Modifications and off-road ability

If you travel to remote destinations such as the Kunene Mouth, you must be self-reliant – and that means you need to bring enough camping gear and provisions.

A traditional ladder frame chassis is a strong structure that’s especially suitable for carrying heavy loads. All bakkies, and certain bakkie-based SUVs, including the Everest, mu-X, and Fortuner, have this type of chassis, but vehicles such as the Nissan X-trail and Peugeot 5008 use a unibody.

A unibody is more rigid and, therefore, doesn’t bend easily, but if you overload it, it will definitely deform… and then you’re in big trouble. A ladder frame will bend slightly, but because the body is bolted on top of the frame, it doesn’t matter that much. In the case of double-cab bakkies, however, the ladder frame may snap in half if you overload the load bin or if you incorrectly distribute the weight.

If you want to fit larger tyres, it’s considerably easier to lift a body bolted to a ladder frame to make room for the larger wheels. It’s a huge endeavour to modify a unibody in this way.

In terms of off-road capability, an SUV is often better than a bakkie because the breakover angle is higher due to the shorter wheelbase. A bakkie’s departure angle is also lower due to the load bin protruding so far behind the rear wheels. However, a bakkie has a fixed rear axle that can flex more and, therefore, provides better traction when scaling an obstacle. The independent suspension of some SUVs doesn’t allow as much wheel articulation and is then forced to rely on electronic aids to get you through an obstacle.

In some cases, such as with the Nissan X-trail and Subaru Outback, an SUV doesn’t have true four-wheel drive (no lowrange gears), and you have to be content with electronic traction and all-wheel drive. In contrast, 4x4 bakkies have mechanical four-wheel drive with low-range gears and even a rear diff lock.