We took the Can-Am Maverick X3 for a wild ride – is this the next evolution of Aussie wheeling?
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Picture this, you’re in your shed wrenching on your project, and you get a call from Jess, the show-runner here at Unsealed4x4. She’s asking if you want to jump on a plane to South Australia and spend the weekend bombing over the Coorong dunes in a Can-Am Maverick X3 RS with a bunch of lunatics. If there’s anybody who’d say no to that, they’re probably a serial killer.
Obviously, nek minute I’m on a plane to Adelaide.
Meet the SXS Club of Australia
After a short flight and a drive south-west to the Coorong, I hook up with the mad hatters who make up the SXS Club of Australia to get a rundown on the vehicle I’ll be riding in, a Can-Am Maverick X3.
The club are a tops bunch of people, too. Basically, a decade or so back, a group of mates began riding ATVs together and started up a club to get insurance coverage for private property rides. This led to them developing a race series, which they ran for a fair few years, eventually leading to the discovery that the older you get, the more coming unstuck at speeds hurts, which led to the relative safety of SXS piloting. Because sitting in a four-wheeled rocket is way safer than on top of one. Makes sense to me, anyway.
Fast forward to the present day and the SXS Club of Australia are one of the better organised outfits in the country, with club-run adventures a regular fixture on the calendar. These days, they’re not so much into the racing side of things, but more about the adventure, camping and social aspects of the sport. There’s a strong family vibe and the sense of adrenalin-seeking is actively encouraged without being a club full of know-it-all douchebags, which many of us have experienced on the 4WD-club side of things.
These guys and gals are about having fast, loud and fun times and enjoying the hell out of the ride, while actively cultivating a welcoming and friendly environment.
Here’s how the weekend went down
I’m now a member and am looking forward to the next ride, if that gives you any context for how much I enjoyed myself.
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Wait, what the hell is a SXS anyway?
SXS stands for side-by-side, which refers to the seating configuration. Imagine a golf cart, but fed a diet of anabolic steroids, energy drinks and gamma radiation.
They’re a two to four-seat buggy that is used for a variety of roles, most commonly for farm and rural duties like carting hay bales and livestock feed or getting to the back paddock in safety and comfort. In that regard, they’re an evolutionary step up from a quad bike.
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But they’re not all for punting around the horse yards. The sport versions, like the Can-Am Maverick X3 in this yarn, come with a bunch of horsepower, an even bigger bunch of suspension travel and a tiny amount of weight. In case you’re unaware, that equation equals fun with a capital Fuh.
Oh, and thanks to our US cousins, where SXSs are fast becoming the off-road trail vehicle of choice (mainly because they’re not ruled with a pearl-clutching iron fist over there and can drive these things way more places than we can), there’s a heap of aftermarket products available.
Everything you can get for your 4WD, you can get for your SXS. Suspension upgrades, interior mods, RTT tent racks, hard tops, soft tops, lighting…you get the picture.
Onto the Can-Am Maverick X3
Okay, let’s get the negatives out of the way first. There are exactly three things that I really don’t like about the Can-Am Maverick X3. One: I don’t own one. Two: They aren’t road legal, which is a crock, frankly. I’d rather be in a crash in something with a full cage than in an MX-5, a Yaris or KTM X-Bow (all of which are driveable on the road in `Straya), but whatever. And three: I don’t own one.
These things are everything that’s good about pure driving pleasure. They’re light, they’re powerful, they’re fast and they’re more fun than being BFFs with Bill Murray. There’s something about having the hammer down, turbo-charged engine howling at the moon behind you, Fox coilover suspension effortlessly taking everything you can throw at it, tyres hooking up and propelling you forwards (or upward) no matter how steep the dunes are that’s soul-stirring.
It’s unfettered, unrestrained and unapologetic gearhead Nirvana. It’s a beautiful thing.
Bang on engineering
The Can-Am Maverick X3 doesn’t just get you right in the feels, either. The engineering side of things is also bang on. A wheel at each corner of the vehicle (which is the best set-up available for handling, just ask the Formula 1 nerds), a rear-mounted turbo screamer engine for weight distribution and more handling (don’t make me tap the Formula 1 sign again) and suspension that requires you to forget everything you know about driving sand, whoops, ruts and washouts and simply trust it to handle it all. At speed. Without upsetting you or the vehicle in the slightest (more Trophy Truck than Formula 1, but you’re picking up what I’m putting down).
Legitimately, the most I felt when bombing over whoops at 60km/h+ was a slight jostling. If I’d been holding a mojito at the time, I wouldn’t have spilled a drop.
