Donut Media Had Quite the Off-Road Adventure in Utah

Donut tackled some serious terrain in the modified Corvair wagon.

The Donut team had help from Matt’s Off-Road Recovery and its beast of a wagon.Donut via YouTube

The guys at Donut Media have their hands in just about every part of automotive culture, but off-roading hasn’t been one that they’ve spent much time exploring. Editor-in-chief and regular on-camera personality James Pumphrey recently took an opportunity to change that with a trip through the terrain at Sand Hollow, Utah, where he competed against other media personalities paired up with legit off-roaders on some of the most challenging obstacles in the West.

Pumphrey teamed up with Matt from Matt’s Off-Road Recovery, a towing service and YouTube channel with over 1.7 million subscribers. The vehicle he used for the event was a 1961 Corvair Lakewood Wagon riding on a tube chassis with a big LS V-8 and homemade off-road suspension, nicknamed “Morrvair.” Although it looks like a ragged junkyard find, the vehicle is purpose-built for the types of terrain Pumphrey needed to tackle during the film.

Despite facing several obstacles with daunting names ending in “of death,” the team pulled off some impressive moves and made it out relatively unscathed. While he had some of the best spotters in the country and an ultracapable machine, others with similar resources weren’t so lucky.

YouTuber Westen Champlin’s vehicle failed, knocking him out of the competition, but the Morrvair made it through to tell the story, and it even had enough juice left for an old-fashioned tug-of-war after the wheeling. Although the video made the feat look easy, going out unprepared and inexperienced will likely yield the opposite result. In short, don’t be a hero, and know your limits if you’re dead set on tackling the Utah desert.

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