TRAIL SAVVY: Off-road driving tips, skills & practices

When it comes to adding drive to the rear axles of most soft-roaders, there is plenty of jargon out there, but it often boils down to another fancy acronym for much the same thing. It’s easy to be confused by the multiple names used for the same systems, and conversely, one name (such as Volkswagen’s 4Motion) which encompasses a number of variations of a system on different vehicles.

For example, a manufacturer such as Nissan calls the system in their X-Trail and Qashqai ‘All-Mode 4x4’ and uses it in various guises on Alliance cousins such as the Renault Koleos and Duster. They use an electro-magnetically actuated wet clutch pack device developed by GKN Driveline.

If you are looking at a softroader from the VW Group, or from Volvo or Ford, it’s likely to be based on a fluid-activated valve-based wet clutch pack, developed by the Swedish company HaldexAB (which was bought out by BorgWarner in 2010).

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