Tough Mudder: Land Rover Defender Octa v Mercedes-AMG G63

Sometimes, you just get lucky. With this winter squall seemingly hellbent on stripping these two brutes back to bare metal, the wind strong enough to rock the G63 on its mighty coil springs, I realise how fortunate we are. For we have the right cars for the weather, or maybe the right weather for the cars, and this isn’t one of those photoshoots where we rock up in a couple of supercars or million pound restomods praying for sunshine.

Lucky indeed. And the location couldn’t be better. There are the roads we know so well just a few miles from here, but until then it’s playtime. This old quarry, long abandoned and deserted nowadays, is strewn with potholed gravel roads and rocky slopes and deep sheep dips, and a more perfect place to put cars like these through their paces is hard to come by.

We even had the right photographer. Not many would’ve leapt so gladly into the wind and rain to fire off the spectacular shots you see here, fewer still would’ve turned up in a Toyota Land Cruiser sporting knobbly off-road tyres, and if there’s any other who would have been decent enough to laugh instead of turning for home after being soaked from head to toe in several gallons of muddy puddle water sent flying by the AMG’s enormous wheels, I’m yet to meet them.