Sometimes what hurts most is realizing your dreams weren't big enough. Here we've been lusting after #VanLife, when we should have been imagining the possibilities for an overlanding Sherp. The Ukrainian go-anywhere 4x4 began trundling over and through everything on 63-inch tubeless tires in 2016, the compact four-seater good for perhaps a few days in the back of beyond. Now its makers have revealed their get-off-the-grid version called Sherp The Ark. This puts an upgraded Sherp on tractor duty, pulling a 15.75-foot trailer that rides on six driven wheels, creating a 10x10 that almost makes us wish for a less-than-total Apocalypse.
Note, this isn't a Sherp simply hooked up to a trailer at will – Sherp The Ark is a complete unit. Whereas the Sherp uses skid steering to turn, like a tank, Sherp The Ark gets three-axis steering like an airplane. That means turning the steering yoke can lift the tractor's front end, and raise and lower the tractor's rear end independently. The technique helps the minidozer climb over five-foot-high obstacles, traverse 6.5-foot-wide ground openings, and up and down 40-degree inclines. That grade angle is five degrees more than can be climbed and descended with the standard Sherp Truck and Sherp Pro. Switches in the cabin permit the driver to disconnect any of the driven wheels on the trailer individually, and to disconnect the four wheels on the tractor so the trailer becomes a push vehicle.
The standard, 8.26-foot-long Sherp is powered by a Kubota 1.5-liter, four-cylinder diesel with 44.3 horsepower and 88 pound-feet of torque, charged with moving 2,866 pounds up to 25 miles per hour on land, 3.7 mph in the water. The 31.6-foot-long Sherp The Ark, with a dry weight of 10,500 pounds, gets a Doosan 2.4-liter four-cylinder diesel with 74 hp and 206 lb-ft, and can run up to 18.6 mph on land and 3.7 mph in the water. The Sherp can hold 76.2 gallons of fuel in five tanks, Sherp The Ark hauls 213 gallons in one tank and ten auxiliary canisters, good for around 82 hours of running.
There are three trailer units available – a flat load platform, a liquid tanker, and an enclosed box – all with 6,600-pound load capacity. The box unit can be turned into a personnel carrier with up to 21 seats. We are naturally more interested in the Dwelling Module for "long expedition projects in hard-to-reach areas" that is "properly isolated with energy-saving materials." For an example of what looks like, check out this video from last year, which we'll guess was a prototype run for The Ark. Glorious. With two of these in convoy, there'd be no such thing as the end of the Earth. About the only thing that can stop the non-street-legal Sherp The Ark is a paved road.
When we last caught up with Bloodhound, the jet engine-powered earth rocket that has been conducting tests in the desert in South Africa, the team had reached 501 miles per hour and become one of the world’s 10 fastest cars. Now they’ve added another milestone, smashing their most recent target of 600 mph and then some, reaching an astonishing 628 mph.
Video footage captured during the test run on Saturday shows the Bloodhound screaming across the table-flat salt pan, kicking up an awesome fin of Kalahari Desert dust in its wake. The sound as it passes by the camera is jaw-dropping. An analysis showed that the airflow beneath the car went supersonic and stripped paint from an area three meters back from the front wheels.
It took driver Andy Green 50 seconds and just over five miles to reach maximum velocity. He launched the vehicle in “max dry” mode, with no flames visible out of the massive exhaust nozzle, up to 50 mph, then put the pedal down to push the Rolls-Royce EJ200 jet engine into afterburn mode. Green actually let up on the gas, so to speak, at 615 mph to stabilize the vehicle and deploy the twin parachute to begin slowing down. It came to halt around the 11 kilometer mark — a little shy of seven miles.
With the latest feat, Bloodhound have declared an end to the high-speed test program, which took place over the last few weeks on a 12-mile-long course in a dry lake bed.
The team hopes to break the world land speed record of 763 mph, set by Green driving the Thrust SSC in 1997, within 12 to 18 months on the same course on Hakskeen Pan. The ultimate goal is to determine the size of the rocket needed to go to 1,000 mph.
Motor1 discovered this gem buried on YouTube, a Jeep Gladiator made over into a tribute to the Jeep CJ-8 Scrambler. Built by Preferred Jeep in Grand Haven, Michigan — and still for sale at the time of writing — the Scrambler look-back just about nails one of the iconic Scrambler liveries from 1982. The only things missing are the brown hardtop and brown wheel cover for the bed-mounted spare tire.
The truck's based on a Gladiator S with the eight-speed auto. We'd prefer the six-speed manual, but the transmission isn't a misstep — the original offered a three-speed automatic. White wagon-wheel rims wear 35-inch tires under a two-inch Mopar lift, the custom roll bar is lined with enough lights to spook everything in the hills, and the spare tire gets a period-correct Y-shaped retaining bar. There's a basic infotainment system inside, and plenty of other features the Scrambler never offered like climate control, heated front seats, and Bluetooth.
Anyone who wants to take the dealer version home will start the negotiating at $52,270 before incentives. Sure, that's not far off Gladiator Rubicon asking prices, but frankly, it's also not far off some original Scrambler asking prices. In 2010 you could find OG Jeep pickups in the fancier Laredo trim under $10K. Dealers and private sellers are now asking anywhere from the mid-$20,000s to more than $40,000 for good examples of the one-time ugly duckling. Models with LS engine swaps have gone for close to $50,000 at auction this year.
Jeep created a Scrambler concept for this year's Easter Jeep Safari and "didn't rule [it] out ... for production one day." Until one day comes, Grand Haven's work might do the trick.
