UPDATE- 2025 Wagon of the year stirs up passionate debate

Our 2025 Wagner of the Year test was recently posted on YouTube and it had so many comments and a lot of questioning some of the results. A few people got fired up in there that's pretty sure which is good and it's fair because we gave some pretty hard-hitting opinions in there. So firstly we wanted to chat about some of those questions but we also wanted to say we stand by the results that we came up with and the 4WD experts who are on the test with us as well. And of course mate from that the results are a mix of how these vehicles performed on the day in each test and as well as that also factoring in what we know from these vehicles from thousands of kilometers of testing, modifying them, banging diff locks in, suspension lifts, bar work and there was a whole bunch of stuff that you didn't see. If we were to put all the off-road testing we did for example in that one section I reckon the video would go but we need a couple of parts on there too mate it wasn't just that one section. But that said there are a few points in the comments there that we noticed were a recurring theme so I just wanted to address a few of them. Probably the top comment was Toyota paid us to win the test absolutely. We did not get a cent in fact we actually had to pay Toyota for some insurance excess to get some repairs done and some damage did on the 200 and 300. Yeah we scratched them a bit and yeah we had to pay them so. Toyota paid us I think you'd have probably a nice what 300 parked out there I'd have I'd have a nice 200 but we don't. I drive a 30 year old Hilux mate. We didn't get paid from any of these car manufacturers and that is actually a good thing because it means you can give you guys a true review. On that too mate the other big one we got was the off-road test results. Now there was a lot of driving done on the day it wasn't just that one section that we showed and there is one little doozy there that we would like. Someone owes some of us some beers. The editors you know hats off and they were staying back super late putting this together they put a lot of time into it but there was one mistake and I actually picked up on it too because I'm a Nissan man and a lot of you guys. Yeah you were blowing up. You called me like what's a Nissan score so you guys are blowing up don't worry I was blowing up too. The Y62 got a six off-road this is the only mistake after this he went over the scores through the top to bottom so many times it wasn't supposed to get a six off-road it's supposed to get an eight. Unfortunately this doesn't change the end scores but it does change the way some of you guys have viewed the video the Y62 score off-road was meant to be eight. Patrol still didn't win mate but even still it's important to note the other one that was a big comment that was left was why didn't the tank score higher being twin locked and of course being twin locked fantastic that was very capable but you were saying before mate one of the main reasons the tank didn't get as high a score as say the Ineos being twin locked is you've got different approach and departure angles you've got different suspension compared to some of the cars it was super low approach and departure was bad and the ramp over wasn't that great so we're bottoming it out a lot it you know it has the basis to be a good car for some mods. Now mate the third one was of course the mighty brake test now the ultimate way to test brakes and I know because I've done this on a track with a Ford Ranger is to repeatedly do hard stops and you get what's called brake fade the brakes get hot and of course bigger brakes will handle that better than smaller brakes. With how much we're shooting we did I think about 3,000 k's with eight vehicles and the time restraints we had we simply couldn't do a full-on brake test with uh the time we had we had time for one stop with each vehicle to see how they performed. Now I'm not a mathematician or a scientist mate but what I can explain is different size brakes will affect different performance and it boils down to this when you have a large friction area like on the Ineos Grenadier brakes and it's a smaller rotor you've got less leverage there so essentially you're going to create heat faster which means harder to stop yeah you need to push harder so those brakes are going to get hotter quicker than compared to some of the bigger brakes on some of the bigger cars. To put it simply Ineos's brakes put more friction in which means it stops so well but in turn that creates more heat and then over time you're going to get more brake fade so that was where the scores came in of yes this vehicle stopped really well if you have to do an emergency stop but if you're doing repeated braking saying you're towing a heavy load or something like that you might find that those smaller brakes would start to get a little bit hot and that's where having the experts along from Bendix really helped with that technical info on why those scores were Hopefully that's given a few more answers into in-depth on some of those biggest questions we got and they were fantastic so thank you for getting commenting on that. Collectively mate 4Drive24x7 put in over 50 days of filming editing and producing into this test. We put a lot of effort and thought into how everything is judged and put together and we absolutely stand by that. We are 100% stand by and we can sleep well at night and at the end of the day everyone's choice is going to be different but we've just showed you what we think is best and the best way to look at this is yeah there was a score but we had like what do we have 10 people there so if I was to pick a winner just by myself I would have picked a different car you would have picked a different car that's the best part about us having so many people that all these scores are added together and collectively the best car picks itself really. Yeah for sure for sure with the exception of that y62 number mate I reckon I stand by everything we said and hopefully that clears up some of the questions we got let us know what vehicle you choose below as for that I'm going to get back on to working on this thing and we'll catch you next time.