Duro Light Utility Vehicle
As part of my playing around with vehicle concepts I dug out an old brochure and some photos of a military truck that the Canadian Military was looking at buying at one point.
I spotted this beastie in downtown Ottawa just outside of one of the Army Officer Messes. I guess there was a “shin-dig” going on with the vendor.
It’s a pretty cool truck, very “Hummer-esque” in proportion/shape, etc. I love the pure utility look of it. I also like the Hummer for this reason – although with the size and the way that the central spine of the Hummer intrudes into the passenger space it wouldn’t be as useful as this truck.
It is kind of hard to get s sense of scale from the images. Try to think of a GM S-Blazer. It is just a touch larger.
This to me is almost an ideal configuration of an off-road vehicle. Good cargo room, functional, good size, enough spaces for 4 adults, funky look.
One of the things that is neat about this truck is that it is solid axle front and rear – but with a twist. It is kind of a vertically arranged DeDion for lack of a better description.
At each end of the axle there is a geared hub (portal) similar to a Hummer, Unimog or Volvo C303 but the axle itself is kind of a shallow inverted “U” in shape. There is no differential on this tube. At the top of the axle there runs a CV supported shaft that is not unlike a normal independent suspension. These shafts run to the differential which is attached to the frame. I have more images, I’ll try to scare them up.
Here is a copy of the brochure for the truck that I managed to get from the sales engineer.
