I don’t know how many words in Russian we all know between the three of us, but there is one we all know without question: KAMAZ. That stands for ten tons of Russian race truck that uses about a thousand horsepower and pretty much all of the torque to tell the laws of physics to go straight to hell in a handbasket. These beasts dominate rally-raid truck classes, especially the Dakar, and are as durable as a tank. The drivers row through sixteen-speed gearboxes and endure landings that are soaked up the old-school way: massive live axles and leaf springs. It’s not high-tech, but it is anvil-tough, and the drivers make wielding such a rig look like a day in the dunes in a Ford Raptor, just with a truck that is about the size of a lifted International medium-duty.
We’ve seen them dune-bashing in Dakar footage, we’ve seen them hanging the tail out on city streets, and we’ve seen them turn Lord March’s driveway into a drift course at Goodwood. But watching one this Kamaz 4326 in a slow-motion flight in the snows of Russia makes it look almost poetic, don’t you think?
