. Have a listen to this.
17:16 The noise is just seriously crazy. It's making noise out of the front and the back.
17:28 It's just coming out of every single part of this car and it is just some proper old-school muscle car sound.
17:35 I have genuinely not heard a supercharger whine as loud as this in a production car. This
17:41 never ever gets old.
17:44 It's worth noting as well with this gearbox, it is a really good setup. Because of the supercharger,
17:50 you can lean on the throttle and it doesn't have to dive back through gears.
17:54 It'll simply spool up that supercharger and then give you the push in the back that you need.
17:58 But then when you do flatten the throttle, it just gives you everything.
18:01 And then of course you can use the paddle shifters here on the steering wheel as well,
18:05 if you do want to do some of your own shifting.
18:07 Now, fuel economy. So if this concerns you, I would look away from your screen or skip ahead.
18:14 The official figure is just under 20 litres per 100 km, but we are achieving
18:18 31.3 and that is pretty much with mainly highway driving.
18:23 The lower the speed is that you're doing and the sort of light off road that we'll be doing,
18:28 it sort of cranks that fuel economy up a fair bit.
18:31 So please don't expect this to be a Prius when it comes to fuel use. So 0-100.
18:36 Ram claims it's around four and a half seconds, zero to 60 miles an hour.
18:40 Put it up against our stopwatch and use launch control.
18:43 This is how it went.
18:46 So you've got a stack of drive modes to choose from. Using this button here, which is aptly named TRX,
18:58 you hit that, it brings up your drive mode selection. You've got Sport, TOW, SNOW, AUTO,
19:04 CUSTOM, MUD, SAND, ROCK and Baja.
19:08 So basically depending on which one of these you choose, it will adjust the way the transmission goes,
19:12 what the paddle shifters are doing, the stability control, the steering feel, etc, etc.
19:16 It can even do the ride and that's because it has adaptive dampers.
19:20 So it's a Bilstein shock absorber system with adaptive damping and a remote reservoir.
19:24 And it means you can get the best of both worlds.
19:26 You can actually just cruise over things and it soaks up the bumps beautifully or
19:30 you can go into the Sport mode and it just firms everything up to give you a slightly hunkered down feel.
19:37 So we'll have a play with that in a second. But in terms of the ride in general,
19:40 they really have managed to smooth this out beautifully.
19:43 It's a bit like the Ranger Raptor, which is just like silk. It just cruises over everything.
19:48 It's not the best handling car in the world, but it means that when you do hit speed hubs, cobblestones,
19:54 corrugations, any of that stuff, this is just smooth as silk.
19:58 And I think it is a credit to them making something this big feel as comfortable as this does.
20:04 Okay, let's give Sport mode a crack. We've got our corner here. It's in Sport mode, suspension's firmed up.
20:10 Yes!
20:19 Oh, that noise is so good. Okay, so the Sport mode actually sits surprisingly flat.
20:26 It doesn't sort of, it's not dead flat, but for a vehicle this size,
20:30 it is pretty engaging. And three to five wide tyres means it has a fair bit of traction there, especially when it's dry.
20:36 It's not so good in the wet though.
20:38 Now, it's time to call out the bit of this car that is very different from you guys who might be watching this in the States.
20:44 And that's the steering wheel. Now, most of the time it's okay, but you'll notice here as we go over some of these
20:49 sort of corrugated sections, it does have a bit of rack rattle and that's due to that mechanism
20:54 they've installed behind it. Steering feel also isn't very good.
20:58 So I haven't driven one of these in left-hand drive,
21:00 so I don't know whether it is just the TRX that doesn't have great steering feel,
21:03 but I do notice when I am turning
21:05 there is varying levels of resistance as I go through that steering range, and that is inherently due to the fact that you need to route
21:11 the steering input from here through to the other side of the car. So look, it's good. It's fine. It's okay.
21:18 It's not the end of the world, but I think there could be a little bit more work done on this transfer box,
21:22 certainly with some of the
21:25 locally converted stuff from Ateco, for example,
21:27 the steering feel is far better on those cars because you don't actually feel that there is anything different to a bog standard car.
21:34 I mentioned earlier on that one of the benefits of all-terrain tyres over mud terrain tyres is you don't get a great deal of road
21:40 noise, and I've done a bit of highway driving in this and you barely notice it's on all terrains.
21:44 There isn't a great deal of intrusion in the cabin. When we drove the Silverado 1500 Trail Boss,
21:49 that was on mud terrains and it was really projecting a lot of noise into the cabin, whereas this is nice and civilized and
21:55 really doesn't feel all that bad for long distance trips. Turning circle,
21:58 I got some bad news if you're driving this car in and around the city.
