I’m not going to purchase it, though I’ll admit that I’m tempted. Had Steve Cropley not lately purchased an almost new Ford Ranger Raptor, I’m wondering if I’d have been capable of persuade him to have a look, as a result of at one stage he was contemplating getting a automobile (maybe a Suzuki X90) to take to the Pageant of the Unexceptional.
A Frontera strikes me as simply the type of automobile for that activity. This 12 months, an unmolested Toyota Hilux gained the general FotU prize, which raised a couple of eyebrows, as a result of the mannequin has turn out to be a bit too notable to be actually unexceptional.
This isn’t the Hilux’s fault: it was bought as a humdrum and reliable business pick-up on the time. However since Marty McFly had a terrific one, High Gear couldn’t destroy one and guerrilla fighters the world over discovered they make sturdy machine-gun platforms, the Hilux has obtained a traditional standing denied to automobiles just like the Frontera.
It’s not just like the Frontera was thought-about a nasty automobile in its time. “In most respects, the Frontera has the [Land Rover] Discovery licked – and that’s a substantial achievement,” Autocar’s highway testers reckoned on 30 October 1991, scoring it 7/10 total and eight/10 for worth.
But Discoverys and Hiluxes of the identical period command a number of multiples the worth of a Frontera, even on the scruffier ends, and there are sky-high limits on good ones. A seller desires £20,000 for a 67,000-mile 1997 Discovery (“a really uncommon alternative”, after all) and there’s a beach-ready 1983 Hilux with KC spotlights and brown-on-beige graphics up for a gulpsome £38,000.