“No Dryden, it’s going to be fun.”
This is what T.E. Lawrence says to the shadowy government official who has just told him he will be heading into the “burning, fiery furnace’ of the desert to assess the chances of the Arab Revolt in fighting the Turkish army during the first World War in the classic 1962 film “Lawrence of Arabia”.
The fact that while he is saying this he is holding a match as it burns down to his fingertips strongly suggests that Dryden’s response of “it is recognised that you have a funny sense of fun” was pretty accurate.
While Lawrence’s time in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula fighting alongside the Hashemite Bedouin people would push the legendary Englishman to the very edge of sanity, I had high hopes the same wouldn’t happen to me as I steered the blunt nose of the Ford Ranger Wildtrak into the vast sands of the Wadi Rum in Jordan, an area Lawrence spent the majority of his time putting the cold steel up the Turks during the war.
Possibly because there was almost exactly 100 years of progress between Lawrence’s adventures in the Wadi Rum and me gently guiding a bright orange 4WD ute across some railway tracks and between a bored looking dog lying next to a pile of rubbish and the almost obligatory truck parked by the side of the road selling what appeared to be greenish bowling balls (some sort of ugly local melon that was, apparently, edible), I wasn’t particularly worried about my sanity, or for that matter, survival.
The main reason for this is that while it would take Lawrence and the Bedouin several days under the searing sun to cross the area on camels, we could easily knock it over in a couple of hours in the air conditioned comfort of the Ranger. Negotiating Auckland traffic on a wet Friday afternoon is more of a challenge to one’s sanity.
Add in the fact that we would neither have the horrors of war, nor the phlegm-spraying belligerence of camels to deal with and it promised to be, well, fun.
I was heading into the depths of the legendary Wadi Rum as part of Ford’s “Go Further In Arabia” event that was taking place in Jordan. I was one of the few motoring journalists in a sea of lifestyle and travel journalists, bloggers, social media stars and other “influencers” (people who, on the surface, seem to have no real purpose for existing, but have a large amount of followers on Instagram and use hashtags a lot), so when the promised off-road component proved to be simply driving across sand I was really the only one who was slightly disappointed.
After all, a Ranger is a capable-enough beast in sand, particularly when the tyres had been aired-down, as ours had been. Keeping momentum up is the key to driving in soft, dry sand and while this proved to be more than some of the “influencers” could get their heads around, the big diesel torque of the Ranger’s 3.2-litre 5-cylinder engine meant simply ploughing around the outside of them when they panicked and backed off the throttle was an effortless – okay, and fun – thing to do.
The Ranger in its Middle Eastern spec is the same beast as we get here in New Zealand, apart from the steering wheel being on the other side of the cabin, so familiarity was never going to be a problem and all the things that make it so good locally – the superb ride comfort, effortless performance and constantly-impressive handling – were present and correct here.
This also meant that the Ranger was as much a fantastically fun drift-monster under the blazing sun in the Wadi Rum as it is on the black sand of a wet, windy West Coast beach in New Zealand…
Oddly enough, while the closest we got to seeing any water all day was the plentiful plastic bottles of the stuff Ford staff kept us continuously supplied with, “wadi” actually refers to a valley or an “ephemeral riverbed”, in other words “a place where water sometimes is”, while “rum” is thought to be derived from the Aramaic for “high” or “elevated” and not the far more interesting drink favoured by pirates and sailors.
While it is most famous for being utterly stunning in a visual sense as well as the place where T.E. Lawrence and the Hashemite Bedouin helped disrupt the Ottoman supply chain by blowing up railroads quicker that the Turks could rebuild them, it also has a more recent claim to fame in the form of being the setting for bad movies.
Since David Lean filmed the brilliant ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ there in 1962, the spectacular setting has been home to a number of less than excellent films, standing in for the surface of Mars in science fiction turkeys like ‘Red Planet’ and ‘The Last Days on Mars’, while it has also played the role of “Egypt” in Michael Bay’s thoroughly hateful ‘Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen’.
