Ever have someone crow on and on about going off-road, only to find out that all they did was drive down a dirt road? I’m sorry, but there is a lot more to off-roading than leaving the safety of the asphalt behind. A gravel road is still a road. Off-roading means more: ask anyone who has been on the Rubicon, or has traversed some of the mountain trails of Colorado, woven between Douglas Fir in Washington, or has been sunk clean up to the bottoms of the rockers in mud. They’ll tell you as much. You need to experience the outdoors as much as you experience your vehicle. You need to find the limits of your rig’s capabilities, and learn to overcome them. And that’s where events like the Croatia Trophy come into play.

An eight-stage slogfest through some of the nastiest areas that Europe has to offer an adventurous team, Croatia Trophy brought together sixty-nine rigs from seventeen countries for one event: an absolute ass-kicker of an off-road endurance test that saw trucks mired in mud, wading through hood-deep water, and in positions on both the X and Y axis that no manufacturer ever dared dream of. This is off-roading. Driving your Subaru Forester on a fire road until it gets dusty? Get out of here.