Rhino off the hook

How many of you have noticed the explosion in rock buggies lately? The rock buggy was created to fill a need in the rock crawling arena. These vehicles are very agile and built to traverse landscape that the average four wheeler would not consider. Turn on speed TV and you will see these buggies crawl, jump and burn their way up and down cliffs, boulders the size of small suvs . These buggies speed through dirt No, not just dirt, fine silt that makes sand look large. The point I am trying to make is these buggies are very capable on the trail, but how are you going to justify 75 to a 100k to your wife for a weekend toy that only holds one person? Now you don’t have to. Rhino off road industries produces several models ranging from a single seater to a tandem with one in front and one in the aft. The one I tested, RTV-2FS competition-Pro, seats two, side by side. I was on assignment in Cedar City, Utah covering WE-Rock Western Nationals. After the second day of competition, I climbed aboard the Rhino. I was a little apprehensive of what to expect since my four wheel drive experience was limited to trail driving with nothing more than a lift kit and a locker. The very first thing I noticed was a clean and well laid out cockpit consisting of a console up front with water, oil, voltmeter, a rhino rock crawling shifter, an air compressor switch and a switch to control the front locker.

I fired it up and with a little instruction from Micheal Hulinsky , we headed for a mountain of boulders that had been the course last year for professional rock crawlers. I hate to admit it but I was a little timid when I first started over the mountain avoiding the real difficult parts and drops (lets face it, I don’t own it and didn’t want to break it). Micheal said, ‘go for it, you’re not going to hurt it. Heading for a four foot vertical drop, I drove down it without utilizing the full potential of the Race runner shocks. In fact, it was less jarring than I get from my Toyota when going over speed bumps. With some more instruction we tore up the course trying to find something the Rhino could not handle. We drove back to flat ground and we were joined by Howard Pearl in another Rhino buggy. He suggested that we do a little desert racing before we called it a day, in the back of my mind I thought how much fun will that be hitting the rev limter just to see 30 miles per hour. Wrong again this baby has a four speed automatic and will maneuver through rough terrain with ease at 60 mph. Rhino off road, has a winning combination with a rig that is competing in WE rock competitions, seats two people and can be driven by any one that can reach the pedals, and the big kicker, it sells for less than a SUV.

Check them out at www.rhino-offroad.com
Story by Brian Gray
Photos by Howard Pearl