This month I have been mostly lusting after the Ducati Desert X. This, as the name implies, is Ducati’s new Dakar-inspired adventure bike that blends chunky retro lines with all the
latest tech to make blasts across the wilderness as easy as popping to the shops.
The press images are strong – consisting of five-time world enduro champion Antoine Méo, immaculately dressed in the Desert X capsule collection, firing himself into the great blue yonder off the top of some sand dunes. It’s a powerful sell – the promise of adventure, of unbreakability, of new skills waiting to be honed.
And refreshingly it’s not all marketing flimflam because this isn’t some hipster scrambler conversion, it’s supposed to be ready to race across inhospitable terrain out of the box. A couple of features prove that point neatly: a tripmaster function, a key bit of kit for rallying that lets you tweak the odometer up and down to match the road book, and an optional second fuel tank that slots around the seat and pumps an extra eight litres into the primary tank when you’re running low. These are must-haves for me, for no obvious reason.
I’ve never done any off-road motorcycling in my life. I’d like to in the future… but that’s not the same as actually needing a bike capable of crossing the Sahara. I’m more likely to use it commuting from Streatham to Shepherd’s Bush, or an occasional razz around Box Hill. And yet I’m drunk on the possibilities of where this bike could take me, not where it actually will.
Which is precisely the appeal of our cover stars. Four proper, hardcore off-roaders; squared off and high riding; locking diffs coming out of their ears. We know most Defenders and G-Wagens are going to see little off-road action besides mounting a kerb on the school run, that 90 per cent of their capability will be pushed to the back of the shelf, and frankly I’m not angry about that. The ability of all these cars to crush a mountain one minute, and waft about doing the daily chores the next is truly remarkable. They excel at it all.
What we set out to do was open your (and our own) eyes to what these cars are really made of. To take on the knobbliest, gnarliest, wettest public byways the UK has to offer and have massive fun pushing the world’s toughest off-roaders to theirlimits… and beyond. Not that you or I will ever need these sorts of superpowers in everyday life, but it’s nice to know they’re there, should you ever need them.
Enjoy the issue,

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• COINage – February-March 2022
• WeAr Global Magazine English Edition N 69 – Issue 1 2022