Far from the madding crowd

come hill or high water--a quartet of highway-chucking off-road vehicles for your great escape

When Winston Churchill uttered one of his lesser profundities, a remark that the substitution of the internal-combustion engine for the horse had marked a gloomy day for mankind, he had in mind only the automobile, running more or less decorously on street and highway. Had the great man known the ORV (Off-Road Vehicle), his language might have been more picturesque, for in the ORV the i.c. engine has finally achieved ubiquity: Roads or no roads, it can go anywhere.

Hovercraft, ATV (All-Terrain Vehicle), dune buggy, trail bike and snowmobile are the primary forms of the ORV. The thing is all new, practically unheard of in the Fifties, not really significant until the late Sixties, booming going into the Seventies--259 snowmobiles were sold in 1959; last year, 500,000. Like other inventions, say the electric bulb and the roulette wheel, the ORV helps satisfy a need: in this case, the wish to get away from it all, easily and quickly. A man who wouldn't walk a long mile to see the Taj Mahal at sunrise can in less time, with an ORV, make himself the only human being in 20 square miles of primeval forest, its majesty and silence his alone--as soon as he shuts off the engine, that is, or engines, as the case may be. People love the things or hate them. The middle ground is almost empty. A man who lives on the outer fringe of a small town in New Hampshire and wakes up sitting at two a.m. because he thinks the house is collapsing, just in time to see a herd of 20 or 30 snowmobiles charging through his back yard, has a tendency to reach for the 12-gauge and a box of deer slugs. But one who's known the giant-killer sense of power that comes with a six-wheel ATV, equally at home on a boulder-studded mountain slope and the still waters of a lake, or the sheer delight, half fun, half fright, of dune-storming a fat-tired trike, or the wonder of hovercrafting six inches over a frozen marsh at 30 miles an hour, just brushing the high spots, has a different point of view, different attitude altogether.

Time was, and not all that long ago, when anything with wheels on it and room for two people could find seclusion somewhere. It's not so easy now, particularly on the country's coasts, and anyone with a modicum of imagination and access to a map can see how much harder it's going to be before long, when solid megalopolis will run from Boston to Washington, D. C., for example. The Off-Road, laughing at freeways to scurry into the boondocks, began as an engine, a tub and a set of squashy wheels, but it may really be the future's thing. Right now, to accomplish the laudable end of really getting out of it, only a two-place helicopter can drop one into privacy more easily.

A military prime mover that would haul an artillery piece almost anywhere--it had an electric motor in each hub--was built by Ferdinand Porsche for the Austrian army in World War One, and maybe it all began there. Closer, though, was the U. S. Army's Vehicle, GP (General Purpose)--the jeep. By the time 1945 shut down the fighting, we had scattered 634,569 jeeps around the world, the Germans had chipped in 50,000-odd of their own version, the Kübelwagen (or Schwimmwagen if it was amphibious), and a few hundred thousand Servicemen had decided they'd like to have one back home. (The most enterprising tried shipping them back stripped, one piece at a time.) Inevitably, somebody decided to make a jeep thing that would be lighter, cheaper and more versatile; almost equally inevitably, it happened in California; so the jeep begat the dune buggy, which begat the trail bike, which begat the snowmobile, which begat the ATV--maybe.

The hovercraft, or air-cushion vehicle, or ground-effect machine, is the only original among the ORVs. The others are all adaptations, developments, the snowmobile taking its tracked drive from World War One's tank, for instance. But the hovercraft hangs on the idea of using one fan to blow a vehicle up off the ground and another one to drive it. The notion surfaced around 1902, and a Finn, Toivo Kaario, built a working model in 1934; but Sir Christopher Cockerell of Great Britain is generally credited with the invention. He came in sidewise, as so many inventors have: An electronics engineer who'd become a boatbuilder, he was working on the reduction of water friction on ship hulls. Cockerell, of course, knew the hydrofoil boat, which lifts its hull out of the water at high speeds, but he wanted the hull dry from the start. He made his first model out of a coffee can in 1953, and it worked. He made another one, two feet, six inches long, and it worked better.

Saunders-Roe of England was the pioneer manufacturing firm, and the first hovercraft floated, flew, went in May 1959. It had a 435-horsepower radial engine and a speed capability of 50 knots. A regular cross-Channel service started in 1968, by 1969 was on an every-hour-on-the-hour basis, and still is. I crossed on one of these hovercraft, the Princess Margaret of the Mountbatten class, a 130-footer carrying 254 passengers and 30 automobiles at a cruising speed of 60 mph. There was a heavy sea running that day and the 60-minute ride was rough, as rough and as noisy as it would have been in a propeller-driven airplane in heavy turbulence. There were no seat belts, and you hung on--or else. I saw four inches of daylight under some passengers. In ordinary weather, veteran hovercraft commuters deposed, the thing was steady as stone, and normal running time was 40 minutes--less than half the Channel ferry's.

