Best Overland Vehicle 2016 - Scoring and Methodology

If you followed a link to get here, welcome to the complete scoring and methodology guide for the best overland vehicle in America story! If you are reading this on Overland & Expedition, congratulations on getting to see this info before anyone else.

GRADING CRITERIA

Load capacity - If touring in a vehicle means taking it all with you...or at least what you need with you...then you need the room for it. More than just “will it fit in there” your vehicle must have the necessary payload to be able to safely carry your gear. You would be surprised to find that with some vehicles, just putting 5 people and gas in it you are close to your max safe weight. With off road and on rough trails this overloading becomes dangerous fast. High dynamic loads put unnecessary strain on your vehicle causing premature parts failure in addition to increasing the likelihood of dangerous driving conditions like insufficient braking or cornering control. Payload is calculated as the maximum allowed weight (GVWR) minus the curb weight and while it varies with trim and options, I’ve tried to gather the best data I could find for an apples to apples comparison...Always check your door jam card for accurate info. The load score is a composite function of both how much volume you have for cargo and payload ratings. The winners in this category have both lots of room to carry things, and the capacity to do so safely.

Fuel Economy Range - Carrying extra fuel is often a necessary evil for overland travel as you may be required to go beyond the factory tank self supported, but it’s costly to do it safely and reduces your payload. Vehicles with inherently good mileage or a large tank size have a major advantage for overland travel in this regard. If you can’t safely travel, say, 350-400 miles unsupported you may find yourself at a seasonal gas station that’s closed for the season wishing you were anyplace else. Range is factored by taking the average of the highway range, the city range and the off road range (calculated to be 15% worse than city for NA gas, 25% worse for turbo gas, and 10% worse for diesel as per my personal experience)

Trail worthiness - We aren’t talking about rock crawling or extreme wheeling here, however the better a vehicle’s trail score, the more likely you are to get to your destination without getting stuck or becoming overworked. Even non-technical trails forest trails can turn into real challenges with unexpected weather. Points here are tallied by the mechanical grip enhancement, suspensions flexibility, and angles relative to off road travel. The Angles composite score takes all the angles, subtracts a minimum score (example anything less than 30 degrees approach gets a negative score) and adds it together with minimum ground clearance. Added to this are mechanical differential locks, special suspension systems and other off road specific enhancement. Vehicles with adjustable suspensions are being tallied at their most capable measurements.

Kinja can’t support all the cells for this one, check out the link

Reliability (5 points)- I think it goes without saying that this is an important trait when you may be calling on your vehicle to get you back home. I tried my best to scour several different sources to determine what is considered reliable, and based some of this with historical data on models that are brand new or have little data. It’s not perfect, but I tried to be fair. This is the first category to have SOME subjectivity.

Durability (5 points)- This is different that reliability, this is how long you can expect to drive a heaven laden vehicle on rough tracks before it starts to loosen up, develop rattles and generally fall apart. Like reliability this is somewhat subjective, but I did factor in points for vehicles with construction that is generally considered more durable [Body on Frame vs unibody, or open C vs fully boxed] as well as some historical analysis.

Value - This is the endgame right here; How much of the above can do you get for your money. Touring can be a rich man’s game but it doesn’t have to be, use your money wisely on your vehicle and put it into your adventures instead. This is scored by combining the above values and factoring in price.

I did my best to be objective and data driven as much as possible, again, is it perfect? no. Are there factors I’ve missed? Of course...but how is this different than any other comparison you’ve ever read? Feel free to write me a comment and tell me what I fool I was for omitting _________. Did I mention I tried to do this by the numbers and as fair as I could? good.

In case you were wondering who won on merit alone, here is how they stack up