Australia’s most famous precision driving team, Team Isuzu D-MAX, continues to enthral and excite with its fleet of D-MAX and MU-X vehicles, performing in front of millions of people each year at major capital city and regional shows throughout Australia, including the recent Sydney Easter Royal Show much to the delight of fans young and old.
In addition to their fearless precision driving demonstrations putting the Isuzu D-MAX through its paces in large arenas, Team D-MAX also gives people the opportunity to see the world from a different angle by taking passengers for a ride with one of their amazing drivers as they take the D-MAX onto two wheels.
“Driving on two wheels is one of the weirdest things you can do in a car. It’s crazy - you turn left to go right and right to go left, so being able to drive on two-wheels in a standard D-MAX with a car load of passengers is great fun,” laughs Team D-MAX lead driver Jack Monkhouse, “and the passenger reactions are always priceless. Most people are amazed at how much of an angle we are on.”
And if that’s not enough to get your heart racing, try jumping in for a ride up and over the Iron Summit in their MU-X. At an incredible 100 percent gradient (45 degrees) the Isuzu UTE Iron Summit is the steepest 4WD ramp in the world and is not for the faint-hearted.
As the first diesel-powered vehicle in the team’s history, Isuzu’s D-MAX and MU-X show their true colours as they are made to perform time and time again for the crowds. Genuine high level dependability and toughness are key to the vehicles’ success with Team D-MAX, and nowhere is this more obvious than when completing the ramp to ramp jump, with the D-MAX literally flying over the other three cars.
“We’ve got several D-MAX and MU-X work-horses in the fleet and they do an outstanding job of towing our equipment around the country and it’s hard to imagine anything tougher than the punishment our precision driving team vehicles cope with,” states Team D-MAX Director Wayne Boatwright. “The D-MAXs we use in the performances get absolutely hammered. Apart from a few minor modifications like roll cages, race seats, hydraulic handbrakes, Detroit locker diffs, stiffer shock absorbers and louder exhausts they are otherwise fairly standard. They’re jumped and bumped and driven on two wheels day in day out and never let us down in terms of performance and reliability. In my opinion they are genuinely the toughest things on the market.”
In terms of drivers, recruitment is strictly by invitation only with most of today’s drivers coming from a rallying background, many having started competing in Motorkhana and Autocross from an early age. All of the drivers have spent many years developing and perfecting their precision driving skills and love showing Australians how versatile the vehicles are.