Test drives and reviews of Mazda BT-50 (Mazda BT-50). The Sandpit Generals

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Pick your track

And here is the turn to the forest lake, which, it seems, has not been used since the first snowfalls of the winter season. The track is barely visible under the white “fur coat”. Let’s take a chance? It’s already April, and the snow must have settled. We turn on the four-wheel drive, and the car begins to pave the way through the virgin snow. I laid 50 meters – but then gave up. The spring snow was filled with water and became too heavy even for the excellent winter tires Nokian Hakkapeliitta 5. We turn on the lowering and crawl another 10 meters. When trying to move further, the car slips, when moving backwards, too. We take out the shovels from the body and scatter the snow a little behind. But the pickup stubbornly does not want to move in reverse along its track – it constantly slides in one direction or the other and skids again. So not for long and the clutch “plant”!

There seem to be two options for solving the problem. The first is to stomp 6 kilometers through the mud to the village behind a tractor (it is definitely there, you just need to find the least drunk tractor driver on the day off). The second is to turn around at the place where we are now standing, although it is very narrow here for our five-meter length, and we will have to dig a lot. But it is even more difficult to overcome another 30 meters to a clearing more freely … We take up shovels – and in about half an hour the pickup truck finally gets across its track, resting against the trees with its tailgate. Here it is, the lack of such convenience as folding the tailgate vertically down! The car does not have a rear bumper (there is only a semblance of an underrun bar, like on trucks), so all the obstacles are taken over by the paintwork of the side. Even the parking sensors in this situation would not help – he would simply constantly and uselessly squeal, getting lost from the abundance of dangerous objects. In general, the Japanese obviously didn’t think of something about the side and bumper.

Okay, we got off with little blood – and soon the pickup crawled back to the road along its rut. Fishing on the forest lake failed – nothing, we will survive. There are many other equally interesting lakes nearby.

So what, the Japanese pickup blundered and, perhaps, lost in cross-country ability to one of the classmates? Doubtful. Perhaps another pickup truck or SUV would have moved a little further, but hardly more than a dozen or two meters. We are not talking about cars specially prepared for trophy raids with increased ground clearance and more powerful “rubber” – we take into account purely store options. And according to our feelings, the BT-50 is far from the worst of them, even with standard off-road “weapons”: plug-in all-wheel drive, reduction gear in the transfer case, ground clearance of 207 mm (for a loaded car – 187 mm), engine compartment protection , “razdatki” and fuel tank. There are no cross-wheel locks, no electronic “assistants” here – but everything that you overcome, you, in fact, do it yourself, and this inspires a sense of pride. The next morning, we more than rehabilitate the Mazda by making our way to another lake at the same time as the Russian Lada 4×4, better known as the Niva. And this, I must say, is one of the very serious “rogues.” Only where it passed due to low weight, the pickup crawled, taking full advantage of the downshift, coupled with the power and traction of the diesel.

Off-road advantages of the VT-50 pickup truck are high ground clearance, protection of aggregates, a powerful high-torque diesel engine and an all-wheel drive transmission with a reduction gear.

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