22:01 It's about 15 metres and that means when you go to do u-turns,
22:06 it is going to be well and truly a
22:09 three-point or even a four-point affair
22:12 most of the time, but at low speeds the steering is light enough. Even with this transfer box,
22:17 it's light enough to do parking and all that sort of stuff. So what about visibility? You may think to yourself
22:23 this is a giant car. It's probably hard to see out of and you'd be right. You do sit really high,
22:28 so in terms of the projection you get down the road, that's great,
22:30 but it really is quite difficult to see the front corners of the car and the back.
22:34 I mean the back feels like it's another two postcodes away. You do get front and rear parking sensors though,
22:40 so that makes life easy. You also have a 360 camera, that also makes life easy too, and these giant wing mirrors,
22:45 although the left-hand side wing mirror is kind of redundant because it's almost impossible to see out of.
22:52 But visibility at the back is good. This digital rear view mirror does a good enough job,
22:56 but you can just switch that off to get decent visibility out the rear too.
23:00 Okay, so let's do a little bit of light off-roading now.
23:05 I say light off-roading because you could probably do some pretty hardcore stuff with this, but today we're going to keep it
23:10 very straightforward and we'll just test out
23:13 some of the four-wheel drive systems just to see how it works. In terms of the four-wheel drive specs,
23:17 you've got 300 millimeters of ground clearance, which is absolutely epic.
23:21 You've got an approach angle of 30.2 degrees,
23:23 that's the angle of the face you can approach before you hit anything at the front, and a departure angle of
23:27 23.5 degrees, which is the same but in reverse. At the back, you've got a Dana 60 rear end with a locking differential,
23:34 so one push of this allows me to lock that rear diff lock, but it is constant four-wheel drive.
23:39 You've also got four-wheel drive high range that you can lock it into or four-wheel drive low range,
23:44 so you have all of the off-road equipment that you need,
23:46 but probably the best part about this is the Baja mode for the suspension. That will give us absolute wheel
23:52 articulation and I'm keen to see how that goes when we get to our offset mogul.
23:56 So we'll run through that shortly, but let's start off with our logs.
23:59 I'm just going to put this into Baja mode because why not? So you can see everything changing here.
24:04 It shows the transmission is in Baja mode,
24:06 paddle shifters are on, stability control is in Baja mode to give us a bit more slip and suspension is in Baja mode as well.
24:12 So let's give this a critical start heading up here.
24:16 I can already feel in that Baja mode the suspension has softened up really nicely and despite the fact we've got a supercharged V8,
24:22 it's climbing up here really
24:24 sort of steadily. It's not surging, which is what I was hoping it wouldn't do given how much torque this thing has.
24:31 We've also got a hill descent control. We'll try that on the way down too.
24:34 It is walking up here without any dramas at all. Pop that hill descent control on.
24:39 So it says to enter select speed shift to four low. So I'll pop it into four low.
24:45 There we go. That is engaged. We'll put the hill descent control on.
24:50 Come around here and give this a shot. The turning circle is just crazy on this.
24:55 Okay, here we go.
24:59 So we've got some pretty deep ruts here, but
25:01 yeah, with the wheel articulation that we have it's getting down here without any problems at all and the hill descent control is
25:07 keeping everything nice and steady too.
25:10 I've got full confidence in how that's working.
25:15 Yeah, big tick. Now, let's try and go back up that hill as well because I think going down is pretty straightforward and with these
25:22 tyres it's just going to go wherever it wants, but we'll keep it in low range.
25:24 We'll go up the hill as well and just see what it's like once you get a little bit of
25:27 ruttage that it falls into and see whether it struggles to get up there. Okay, let's try a hill again.
25:33 This time we are in low range. I still don't have the diff locked, so we'll just climb up here and see how it goes.
25:39 It's quite hard to see. So it has got a camera view here
25:43 so we can actually set it to front view so I can see where the ruts are
25:47 and how we're trekking up this hill. It's getting up here with no dramas at all.
25:51 Like I said, this is very much light off-road terrain, but it is walking up here without
25:56 any dramas in the world. It's just impossible to see out of this. It's crazy how big this is.
26:03 All right, we'll go down the other end here now.
26:06 Turn this corner.
26:09 Yeah, it is really nice and comfortable too. Even here on our logs where it can get pretty rough,
26:13 it's just going down without any dramas at all. Let's head to our offset mogul.
26:17 This is where we're going to be able to test the rear end and how it goes with traction.
