Battle Royale

- Abhishek Chaliha

You could say that the life of a road tester is all fun and games. It certainly looks that way, doesn’t it – what with all the hottest new cars and bikes that we test all over the world? But have you ever heard the phrase, “the grass is always greener on the other side?” More often than not, we have very tight deadlines – not to mention limited time with the cars and bikes that we’re attempting to test while the photo and video crew ask us for the millionth drive-by. Plus, no matter how nice the machine, with your road tester hat on you’re always analysing the machine rather than enjoying it. So, have I managed to convince you not to hate us all?

No. Never mind, because on this test my mission was to have fun. Plain and simple! Our sole purpose in this feature is to fully exploit the true potential of these machines – while having a good time in the process. And, in order to do exactly that, we headed to a new off-road park called the Off-Road Adventure Zone, just offthe GurgaonFaridabad highway on the outskirts of Gurgaon in the NCR. Our battleships consisted of the new Fortuner and Endeavour of course, but also to throw in a bit of a twist we decided to add the distinctly more utilitarian Isuzu D-Max V-Cross just to keep these two now quite premium SUVs honest.

Especially in their latest avatars, both the Fortuner and Endeavour have become a lot more luxurious than ever before. So the question is, have they forgotten their roots or can they still take the fight to the likes of a workhorse like the Isuzu? After all, you could really go dune bashing in the previous gen Fortuner.