Sand dunes is no match for the Toyota Fortuner. Picture: Trevor Stevens
Taking a trip into the unknown can certainly be thrilling, but equally daunting. New roads, unfamiliar rules and the language barrier in a foreign country are just some of the many challenges that can make or break a journey.
After embarking in a car on an adventure to Mozambique for the first time for a short holiday with the family, the plan was never to take a 4×4.
On deep reflection, having travelled 2 000 km and arrived back home, safe and satisfied thank goodness, I had the opportunity to swap my car for The Citizen Motoring’s long-term Toyota Fortuner.
I found the Fortuner a vehicle packed with power but appearance-wise, easy on the eye with its fresh design.
In the planning months for the trip, painstaking research was done.
“Those in the know” weighed in and I was confident my compact SUV with a relatively high clearance would get the job done. Especially during the winter months and on travel-friendly roads, I was assured.
The trip to Komatipoort from Johannesburg and through the Lebombo border post was never going to be an issue. Nor would taking the ring road avoiding Maputo and up north to our destination Bilene, via Macia, cause much concern.
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The problem? Our final destination was roughly a 30-minute drive on mostly sandy roads from the town of Bilene to the other side of the lagoon.
Soft sand is the order of the day and wet weather can make it tricky to navigate.
Enter the chance to drive the flagship Toyota Fortuner – an invite I didn’t hesitate to grab. Any doubts about getting stuck quickly disappeared.
But I digress. While large parts of Gauteng were enjoying a rare winter wonderland of snow, an unseasonal storm hit Bilene.
Nasty winds peppered the palms and beach where we were staying, and the rain fell on and off for three days. Large pools of rainwater filled the only road to town, and our exit trip needed more thought.
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Travelling home in a convoy, mostly made up of 4x4s, we made it. The only compact crossover SUV was pulled out on the odd occasion and lost a number plate in one of the deep pools of water.
We later found out many other vehicles suffered the same fate.
The Toyota Fortuner had no such problem. And although there are worse places to get stuck, a collective sigh of relief was heard among our group as we negotiated the wet terrain with relative ease.
The way the Fortuner handled the sandy dunes before our departure gave me confidence as a novice off-road driver.
So how did the family find the Toyota Fortuner?
My teenagers have long legs, so the spaciousness was a breath of fresh air.
The Fortuner offers space, space and then more space, particularly if you stow the third-row seats to accommodate your luggage – something we had plenty of.
There was no complaining about cramped legs on the five-hour trip to Komatipoort. Nor once we crossed the border and often had to maintain speed limits of just 60 km/h on the two-lane ring road.
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Driving a car with such effortless power – it has a four cylinder, 2.8-litre turbodiesel engine which produces 150 kW of power and 500 Nm of torque – at 60 km/h for extended periods of time, feels like you are not moving, but the comforts the vehicle offers ensures time does not drag on.
With a front and rear air-conditioning system, there were no arguments when it came to controlling the temperatures in the car. A first for our family.
My wife, daughter and sister-in-law loved the front seat warmers.
It’s never been something that appealed to me, but a few days back in chilly Joburg on the way to the office and I was converted. Who would have thought?
On the open, mostly South African roads, I enjoyed the Adaptive Cruise Control, which uses radar to scan the road ahead up to 10 times per second.
It’s exclusive to the VX model, allowing for the Toyota Fortuner to match the speed of the vehicle in front of it and automatically maintain one of four pre-set distances.
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The specs say “it will even slow down to a complete stop if necessary and accelerate again thereafter with no intervention needed from the driver”.
True story.
Toyota states: “There are only two things you need to take your off-grid adventures from awesome to out-of-this-world: the ones you love and the new Fortuner.”
The vehicle certainly lived up to this reputation.
The Toyota Fortuner not only gave me peace of mind in trickier conditions but the confidence we would safely get from A to B and back again. And fuel economy of a shade under 10 L/100 km was quite commendable too.
The family-friendly Fortuner not only warmed bums, it warmed our hearts. In the words of my wife, “this vehicle is a beast” – on and off the road.
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