26:20 I'm going to leave everything in high range and the rear diff unlocked just to see
26:24 how much wheel articulation we get and how easy it is to get out of that little section.
26:28 Okay, so let's go through our offset mogul. We've got our seesaw first, which is
26:34 where the car gets thrown onto its side and each time I go through this,
26:39 I feel like the car's going to tip over. The other cool thing is just here, we've actually got
26:43 pitch and roll, so you can see the kind of angle that we're on at the moment, and there's a couple of other menus there.
26:48 So you've got wheel articulation and also a menu that tells you what the differential is doing.
26:53 So we'll get it into our crisscross here. This is where we're going to be able to see the body rigidity.
26:57 So we're fully loaded up there. I'll try and open and close the door, see how that goes.
27:02 No dramas at all. So nice and strong chassis. Let's move over now to our offset mogul.
27:08 This is where we're going to get the wheel lifted pretty much entirely off the ground.
27:12 Every time we've been here in a dual cab, for example, the wheel will leave the ground.
27:15 So I'll be keen to see what this looks like.
27:17 We'll then hop out as well, so I can actually just give you an idea of what that suspension is like
27:22 when it is fully open. So here we go. We're approaching it now,
27:25 getting to the point where we're fully articulated, which is right about there.
27:31 So let's hop out and have a quick look at what's going on at the back end.
27:33 Okay, so let's have a look at this. So you've got a live axle at the rear,
27:36 which means it's not independent suspension. This is at full load.
27:40 You can see that wheel is completely compressed into the body there.
27:44 But the reason you're able to get so much articulation is what's happening on the other side.
27:48 So come and have a look at this. Now with that live axle, while that side's fully compressed,
27:53 have a look at the articulation you have here. This is still in contact with the ground.
27:57 I mentioned earlier that when we've tested dual cab utes here before, the tyres have been off the ground.
28:01 Only something like a Land Rover Defender with air suspension can get this type of articulation.
28:06 Under here, you can see the guts of that suspension system.
28:08 You've got a coil spring with a bump stop. Over to the side, you have that Bilstein Active Damper
28:14 with remote reservoir as well. So that means you can adjust how
28:18 firm the suspension is. When you are in Baja mode, it's able to soften up completely and give you the compliance
28:23 you need when you take those strong hits. It'll take up to a tonne of impact per corner.
28:28 So it is a properly decent setup and it is going to be good for off-road.
28:32 And as you can see here,
28:33 this is probably not going to struggle at all to get us out of here because of the tyres and the articulation.
28:37 Then you can also lock the rear diff if you need to.
28:40 So let's hop inside and see how it goes when we try and pull out of here.
28:42 Righto, so you can see how much articulation we've got there.
28:45 That means that even without the rear diff locked, I should just be able to put this into drive,
28:49 roll out of the brake,
28:52 and it walks out of here without
28:55 any dramas at all. So it's a pretty awesome setup. I didn't think this would challenge it,
28:59 but I think it goes to show you just how far you could go off-road in one of these.
29:03 I think that, you know, if you found some proper off-road terrain, this would absolutely destroy it.
29:09 So I absolutely love this about as much as I thought I would. I don't need this in my life,
29:16 but I want this in my life desperately.
29:18 It's a car that's not going to exist in like five or ten years time as the world moves towards
29:22 electric vehicles and stuff like that. And I completely support that movement and whatever, but
29:26 yeah, this is just something else. And Ford is bringing a V8 version of the F-150 Raptor,
29:31 so it is going to be an interesting couple of years in this segment. Now, things I like. It is
29:36 just an epic engine. I love the way it rides. It has a lot of presence, but things I don't like.
29:41 The steering feel just isn't there for me.
29:43 I know that this is how you have to do a conversion to make it work in right-hand drive when there isn't a factory
29:48 right-hand drive version available, but to be honest,
29:51 it just doesn't really have the feel you would want to be driving quick in it.
29:54 And I haven't driven the left-hand drive version of the TRX,
29:57 so I don't know if it's just how it is from the factory or whether it's the local conversion job.
30:01 I will get a chance to drive the other version of this that is being converted in Australia at the moment in a few months
30:06 time, so I will report back on that. But outside of that, there is just really not much to not like about it.
30:11 So let me know in the comments section below. Have you bought one of these? If so,
30:15 we are instantly friends. Let me know what you like about it. If you haven't bought one,
30:19 what do you think about it? Do you think it's cool or do you think it is just absolutely ridiculous and pointless?
30:24 Let me know in the comments section. If you did enjoy this video,
30:26 please make sure you share it with your mates, and if you haven't done so already,
30:29 subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon as well. But until next time, take it easy.

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