Jeep Reviews

You’re right that most mid-sized vehicles are SUVs which means they won’t go properly off-road. Your requirement for wading abilities and a sunroof are a little mutually exclusive, while your size restriction rules out pretty much any dual-cab ute with four-wheel-drive.

About the smallest proper off-road four-wheel-drive would be the Suzuki Jimny, but whether it can be specified up to your luxury standards is another matter altogether. The driving experience may not match your refinement requirements, either.

The problem is that the market for true off-road vehicles has switched to either full-sized wagons, dual-cabs, or SUVs with the looks, but not the drivelines, suspension or gearing to be proper off-roaders. Models that were formerly great off-roaders like the original Nissan Pathfinder and Suzuki Vitara now exist only as watered-down SUVs with no off-road capacity whatsoever.

That said, two vehicles to look at would be the Land Rover Defender 90 which amounts to the short-wheelbase version of the Defender. Although it’s now a luxurious SUV, it still has the off-road smarts to be a weekend warrior. The other prospect would be the GWM Tank 300. Available in hybrid and non-hybrid forms, the Tank 300 is relatively compact and is extremely good off-road. It’s also pretty good value.

The Jeep Gladiator was unveiled in 2018 before arriving in Australia in the middle of 2020.

Many cars don’t appreciate having the brake and throttle peal pressed at the same time. It’s partly a response to cases of pedal error in the USA many years ago that almost bankrupted some car companies via legal cases brought by owners who had pressed both pedals and had their car rocket through a wall or into a shopping centre. The US courts called it Unintended Acceleration. The rest of the world called it Pedal Error.

In any case, if you do press the brake and throttle pedal together, the throttle may – as you have noted – become unresponsive. But it should return to normal operation within a few seconds. You claim not to be pressing both pedals at once, but sometimes, even a light, unintentional brush of the brake pedal is enough to send the car into no-throttle mode.

That said, you could have a vehicle that incorrectly 'thinks’ you’re pressing both pedals when you are not. In that case, the sensors that detect pedal pressure may need to be changed. You could also be dealing with a car with a faulty body computer – the brain that links all these functions together cohesively.