Jas,
Good balanced response. The only drama I had with the Patrol was getting stuck in/on 3 foot of snow. The DSE guys with us in a 76 with diff locks and four chains got stuck too - but got out quicker.
Some members have formed opinions on hear-say and rumours - so there's a bit of sifting to do. My all time fav was the 105 Cruiser - honest but slow. Never been in a 200....hopefully they choose them!
Tim
Tim
Our vehicles were the same, compared to the Police vehicles we used in the day. A number of our 100's has double lockers, all of our vehicles have 2 inches of lift (our 76's have 3700kg GVM upgrades), full Toyota or Nissan, front and rear bar options with winches, we had cooper STT's fitted, and diamond snow chains to suit, our vehicles out performed both the Police and NPWS vehicles because there departments didn't upgrade them from standard (apart from bull bar and winch, they had standard issue tyres
). We live in our vehicles (extended patrols, sleep in swags, cook eat sleep etc) so we can justify the equipment.
It is my opinion that both the Nissan or Paj (and cruiser preferably
) would have been as capable as our vehicles with the same upgrades. Honestly whenever the Talbingo cops needed to do a job in the Park in winter they would ring and wake up the fishpig (me) to assist. Operational protocols a lot of the time required that they use a Police vehicle (even though we had radios in our vehicle/and HF/sat phone) they would want me to follow them as we could just about conquer anything in a timely manner with two trucks (and to be fair the Paj's and Nissans did an admirable job considering their spec).
There are plenty of good base vehicles to choose from, however getting your management to spend the money needed on upgrades to make them a capable all round unit
will be the stumbling block.
Regards
Jas