Winnebago has been building motorhomes since 1958, and the ARKA is the third model in its Backcountry line, alongside a Class C and an adventure van. It is pitched as an off-grid truck: capable off pavement, carrying enough water, power and insulation to stay out for up to fourteen days, sleeping four and seating six.
The significance is not the vehicle, it is who built it. Overland rigs have been the province of small builders and one-off fabricators, sold at expos to people who understood the trade-offs. A company with a dealer network and a warranty department entering that space means the category has become large enough to industrialise.
Buyers get something real out of that: service coverage, parts availability and a financing path, none of which a boutique builder can match. What they give up is the thing boutique builders are good at, which is a vehicle configured for how one person actually travels rather than for the median of a sales forecast.
The independent side has not stood still. Slide-in campers built from honeycomb composite sealed with polyurea, aimed squarely at the payload ceiling of midsize trucks, are doing something a mainstream manufacturer has no reason to attempt.
If you are shopping, the question is not which is better. It is whether you want a vehicle you can get fixed in an unfamiliar town, or a vehicle built for exactly the trip you take.
The Boulder Concept turned up unannounced at the New York show in April: an upright, two-box, four-door SUV on what Hyundai says is its first fully-boxed body-on-frame architecture for the United States. The company calls it a pure design study, which is accurate and also beside the point. What it previews is a platform, and the platform is confirmed.
The first production vehicle on it will be a midsize pickup, due by 2030, competing directly with the Tacoma, Ranger and Colorado. Hyundai has committed to designing, developing and building it in North America with its own U.S. steel. An SUV related to the Boulder is expected to follow, and senior people at the group have indicated the platform will reach beyond the Hyundai badge.
Read the concept itself carefully. Ladder-frame construction, an off-road stance built around aggressive approach and departure angles, and 37-inch tires on the show car. Concepts wear tires that production trucks do not, but the proportions are drawn around a real frame rather than sketched over a crossover, and that distinction is the whole story here.
No powertrain was announced, which at this distance is normal and also the single most consequential unknown. Whether this lands as a diesel, a hybrid, or something electrified decides whether it competes with a Tacoma TRD Pro or with something that does not exist yet.
Four years is a long horizon in this segment, and a concept is not a commitment to a shape. What is committed is the frame, the factory and the segment. For anyone who buys a midsize truck every eight or ten years, this is worth filing away rather than acting on.
Air down. Dropping pressure lengthens the contact patch, which improves traction on sand, rock and washboard and takes a great deal of punishment out of the ride. It costs nothing, it is reversible at the next gas station, and it does more for capability than most of what people bolt on. Carry a deflator and a gauge you trust, and air back up before pavement.
Carry a full-size spare that matches what is on the truck. This is the reason a mid-trim package with a full-size spare can be the smarter buy over a higher trim without one. A temporary spare on a forest road is a slow limp at best and a second recovery at worst.
Check the closure before you drive, not when you arrive. Forest orders change weekly through fire season, and a road closed for hazard-tree work does not announce itself at the highway junction. Agency alert pages and the fire incident sites are the authority; anything else, this paper included, is secondary.
Match recovery gear to the rig and the trip. Rated recovery points are worth more than a longer strap, and a strap anchored to something that was never designed to be pulled on is how people get hurt. If you are travelling alone, that changes the kit considerably — self-recovery is a different problem from being pulled out by a friend.
Last one, unglamorous: know the payload and know the fuel range with the actual load in the truck. Both numbers change with a build, and both are more likely to end a trip than a hill you could not climb.
They remain the only two SUVs you can take the roof and doors off, which is most of why people cross-shop them at all. On price the Jeep starts lower, around $36,000 against roughly $40,500 for the Bronco, and stays lower the whole way up the ladder. At the top the Bronco Raptor asks about $80,000 while the most expensive Wranglers, the Moab and Willys 392, sit near $70,000.
The catch on the Jeep's entry price is doors. Lower Wrangler trims come as two-doors and four doors cost extra; every Bronco has four. Reviewers generally hand the Bronco the on-road manners and the Wrangler the value, and both give up a lot of fuel economy for the privilege of the shape: high teens to low twenties for the Bronco's four-cylinder, worse for the 2.7 and worse again for the Raptor.
If you are buying for capability rather than badge, the useful middle of the Bronco range is the Big Bend, which brings heated seats and navigation, carries a full-size spare, and can take the Sasquatch off-road package. A full-size spare matters more than most option boxes the first time you tear a sidewall a long way from pavement.
One number worth checking against your trailer: the Bronco tows 3,500 pounds, 4,500 in the Raptor, well short of what the Wrangler and 4Runner will pull. Ford has also announced a 2027 Bronco done with Filson, the latest in a line of heritage collaborations, which will be a styling and trim exercise rather than a capability one.
Ten years ago an off-road trim meant a Wrangler, a 4Runner or a body-on-frame Land Rover. The category has since widened to the point where nearly every mainstream crossover has a version with more clearance, chunkier tyres and a skid plate.
Toyota's redesigned 2026 RAV4 is hybrid-only and includes a Woodland version aimed squarely at trailheads. Subaru continues to extend its Wilderness line; the Forester Wilderness starts just under $40,000, and a hybrid version has now been shown for 2027. Hyundai used the New York show to display a rugged concept that reads as a preview of a production midsize truck.
Buyers who still want a frame under them have the Lexus GX, which makes no apology for being truck-based and pays for it at the pump, and the Ineos Grenadier, built for hardship rather than refinement and returning fuel economy in the mid-teens either way.
On the electric side, Rivian's smaller R2 is the one to watch: roughly 9.8 inches of clearance, more than 300 miles of range, and a price expected around $55,000, with a more aggressive R3X shown alongside it.
The through line is that off-road capability has become a trim level rather than a vehicle type. Whether the hardware underneath justifies the badge is a question for the first washboard road, not the brochure.
Toyota brought the Tundra Trailhunter to Loveland for its first public showing, which is a choice worth noticing. The Trailhunter line is aimed at overlanding rather than desert running, and showing it to a field full of people who already own roof tents is a more honest test than a convention centre stand.
Alongside it the company showed a rugged off-road concept built on the global Hilux platform and described as purpose-built for overlanding. The Hilux is not sold in the United States, which makes a concept on that platform at an American show an interesting thing to put in public.
The full-size overland trim is a crowded category now. Ram and Jeep both ran vehicles on the driving course at the same event, and the heavy-duty aftermarket showed up in force with suspension systems for current F-250 and F-350 trucks.
What none of it settles is whether a factory overland trim beats the same money spent on a plain truck and a builder you trust. That argument was being had in the campground all weekend.