Daily Time

Traversing Simpson Desert with a pair of polar opposite IVECO trucks for a different kind of adventure tour.

THE IVECO Daily 4x4 and I are pretty well-acquainted. I’ve done more than a few kays in the previous generation and found it to be a pretty capable mudslinger, albeit one that is less at home on the road than other 4x4 light trucks out there – this truck has a definite offroad bias. There was, however, a cheap feel to the interior, as well as a few rattles and squeaks.

An update last year saw the arrival of a new Euro 6 3.0-litre powerplant, a new cab and fresh interior. The previous generation used EGR alone to battle diesel emissions; this new version uses both SCR (it takes Adblue) and EGR. I’m not a fan of EGR at the best of times, much preferring the mechanical simplicity of SCR. However, in Euro 6 guise, the SCR system does the bulk of the heavy lifting, leaving the EGR system with a much reduced flow rate.

We recently tagged along with one of Daryl Beattie’s Adventure Tours across the Simpson Desert. My main job on this trip was to steer the big Eurocargo 4x4 that serves as a mothership for the guided dirt bike tour; while everybody else was doing their best to break their bones on bikes, I was wrestling with 13,500kg of off-road truck.