CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN, FORD EVERY STREAM
Rugged, grunty, daring, muddy — 4x4 truck motorsport and the associated fabrication are both Dan Cowper’s livelihood and his leisure.
In fact, he is the classic example of someone who turned a hobby he had lived and breathed since he was a nipper into a job. He is self-taught too.
Every year, on his 32-hectare farm at Turakina near Whanganui, Dan hosts the Suzuki Extreme 4x4 Challenge, which he created and has filmed for television. Dan prepares the 10 to 12 tough, challenging courses over four hectares — courses that test the mettle of participants, many of who drive the trucks that he and co-worker Cameron Hastings have designed, and made from steel pipes.
“If I go to a national trial 20 trucks out of 40 have come out of my workshop. In the beginning I was constantly stressed out about them all holding together and working properly. I’ve got over that and now I can quite happily just watch and see how all my customers are doing,” Dan reveals.
“In the beginning I was constantly stressed out about them all holding together and working properly”
Designer motorsport 2020
“Gone are the days where the guys are buying a Suzuki Jeep off the showroom floor and putting a roll cage in it and some mud grips and idling around these courses,” says Dan. “Now we’ve got 600 or 800hp [447 or 597kW] and all this flash suspension and we can really go up some insane banks.”
Dan’s aim is to design a vehicle that is capable on steep hills and can handle well over bumps at speed. In this particular buggy he says he is almost trying to combine the ideas of two sports: off-road racing and 4x4 trials.
“Years ago four-wheel-drive trials were done in little Suzuki jeeps and
