EDITOR’S COLUMN: HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY, UNSEALED 4X4

By Unsealed 4X4 6 Min Read

This issue is a pretty exciting one for us here at Unsealed 4X4. I mean, we always get a bit happy when a new edition goes live, but this one is a little bit extra special because it officially marks the two-year anniversary since this here mag kicked off.

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To be honest, those two years have flown by. We’re always out and about running trips, driving new vehicles, testing products or modifying our 4WDs so much it barely seems like there’s any downtime. And y’know what? We wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s been an absolute blast.

For images and the full Unsealed 4X4 experience, read this on our digital magazine platform.

 

Looking back over the last 24 issues we’ve sure covered some ground. From taking an old Willys Jeep up the Cape to tackling the High Country in the snow to making arguably the hardest Simpson Desert crossing known to man to reviewing just about every 4X4 under the sun (not to mention camper trailers, slide-ons, off-road motorhomes and caravans) to taking on our very own project vehicle.

 

And let’s not forget about our product comparisons. At this point in time, we’re the only 4X4 mag in the country doing actual no-bull scientific and real-world testing on a range of off-road accessories. And while we’re incredibly proud of these industry-leading tests, I can’t say that they haven’t ruffled a few feathers. We’ve had some amazing results, showing that a lot of companies’ products aren’t living up to the labels or the price tags. And we’ve also shown that a lot of places are still selling top-quality gear at a reasonable rate.

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In doing this, we’ve had threats of legal action, lost advertising dollars, been called a lot of names; and we’ve even had some people accuse us of rigging the results.

Doesn’t matter at all to us. You know why? When we first decided to start doing these comparisons we gave ourselves a simple mandate to get the facts and report them to our readers. We don’t embellish, we don’t tweak results to suit our advertisers; we just take a bunch of gear into the bush, test it and tell you guys what we found. Nothing more or less.

And it’s been hugely successful.

 

Yes we’ve pissed off a few industry players, but the fantastic thing that we’ve seen is that the huge majority of aftermarket outfitters are genuinely passionate about putting out the best quality gear they can, and they take our testing and use it to fix weak points in their products. To me that is a hallmark of a great company. They take the honest and constructive feedback from our tests and use it to improve things, with many of them keeping us in the loop as far as product development goes so we can let you guys know that they’ve addressed any issues found.

I’ll give you an example: One of the inclusions in our round LED driving light test back in Issue 22 performed brilliantly in the light test, but unfortunately allowed water ingress into the light housing. Literally the next day a rep from the company came to our office to pick up the light and discuss our testing procedure. He went off with the light and sent an email a week or so later telling us that they’d identified the problem, and fixed it; and they will be updating their production line and will send us out a new set of lights to test when they’re ready.

 

Think about that for a sec. This company could have blamed us, could have accused us of lying, could have got angry… Nope, they saw we’d found a problem and moved very quickly to fix it. That’s the type of company I want to spend my money with.

Oh, and for the people who routinely accuse us of doctoring results for our advertisers: Sorry folks, but you’re dreaming. Always have been on the level, always will be. So much so that some people are using the months of hard work (and tens of thousands of dollars) we put into each and every one of our comparisons to try to rejig our results in order to market their products – which is as see-through as a wet nightie.

 

Nope, we honestly do these things for our readers and our readers only. Nobody else. Full-stop. End of story. If you still don’t believe me you’re welcome to come and stand in sub-zero temperatures from 8pm to 3am while it’s raining and hold a load-cell for us… no seriously, I don’t want to do it.

As always, we’re cooking up bigger and better article ideas all the time, but we’d love to hear your feedback and ideas too – after all, this is your home of off-road adventure. So let us know what you want to see in the mag… unless it’s more of Deputy Editor Ev (his therapist said we shouldn’t encourage him…).

Dex.


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