I love race tracks – but dune-bashing is my top driving activity
Our chief road tester would come back time and time again for sand duning
Opinion
3 mins read
26 June 2025
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Can you really love something that you’ve done only a handful of times? I certainly enjoyed getting married and, as my better half will (hopefully) be reassured to read, don’t plan to do it again.
I’m confident that I’d have a blast parachuting, even bungee jumping, without necessarily feeling the need to sign up for a repeat performance (the bungee certainly wouldn’t).
When it comes to sand duning, however, I’d roll up time and again. It’s precisely what it sounds like: the act of driving a car up and, in all likelihood, back down a sand dune. And it’s great fun. (My Apple Mac’s autocorrect is insistent that I mean ‘sand dunning’.
Rest assured if you’re in the debt collection business, that there must be richer seams to plunder than the vast emptiness of the Namib.) This is, most famously, the thing that so many 4×4 enthusiasts head out of their air-conditioned metropolises to engage in at the weekend.
Will my Toyota Land Cruiser get up Big Red? Or the Moreeb? Or Dune 7? Moreover, will it go up quicker on my new tyres? Or with my trick locking diffs? Or if I’m wearing my raciest pair of flip-flops?
To much of the world, the act itself probably seems a bit puerile, but that’s perspective talking. Is it any more gratuitous than driving around in two-mile circles for your kicks? It doesn’t seem so to me, and less so, I must say, every time I do a bit more of it.
My first go was, I think, 15 years ago, on the Moroccan press launch of the original Dacia Duster. Not the worst sand duning device, as it turned out, because it’s quite light and easy to keep moving.
I’ve since done more in the UAE (in a Maserati Levante) and in South Africa (on the launch of the Land Rover Defender Octa).
Somehow I’ve yet to get anything stuck or beached or cave in a sump or a set of suspension turrets by disappearing too quickly over an unsighted summit or into a gully. It’s nice to leave the odd excitement for years to come, after all.
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Good dune driving is all about close control of power and traction, smooth and efficient steering and the conservation of not only momentum but, crucially, drive. It’s about feel. Use too much gas and you will dig yourself in; too little and your revs will drop, the drivetrain will bog down and you will just grind to a halt.
Do too much steering and your tyres won’t work to drive forwards as effectively, all of your impetus and energy being wasted as wheelslip. Make short, efficient course corrections instead, keep the steering straight often as you can and you will fine.
Ice driving is a lot of fun, too, albeit for different reasons. But, given the choice, I think I’d take sand duning for the fascinating and different lessons it teaches.
