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How it all started
Duncan Smith: Owner Hybrid 4x4
My off road adventure started around 6 years ago purely by chance.
Being a bit of a petrol head and always on the look out for a good deal, I
bought an off road vehicle with a view to selling it on and making a small
profit. It was a Auverland A3. After acquiring the Auverland I decided to take
it to Devils pit an off road course located in Barton Le Clay in Bedfordshire
just to try my hand at off roading. I became instantly hooked and for the next
twelve months attended every “play day” event where people turn up, pay a fee
and spend the day hurling around in the mud.
By this time a couple of my friends had also bought off road vehicles and I
decided it was time to take the next step so we went to watch a couple of winch
challenge events and decided that was the path to take. I acquired another
Auverland A3 to use as spares for my first truck and began modifying it quite
heavily so I could start competing.
During this time a Land Rover Series 1 challenge truck came up for sale
quite locally and I decided to invest in it and focus my attention on modifying
that instead of the Auverland.
I entered a couple of challenge events with me driving and a good friend
of mine Ben Robinson as my winch man we had varying levels of success but
thoroughly enjoyed it.
2011 bought our first full season as competitors and we achieved a 3rd
place finish overall in the LRS series. We continued to Modify the Series 1 and
became know as Team Hybrid due to some of the radical changes we made to the
truck.
In 2012 we enjoyed more success finishing the season 1st overall
in the LRS series. 2013 again 1st place overall was achieved again
in the LRS series. Then Ben had to give up winching for me due to other commitments
and this lead to a very up and down 2014 season for Team Hybrid trying to find
another good winch man.
During the 2014 season I meet Henry Papworth my current winch man at a
challenge event. Henry was competing as a driver and after chatting for a while
he told me he was struggling to find the time to prepare his truck for each
event due to his work commitments. So I suggested he became my winch man that
way he could still get his off road fix without the time commitment of
preparing his truck. We decided to enter the Santa’s challenge event together
and won!
Henry agreed to my offer and 2015 was our first season competing together
as Team Hybrid. We entered the Oddyssey Battery winch challenge series and won
the series overall. With 9 wins and 11 podium finishes durng this first year
together, also a second place finish at the Welsh extreme and de-cider events
rounded off Team hybrids most successful season to date.
2016 and the truck is really looking a lot different from what it was a few
years back we continue to find success with 4 out of 4 wins already and a trip
to Croatia in October to
compete in the Wild Boar Valley Challenge our prize for winning the welsh
extreme. We will be the first UK team to compete in the event.
You can check us out on Face book and watch us in action
on our You tube channel.
Due to continuing success we have decided to launch
Hybrid4x4.com to offer quality products to the off road market and general
winch market that have been tried and tested on our own challenge trucks.
All our products meet the approval of me and my
team. And have been sourced to offer the our customers a very competitive
price.
We are always keen to get feedback from our
customers about our products and you can contact me direct for any tips and advice
@ [email protected]
We hope to launch a forum on the hybrid4x4 site
very soon so everyone can get involved in the hot topics of the moment.
Many thanks for stopping by.
Duncan