Bigger Is Better

Is the unimog the ultimate adventure touring vehicle? We drove the U5023 mog to find out.

- Matt Raudonikis 

What’s on your bucket list of 4x4 and off-road vehicles to drive? A classic Land Cruiser maybe? An AMG-G63 6x6 perhaps? What about a Bushmaster? Any takers for a Rolls-Royce Cullinan or Lamborghini LM002?

Classics, exotics or just downright unstoppable, these are the vehicles dreams are made of, and most of us will never have the opportunity to climb behind the wheel of them. The venerable Mercedes-Benz Unimog fits in to all of those categories: classic, exotic and damn near unstoppable, so you can imagine my smile when offered a drive of the latest Mog.

A CLASSIC

THE Unimog has been in production for more than 70 years. It was conceived as a vehicle that could do the job of a tractor, a truck and farm equipment. It was the Swiss Army knife of vehicles; one vehicle that could do the work of many machines. The term Unimog is an abbreviation of the full name UNIversal-MOtorGerät, which loosely means a single piece of equipment. The Mog, as the name is often abbreviated to, is a do-it-all piece of kit.

Over the course of seven decades the Mog was refined and developed into many configurations, employed by military forces around the world for multiple tasks, converted into recreational off-road campers and even competed in the Dakar Rally.

The Australian Defence Force has used Unimogs as troop transporters for more than 30 years and other organisations such as Victoria’s DELWP have utilised them for anywhere a heavy-duty off-road vehicle was needed.