The tech side of things – Can-Am Maverick X3
The power in the Can-Am Maverick X3 comes from a belt-driven 900cc turbocharged Rotax engine that is surprisingly economical given the 200 hp it spits at you with a hiss of fury. I don’t have exact figures, but after two days of hard charging over the spectacular Coorong dunes, the digital fuel gauge had only dropped by one bar, which is impressive given the abuse the throttle pedal was taking.
Look, I really don’t mean to bang on about it, but it’s legit hard to fault this thing. The seats and harnesses were comfortable without being restrictive. The dash was well laid out and everything was easy to see. The controls were intuitive and straightforward. The ergonomics were bang on. The chassis was rigid enough to inspire confidence in a rollover situation (which I have on pretty good authority), but still provided plenty of feedback during cornering, braking and straight line hooliganeering. There was more than one driver who caught air and the landings were simply soaked up.
We need to talk about suspension
And yes, we do need to talk about that suspension. Mainly because I don’t think there’s a synonym in the English language for “fknunbelievable” that’ll do it justice. Front and rear A-arms provide the skeleton of the system, along with a surprising amount of wheel travel, it has to be said. And the Fox Smart-Shox-equipped coilovers are something else.
They can adjust themselves from fully soft to fully hard in 17 milliseconds and tweak both rebound and compression 200 times per second. Sounds fancy on paper, but in reality, it results in ridiculous comfort and control levels as it reacts effectively instantaneously to both the terrain and the driver input.
Dive under braking is barely noticed. Excessive squat under hard acceleration or steep climbs isn’t a thing. Body roll, lol, what’s that?
As for corrugations and whoops, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a vehicle that can handle them this well. Bombing over them with the pedal held flat becomes totally normal after the first few times, but the smile remains.
And just quietly, I got to ride in the 4-seater LWB version of the Can-Am Maverick X3, which soaked them up even more effortlessly with the increased wheelbase. I freaking hate this phrase with a passion, but “game-changer” is fully warranted here.
Then somebody (definitely not me) went and rolled one
This person (not me) shall remain nameless to avoid embarrassment. I – I mean they – may or may not have been a little too heavy on the throttle and may or may not have run out of talent before making the horizon do a cartwheel and ending up coming to a stop on the side with a mouthful of sand and a heavily bruised ego (allegedly).
Despite the boneheadedness of this move, it did highlight a few key points that are worth sharing (almost as if this, dare I say, genius, did it on purpose. You know, for science). The first thing was that the driver was completely unharmed. Not even a bruise, apart from the aforementioned self-esteem.
The second was that the Can-Am Maverick X3 was also totally unhurt. Not even a scrape mark to be seen. Admittedly, the rollover was on soft sand, but it does go to show what a decent cage, helmet and harness combo can do.
After interviewing the driver, who as we’ve established was certainly not me, he told me that he’s hit his head, elbows, knees and other body parts much harder during normal off-roading trips, so even though there are no airbags, ABS, lane-departure warnings (pfft) or back-up cameras on the X3, the safety aspect really does have to be mentioned. Pulling the same move in a Cruiser with its lap-sash belt and non-reinforced roof would have likely had a very different outcome.
I know what I’d be buying…
You can’t help but wonder about the farmers and property owners who have been injured or worse on their quads over the years. Could things have been different if they were in one of these things? I don’t know for sure, but I do know which one I’d be buying if I were working the land.
Can these really replace 4X4s?
Not really, no. But not because they can’t handle the pace off-road. Don’t buy into the tired nonsense about independent suspension being no bueno for wheeling either. This is very superior suspension to your Triton, your GU or your Ranger.
In fact, a relatively unmodified (compared to the full custom race cars of other 4400 competitors) Can-Am Maverick R won the hardest off-road race on the planet, King Of The Hammers, earlier in 2025, so they’re more than capable.
Still, not many of us use our 4WDs JUST for wheeling. We also tow with them, camp out of them, use them to cart tools around and cover thousands of yearly kilometres on the blacktop with them. And while the Can-Am can do some of those things without a worry, it can’t do all of them.
Still, I’ll be talking with my engineer about the possibility of swapping out the body for a Suzuki Sierra and seeing if they’ll sign off on a 200 hp, rear-engined, long travel, ridiculously fun-to-drive super commuter/ beach runner. And even though it’s most likely not an option, I honestly can’t think of a better vehicle for the job.
With thanks to the SxS Club of Australia and Can-Am
Thanks to the SXS Club of Australia for facilitating this ride and lending me the Can-Am Maverick X3 RS.
The Can-Ams are also available in other models, such as the R (race version) and RC (rock crawling), as well as a more agricultural model. Find out more on the Can-Am Website
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