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Call them what you like - four-by-fours, jeeps, off-roaders, sports utility vehicles; it seems one can't throw a brick in London these days without hitting a land rover, land cruiser, or one of those Suzukis with humping rhinos on the spare wheel. But poseurs who drive them have a point - these vehicles are fun. They elevate one quite literally above the rest of the traffic. Girls love them, and they give one the feeling that one could do anything, go anywhere.

Few 4x4 drivers ever really discover their vehicle’s full potential, rather like people who only use computers for word processing, and never use the other 99 percent of its memory. Certainly this applied to me, until I went to Rubicon Springs, California, for the annual Jeep Jamboree.

Every year, Jeep enthusiasts from all over the USA get together to drive something called the Rubicon Trail. 4x4 trails are graded up to 10 as the hardest. The Rubicon Trail is a grade 10. It is only 19 miles long, but it takes two whole days to drive. When one sees the trail - which starts at 10,000 feet [3050m] and runs through some of the highest mountain country in America - one can see why. A lot of it would be hard enough to scramble on foot, let alone trying it a vehicle.

Those who think that they have driven off-road [perhaps tried one of those ‘assault-course-for-vehicles’ places in the Home Counties, with a watery bit to splash through and some rocks to bump over?] can safely be told that they know nothing at all. The first ‘hazard’ on the Rubicon consisted of a winding staircase of loose boulders. Each wheel had to be placed separately (Jeep Wranglers have an amazing suspension that allows them almost to ‘crawl’ up and down ledges of four to five feet without bouncing or tipping). Everyone got stuck, even the motor trade journalists, who were supposed to be the experts. None of us would have got through had it not been for the marshals - super-experienced 4x4 enthusiasts who volunteer to organize the trail. They walk ahead of the vehicle (this trail can be walked faster than driven), and when the going gets particularly rough, they tell one where to put each wheel, and jolly testy they get if it’s not done correctly.

Walt is the most testy of all. A taciturn cowboy-type with a perpetual frown and a mouth that pointed down at both sides, he was the mechanic for the trip and therefore our Fuhrer. When I found myself - wide eyed and terrified - pointing vertically down hill with nothing under my front wheels, about to go head over heels, he told me to turn the steering wheel to try to gain some purchase. I did, but nothing happened.

“I said turn the Goddam wheel!” shouted Walt.

I tried again, and thank goodness, my front left wheel found something solid - just as we were about to go over into the void.

“Ain't it amazing what happens when you turn the wheel?”

I could have killed him, but then without him I’d have killed myself. Anyway, he was bigger than me. Every time I made more than a normal mess out of a particular hazard - letting the back down too fast over a rock stair and hearing (and feeling) it go ‘crunch,’ or getting stuck and applying too much gas so that the wheels spun mud and rock in every direction - I'd look up and there Walt would be, shaking his head and wondering how such an incompetent had ever been allowed behind the wheel.

In a Jeep, even an incompetent such as I can drive something as impossible as The Rubicon Trail. Bear in mind, too, that these Jeeps had no modifications beyond some slightly wider tires, and an extra plate welded under the transmission (these were automatics - smash the transmission panel on a rock and that's the end of your trail). In all other respects they were exactly as one would find them in the showroom. Moreover, these particular vehicles were veterans of two years of taking journalists over the trail. They coped with the job like champions, in spite of our not being able, at any time in two days, to get beyond low range first gear. It was exhausting, but also immensely satisfying, especially because the organizers helicoptered in a full-on Country and Western band to a meadow just below the snowline where we camped the night.

If I ever get the chance to drive the Rubicon again I’ll be there in a heartbeat, if only to remind myself - as I watch the urban cowboys crawl through Soho in their 4x4s - what such a vehicle can really do. More than that; next year I’m buying a 4x4 myself, and it’s going to be a Jeep.

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