Things have improved for the Wadi Rum’s IMDB profile lately, however, with the decent-but-confusing ‘Alien’ prequel ‘Prometheus’ being filmed there, as well as the acclaimed Matt Damon-in-space hit ‘The Martian’.
And it is easy to see why movie makers choose the Wadi Run to play the part of an alien planet, as it really does feel like no other place on earth.
The massive, towering sandstone and granite formations are breathtaking in both their scale and shape, while the persistent redness of the landscape that utterly engulfs you with its vastness is only broken by the equally demanding and vast blue sky.
While the trip in is amazing in almost every way, with the constant eruptions of colossal rock towers from the dry, red sand, the absolute highlight of the Wadi Rum show is the “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” rock formation that we reach shortly after the lunch stop at the awesomely-named “Captains Desert Camp” (complete with missing apostrophe).
The distinctive and remarkable formation is named after a book by T.E. Lawrence, as opposed to the other way around, signifying perhaps more than anything else the impact this remarkable man had on the region.
After the lunch stop we had also made the switch into a Ford Edge, which readers of this publication may know better as “the vehicle that will almost certainly replace the Territory in the local Ford line up, even though Ford continues to deny it”.
While we also drove the Edge on the road while in Jordan, it has to be said that said roads there aren’t exactly representative of the local experience. Wide, broken and with a decided lack of corners, they were a excellent gauge of ride comfort, but handling? Not so much.
Massive, sprawling straights make up the major highways in Jordan – not surprising, given the startling lack of things that need to be driven around in the desert – but some of the roads are in such bad condition that if the ride quality seems good here, then it will feel good anywhere in the world.
The Edge’s suspension was impressive on Jordan’s broken highways, albeit surprisingly well-controlled and firm. It has a beautifully composed feel to the chassis that belies its size.
In the depths of the Wadi Rum, the Edge felt equally composed and comfortable, with a surprisingly amount of confident ability in the sometimes-deep sand – remembering that the Edge shares its platform with the FWD Mondeo, albeit in 4WD guise for our drive.
The Edge is available internationally with a range of engines, including a four-cylinder 132kW turbo-diesel and a twin-turbo 154kW version, as well as EcoBoost petrol engines that include a 182kW 2.0-litre four-cylinder and a pair of 3.5-litre V6s: naturally aspirated (208kW) and turbocharged (234kW). The entry V6 driven in Jordan is a strong, smooth unit, while the auto transmission is very slick.
What we might actually see in the Edge if it arrives in New Zealand (let’s face it; when it arrives in NZ) is still open to speculation. The Canadian-built RHD models for the UK get the two diesel engines, so we’ll almost certainly have that option. But one or two petrol engines are likely as well.
There is also a LHD seven-seat version of the Edge built in China, but the larger Everest would seem likely to be left the lone seven-seateer in the Ford SUV line up, while the Edge squarely takes over from Territory. Or perhaps even becomes the Territory, as Toyota has the rights to the Edge name in Australia.
The locally available Ranger and the one Ford are pretending won’t be locally available, but will be soon weren’t the only Fords at the event, and we also had access to the Explorer, Expedition and the mighty F-150.
They are three very easy vehicles to sum up in a few words too – the Explorer is thoroughly excellent, although pretty much exactly like the Edge, only slightly bigger. The F-150 is a high-tech, modern, massive truck that is far too big to be sensible and far too cool to make fun of in any way, while the Expedition is simply a very old turd with a fresh layer of chrome.
Thoroughly massive, dynamically awful and packed to the gills with an overkill of gadgets to make up for its sheer awfulness, the Expedition is an elderly aberration in Ford’s otherwise excellent line up that was present in the desert.
Getting to play in the Wadi Rum was the experience of a lifetime and the vehicles we drove were far and away a superior option to a camel. Except maybe for the Expedition.
While his sanity was stretched thin by the horrors of war (and probably the bloody camels), T.E. Lawrence probably didn’t end up thinking the desert was quite so much fun after all. Perhaps if he had a Ranger or Edge he may have thought differently. I know I did.
This article first appeared in the July 2016 issue of New Zealand Autocar magazine.
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