A Toyota LandCruiser bought eighteen months ago by Michelle Soutar partly, she says, "for the camping trips we kept meaning to do," completed its two-hundredth consecutive school run on Tuesday without once leaving bitumen, a milestone Ms Soutar confirmed only after being asked to check the trip computer.
Ms Soutar, who lives near Yarra Bend and drives her two children to a primary school eight hundred metres away via a slightly longer route she prefers because of the park, said the vehicle was chosen specifically for its low-range four-wheel-drive mode, its wading depth and its "proper," low-speed off-road traction control, features she researched for several weeks before buying. She said the car has engaged its off-road mode, which requires a dashboard button and a confirmation screen, on zero occasions. The wading depth has been tested, to her knowledge, only by a sprinkler left running on Yarra Boulevard last summer.
A survey of 1,000 Australian drivers conducted for tyre manufacturer Continental last year found that only four per cent of SUV owners take their vehicles off-road at all, even though roughly one in four buyers associate SUVs with adventure and outdoor recreation at the point of purchase. Ms Soutar said she had not seen the survey but accepted the figure "without much surprise."
"We did talk about doing the Victorian High Country trip," she said. "That was genuinely the plan when we bought it. Then it was going to be the Grampians for a long weekend. Then it was going to be something smaller, like the Otways. At the moment it's doing the school run and sometimes Bunnings on a Saturday, which, to be fair, does have a gravel section near the trade entrance."
She said the vehicle's bull bar, which she specified as an optional extra at additional cost, has been struck twice: once by a shopping trolley in a supermarket car park, and once by her own garage door, which she has since had serviced to open further.
Ms Soutar said she has no plans to sell the car and still intends to use its off-road capability "properly, at some point," a timeline she was unable to narrow down further when asked.