Arctic Trucks, the offroad-tuning company best known for building street-legal monster-truckish 4x4s in Iceland and made popular by Top Gear, has had a base in the UAE for the better part of a decade now, and most visible as Toyota’s locally-modified Xtreme range of 4x4s. Now there is a proper Arctic Trucks-branded Isuzu D-Max available, and we got to take one for a spin.
The Isuzu D-Max AT35, modified by Arctic Trucks, is now officially being offered in the UAE by Genavco, complete with gigantic fender flares and a tall lift kit.
Privately-owned midsize pickups are a legitimate market segment in several Asian and even Western countries. Here, they are almost exclusively used as commercial vehicles, driven by sweaty hard-working men who quietly laugh at moisturiser-toting management types trundling to office in oversized American pickup trucks. However, Isuzu feels there is a gap in the market for a good-sized “lifestyle” pickup, and hence, we have the Isuzu D-Max GT.
It seems like just yesterday when we drove the Isuzu D-Max around a racetrack in Bahrain. In fact, it was just earlier this year. But that was the old model. What we drove this week was the new 2013 model, completely new in almost every possible way. But why would you be interested in a pickup review? Well, we took it around an autocross course as well as offroad.
It isn’t often that we get to fly to other countries to test-drive a car. So it was doubly interesting that our only fully-sponsored foreign trip of the year involves the 2012 Isuzu D-Max pickup truck. At the Bahrain Formula 1 circuit no less.