Every box, every generation
4Runner
“Toyota's mid-size body-on-frame survivor — forty years of refusing to become a crossover while everything around it did.”
Chevrolet / GMC
“General Motors took a half-ton pickup, cut a bit off the back and made the roof optional, and the Bronco and Scout never quite recovered. Then it did the opposite with the Suburban, giving it nine seats and four doors. Neither one is subtle, and both are easy to keep running.”
Ford Bronco
“Ford's first SUV started as a 92-inch tin box with flat glass and a Dana 20, grew into an F-Series with a lift-off roof, vanished for 25 years and came back to fight the Jeep again. The first one is still the one everybody wants.”
G-Class
“A military box that became the world’s most expensive school-run accessory. Still devastating off-road — which most owners will never find out.”
Grenadier
“A billionaire couldn't buy the old Defender, so he built his own from a pub table, a BMW engine and a pair of tractor axles. It is gloriously square, genuinely capable and steers like a canal boat (until 2026).”
Hummer H1
“An Army truck with carpets, built on the same line as the real thing and twice as wide as common sense. It goes almost anywhere, seats four, and asks for an idler arm in return.”
International Scout
“A tractor company's answer to the Jeep that accidentally invented the American SUV. Rusts like it's paid to, and owners forgive it every single time.”
Isuzu Trooper
“Isuzu drew a box, sold it under about a dozen badges on four continents, then spent four years in court defending its honour. The first one is a tall, honest tool; the second is a roomy V6 cruiser with a solid rear axle and a thirst for oil.”
Jeep
“The Jeep is the boxy 4x4 everyone else gets compared to, even the ones that got there first. It leaks, rattles and rusts, and it keeps selling, mostly to people who have already owned three.”
Land Cruiser
“The truck the rest of the world actually depends on — the one that turns up, fully loaded, in places where a breakdown isn't an inconvenience but a plot twist. Seven decades in, Toyota still hasn't figured out how to make it fragile.”
Land Rover
“The original farm-gate-to-Sahara tool: slow, leaky, drafty, and still the shape every other boxy 4x4 gets measured against.”
Lexus LX & GX
“Land Cruisers that went to finishing school and somehow kept their boots on. The badge says country club; the frame rails say Gobi Desert.”
Mitsubishi Pajero
“The Japanese 4x4 that went to the Sahara to prove it wasn't soft, then won the Dakar more times than any other car. It wore three names on three continents, and plenty of Land Cruiser owners learned to dislike all of them.”
Nissan Patrol
“The Land Cruiser's oldest sparring partner, and the one Americans mostly know from imported photos of the Outback. The coil-sprung GQ and GU are the reason Australians still argue about which Japanese wagon is tougher.”
Range Rover
“The truck that taught a farm tool to wear a suit — and, for its first quarter-century, never forgot where it parked its wellies.”
Suzuki
“The smallest proper 4x4 you can buy: ladder frame, two solid axles, low range and almost nothing else. It has been out-climbing trucks three times its size for more than half a century.”