It's a peculiarity of the hovercraft that efficiency increases in direct proportion to size, and it was Cockerell's opinion that there was no practical limit. Richard Stanton-Jones, Saunders-Roe's managing director, envisioned a transoceanic hovercraft a mile long, of 100,000 tons dead weight, driven by a 2,000,000-horsepower assembly of engines. While such a monster could be built if the money could be found, it's most unlikely it will be. Stanton-Jones's optimism was characteristic of the hovercraft's nascent era, reminiscent of the parallel period in airplane history: Pioneers saw the skies full of small private planes. Some hovercraft enthusiasts believed that the automobile itself would be sent to permanent rest in museums beside the paddle-wheel ship and the steam locomotive. Logically, scores of manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic jumped into the field to build one-to-four-passenger hovercraft, and, equally logically, the attrition rate was high. By 1970, three of the biggest in Britain, including British Hovercraft, builders of the cross-Channel machines, were conceding financial troubles. Still, a few months later, another firm, Hover Air Ltd., claimed to be back-ordered $24,000,000. Hover Air's model range includes a single-seater weighing only 150 pounds complete with two engines, probably the lightest hovercraft.

The root attraction of the machine, its ability to move at equal speed over ground and water, is strong enough to hold it viable, and 25 to 30 companies in the U. S. and Canada are producing or planning production. The market place is not crowded, and it's dominated by the Air Cycle, a $1500 ticket made by Air Cushion of Troy, New York. The Air Cycle has two points of marked superiority over most private-use hovercraft: Standard practice has been to use two engines, one driving a horizontal fan to create the cushion of air on which the machine floats, the other a vertical propeller for thrust. The Air Cycle takes lift and propulsion from a single engine. Second, because the hovercraft runs essentially without surface contact, it has been tricky to handle in turns and in side winds: no wheels on the ground, no rudder in the water and not enough speed to make its airplane-type rudders sharply effective. A turn in most hovercraft is a wide drift. Air Cycle's control system, including airfoil trim control and thrust spoilers, produces superior handling characteristics, even at its 40-mph top speed, and is easy to learn. It can climb a 20-degree slope, too much for most hovercraft.

Credit for the invention of the All-Terrain Vehicle is usually divided between two Canadians, John Gower and Ron Beehoo, who worked independently of each other in 1961-1962. Gower called his machine the Jiger, and it was in production for about five years. Beehoo made his first one--he called it Aquacat--in his basement and started production with a work staff of seven men. The vehicle was an immediate success and five years later, with five times as many employees, Beehoo was still well behind demand; in 1966 he combined his firm with an American company, Mobility Unlimited. Produced in a Raymond, Mississippi, plant, it's the Amphicat now.

Ron Beehoo laid down the basic form of all ATVs: a thermoplastic, fiberglass or steel tub built in two halves with preformed seats, engine cover, cargo space, dash, wheel wells, and so on, a light engine driving, usually, four or six wheels through chains, the wheels tired with big doughnut balloons, heavily cross-treaded, running on a pound or a pound and a half of air pressure. The difference between an ATV and, say, a rough-ground traveler like the jeep is in the simultaneous drive of wheels so squashy that they can get a grip on anything, even, to a modest degree, water. I drove one by ATV Manufacturing Company of Glenshaw, Pennsylvania, the dominating firm in the field, into a (continued on page 172)far from the madding crowd(continued from page 98) swimming pool, across it and out the other side. A fast swimmer would have beat it across the pool, but its progress was dignified and steady.

The ATV is happy in rough ground--wooded, rocky, marshy, sandy, snow-covered--any kind. On any terrain, at least one wheel will find a grip on something, and one wheel will do it. No matter how soft the footing, the wheels are reluctant to dig in, since they're putting only about a pound per square inch of pressure on the ground, almost floating on it. Being run over by an ATV produces only a mild massage sensation. For comparison, a jeep puts down 17 pounds, a horse 13, a trail bike 12, a dune buggy 8. The body of an ATV will take a terrible pounding without significant distress, and since all running gear except the practically indestructible wheels is housed inside the body shell, a good one is indifferent to most hazards.

None of the wheels actually steers on a standard-design ATV, since they all run in a straight line all the time. It's controlled like a tank: The driver brakes all the wheels on one side and speeds up all on the other side. Some ATVs have wheel or yoke steering, but the original tank twin-lever system is commonest, one lever handling each bank of wheels, pull for brake, push for go, hand throttle on the right-hand one. The novice ATV pilot proceeds in a stretched series of bent lines, constantly overcontrolling, but an hour's practice will make a fair driver out of a bright ten-year-old.

