The Most Powerful SUVs and Trucks that are considered the pinnacle of engineering on our planet

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

A good and passable car is always pleasing to the eye. And ideally, it should climb a near vertical wall. In general, SUVs are perhaps the main word for every man.

Even if you are the Emperor. With the light hand of the famous motorist, Prince Orlov, Nikolai II switched from a live horse to an iron horse and immediately acquired a garage of 56 cars worth about 1 million rubles in 1913 prices.

For the highest person, designer Adolf Kegress created the world's first half-track vehicle. It had soft camel-felt tracks on its rear wheels, and instead of the front, it had skis. On January 15, 1917, Nicholas II wrote down in his personal diary the impression of a ride on the miracle of technology: “At two o'clock I went with all the children on Kegress's snow motors to Pulkovo, drove through different ravines, descended the mountain, drove straight through fields and swamps along the Gatchina highway and returned through Babolovo. We were not stuck anywhere, despite the deep snow, and returned home at 4 o'clock, very pleased with the unusual walk."

And this is Rolligon - a hefty SUV with low-pressure tires easily pulls 7 tons with a dead weight of 4300 kilograms. Even on a person, such a colossus will easily pass without causing any harm.

Augers

The world's first screw rotor all-terrain vehicle was patented by the American inventor Jacob Moret in 1868. The principle of its movement is simple - two screws of Archimedes, and the auger will easily roll over the dead swamp, snow-covered hills or water surface. Henry Ford also picked up the idea, equipping the Ford Zone tractor with screws. The serial auger was built in the 1920s and was used to deliver doctors and mail to Alaska. In Russia, the auger sleigh created by Dergint in 1900 was patented, but the idea did not receive much approval.

Later in the USSR, from 1979 to 1991, the augers ZIL-2906 and ZIL-29061 were produced. But this road train is really unique.

1958 - The US Department of Defense orders the longest wheeled road train in history. LeTourneau TC-497. The length of the monster is 173 meters, weight is 450 tons, 4 gas turbine engines, 56 wheels with a diameter of 3, 5 meters, equipped with an individual electric motor, an electronic control system that endowed the TC-497 with unique maneuverability.

The manufacturer also took care of six crew members: comfortable living units, a kitchen, a wardroom, sewerage system and an automatic laundry. But all this turned out to be very expensive and not practical. The road train was put up for sale for 1 million 400 thousand dollars. There was no buyer, and in 1971 the trailers were scrapped. The tractor is on display in the Arizona State Museum. But companies aren't the only ones capable of creating powerful prototypes. This spider was built by a lone inventor. The main feature is independent meter wheels with a vertical stroke of 2, 13 meters.

And this is the brainchild of the engineer and traveler Alexei Makarov. For a polar all-terrain vehicle, the speed on solid ground of 50 kilometers per hour and 5 kilometers per hour on water is provided by a 150-horsepower engine with a torque of 360 Newton meters at 1800 rpm, as well as a propeller. The Yekaterinburg barge haulers pull 2 tons, and the low-pressure tires with a diameter of 1.75 meters and a width of 0.72 meters provide excellent grip on any surface. For the comfort of the members of the expedition, the seats are transformed into sleeping places, there is a small kitchen with an extractor hood and a small shower.

And this is a Viking from Naberezhnye Chelny. Natives of Kamaz, under the leadership of Artur Tuktarov and Leonid Khripunov, have created the world's only amphibious all-terrain vehicle that has been certified for compliance with UN requirements. And this miracle of technology is made on the basis of an antediluvian armored personnel carrier of 1959, into which an eight-cylinder engine with a volume of 5.7 liters from a Chevrolet Corvette was stuck, spare wheels were transformed into additional ones that can be lowered to the ground using hydraulic motors, they added a reinforced off-road suspension and, of course, a harpoon with a winch, where can we go without it.

The first photos of the Punisher that appeared on the Internet caused a real stir. Someone admired the aggressive design worthy of a Batmobile, someone ridiculed huge windows for an armored car with a terrible view because of the tilt, someone generally shouted, this is a fake, but in 2008, at the ZIL plant, together with Ford, work began on the project. The full technical characteristics of the futuristic armored car are still classified. Of course, large windows will not add survivability to the Punisher, but the angle of their tilt increases the likelihood of ricochet and minimizes damage, and the external view is supplemented by six cameras. But when the priority is not passability, but carrying capacity, then such monsters are born.