Global Expedition Vehicles: The GXV Turtle

Most heavy-duty eight-lug trucks have a function in life—they are either used for work or play—and if you’ve followed The Turtle Expedition over the years in publications like Diesel Power, Four Wheeler, Off-Road, 8-Lug, and other truck and RV magazines, you have seen that we’ve tried to make work and play synonymous. For The Turtle Expedition, work has been to travel to some of the most remote parts of the globe.

The concept of expedition travel is not new. Europeans have been exploring the world since Leif Ericson, who is regarded as the first European to land in North America, nearly 500 years before Christopher Columbus in 1492. And we can’t forget Marco Polo, who traveled through Asia in the 1200s.

Today, if a German, Swiss, Austrian, Italian, or anyone from that part of the world wants an adventure, there are choices. They could climb Mt. Everest and die in a crevasse or just freeze their toes off. They could sail around the world. That’s a bit scary and expensive, and besides, some people get seasick looking at a glass of water.

Then there is overland travel—which seems to have caught on. While it can involve four-wheeling, overland travelers follow roads. They are sometimes very bad roads, but from two-tracks across Mongolia to ice roads up frozen rivers, they are roads nonetheless.

If you live in Europe, there is not much adventure left, so you ship from Spain to Morocco, or from Italy to Tunisia. Now you’re getting into the Sahara, and you need a vehicle, more or less self-contained, that can go 1,000 miles over very bad roads, carry water and food for a few weeks, and not break. Sort of like a blue-water yacht but with four-wheel drive. Get the picture? This is not a Winnebago.

Companies like Unicat (www.unicat.net), Langer & Bock (www.langerundbock.com), and Alu-Star (www.alu-star.com) have been building expedition campers for more than 25 years. They are meticulously engineered, but at a price. In our humble opinion, based on 38 years of combining work and play, the best overland travel vehicle foundation is an American eight-lug HD pickup.