Among the 16 leading makers, ATV Manufacturing, which builds the Attex (pronounced Addex, by the way), has the widest range of models, and controls about 50 percent of the market. Attex sells six models, beginning with the Crazy Colt, at $995 the lowest-priced six-wheel ATV in the field. Attex shows a heavy option list, including a 110-volt generator for power tools or camp lighting and a four-man self-contained trailer tent that can be towed anywhere the Attex itself will go. The machine's leisurely water speed can be significantly bettered by hanging an outboard on the optional mount.

The Coot, by Cummins Engine Company of Dallas, steers by wheel, not levers (four-wheel steering is an option), and has a two-part steel body hull, hinged in the middle, allowing front and rear sections to track independently over rough terrain. The Coot will accept 1000-pound loads over short hauls, is made in three models beginning at $1895.

The Coot's semiarticulation, which allows the front and rear sections to take a vertical angle of 45 degrees relative to each other, combined with the optional four-wheel steering, makes it almost stallproof in any terrain. It's nearly impossible to put a Coot into a situation in which it can't get power to the ground, and the four-wheel steering (in opposite directions, like a hook-and-ladder fire truck, the front wheels pointing left, the rears right for a left-hand corner) can take it out of ridiculously tight binds. Slower, at 20 mph top, than most ATVs, it's exceptionally powerful: The 1-to-164 low-gear ratio would run it up the side of a house if it could stick.

There's no reason to doubt that the first anthropoid to cut a set of wheels out of a tree trunk was copied by the fellow in the next cave and challenged to a race, and that's the way it's been since, from one-horse chariots to jets. The ATV, on first sight, is an improbable racing thing, tiny-wheeled, trundly and as streamlined as a brick. Truth is, however, that ATVs can be made to do 60 mph, and they're raced all over the country. A national meet will pull 300 entries and 10,000 spectators. The first big race was run in 1969 and won by an Attex. The course, which looked to be strictly for pack mules, was laid out over abandoned logging trails and mountainsides in New Hampshire. One Dexter Schultz, an airline flight engineer, ran it in 36 minutes flat, a rate that works out, almost incredibly, to a shade under 30 mph through semisolid boondock country. Attex still holds the national championship.

While the normal ATV mode specified wheels in multiples of two, a hot new item in the market place runs on three: the ATC (All-Terrain Cycle). An obvious spin-off from the go-anywhere trail motorcycle, the ATC is simply a fat-tired tricycle and, like a trail bike, it's usually a one-rider rig. Excepting deep water, the tricycle will go anywhere a standard ATV will go--but the pilot needs to be in better shape; he's in for a workout.

Origination of the idea is hard to pinpoint, but Sperry Rand's SPD began work on a design concept in 1966, and its Tricart was a clear first in the national market in January 1970. The Tricart is a $695 sit-down trike, the body a monocoque fiberglass tub, rear-mounted Briggs & Stratton or Rockwell-JLO engine, rounded handle-bar steering, foot-rests on the front axle. It will do 45 mph, run up a 45-degree hill and stay upright on a sidewise 30-degree slope. A single-cylinder B & S engine drives the smaller and simpler $495 Tricub 25 mph. Optional is a ski conversion for the front wheel.

Snow conversion is available, too, on the Dunecycle, an Allied Pacific ATC highly regarded by trike freaks. Dunecycle carries independent rear-wheel brakes and can be turned in little more than its width. Footrests are frame-mounted, the stylish "chopper" handling of the front end putting the wheel out of reach. Alsport's Tri-Sport is another sit-down trike, running engines from three to 12 horsepower and optioning everything from a dune flag to a three-unit gang lawn mower.

Honda of Japan, which blitzed the motorcycle universe a few years ago, sticks to the bike setup in its ATC, the rider going astride. Because the two rear wheels run on a solid axle, the Honda is tricky to handle. All ATCs are illegal for road use; Honda's fix for this is an easy one-tool teardown into components that can be stuffed into most automobile trunks.

Doomsayers to the contrary, Off-Road Vehicles are on the scene to stay. The things simply have too much going for them to be put down. Against that, the environmentalists and the old-line, or muscle-power, nature lovers have a case, too. The ORVs are noisy, they throw their share of exhaust pollutants; carelessly or irresponsibly used, they can tear up the environment, and in some areas they leave permanent scars on the ground they travel. (Tread tracks left by training tanks in World War Two are still clearly visible in California desert areas.)

The same charges were laid on the automobile when it first appeared, and the answers will be the same: licensing, Federal and state regulation, and so on. Society's responses to the auto didn't hurt it and won't hurt the ORVs. They're useful working tools in many ways and many places. (An Eskimo's first ride in a snowmobile usually turns him off the trusty Malemute sled dog for good.)

Besides, the ORVs are about as much fun as anything you can buy for mere money.