Charlie Flindt - Tigger the Terracan: From Farm Workhorse to Retirement Riddle [11 min listen]

Voices of the Countryside

My faithful farm truck sits in the yard, not exactly sure how it is supposed to spend its days - or justify its hefty running costs. What's the future for such a loyal beast?

Join me, if you will, in some automotive anthropomorphism, and spare a thought for Tigger the Terracan, who sits in the farmyard, having a bit of an existential crisis.

Tigger, you see, is my farm 4x4, and, since our semi-retirement, it hasn’t had much in the way of work. When we were full-on farming, it was out and about most days: hauling, carrying, towing and giving lifts and shuttling me back and forth from my tractor and combine. And in all those tasks, it was pretty well unbeatable. But now its days are quieter. Almost too quiet.

Let’s go back a couple of decades, though, to when Hyundai was a bit of an unknown quantity in the British motoring world. In 2003, I was invited (as an F-list motoring journalist) to the launch of the Terracan in the North Yorkshire Moors. And as my test car made its way along a deep riverbed (not sure you’d be allowed to do that now) I was impressed. Here, I thought is an old school 4x4 of immense capability.