Torsus Terrastorm 2024 review | First Drive

When someone says to you “do you want to drive a reinforced van off road?” you do not say no. When someone then asks if you want to also drive the ambulance version of it on the same road where James Bond crashed his Aston Martin DBS… well, there’s very little time between question’s end and “yes.”

Meet the Torsus Terrastorm. At its most basic, this is a Volkswagen Crafter van that’s been lifted a little bit. In reality, it is a machine of far more depth. The kind of vehicle that seems like something made just because someone thought that they could. But it is a machine that will save lives and transform communities all over the globe, and today we have most of Millbrook’s giant testing grounds to see exactly how it will do that.

Obviously it looks like a Volkswagen Crafter (or a MAN TGE if you know your vans). But how many of the Crafters that you see out and about delivering Amazon parcels ride this high? And how many of them have such chunky bumpers… or a snorkel? None. They’ve all got rusted arches and sit too low on one corner after mounting a few too many curbs at speed. They do not look this smart.

The Terrastorm isn’t designed specifically to look good, and that’s probably why it does. It sits higher, has big chunky protection all the way around, which is covered in special scratch resistant paint, and has Torsus set out in large letters across the grille. 

Well, that’s what one of them looks like. We’re here to see three completely different Terrastorms today. One is kitted out in the back and enough kit to takeover a small country, but we’ll come to that later. Terrastorm two is blue, white and red and has the word Ambulance scrawled across its panels. It still sits high and has the big chunky bumpers and paint, but it’s lost the roof rack etc. and gained flashing lights, and a set of air horns on the side. No ambulance has ever looked this good.

Terrastorm three? Well that looks like a builders’ double cab. The kind of van you see with a pile of grit in the back that’s got a spade precariously balanced in it. Except this one is camo-painted, and has massive protective bull bars… and it’s bulletproof. The ten-year-old in me is already in love. Sod it, the 36-year-old me is in love.

We can split this into two handy sections. And for that I get to write a sentence that I have never, ever, written before. How did the Ambulance handle on road and how did the military van do off?

Let’s start with a few stats and the ambulance. Every Terrastorm has four-wheel-drive through a haldex differential, a locking differential, integrated winch and a reinforced skid plate. 

If you delve into the details of the Terrastorm’s upgrades even some of the wording just sounds cool. The front suspension is MacPherson strut with Bilstein shock absorbers, and it has adjustable camber built by a company called Ironman 4x4 which can be changed by up to 1.75 degrees each way depending on the conditions. At the rear the trad van leaf springs remain, although the Terrastorm does noticeably have discs all round rather than drums at the back. But it’s got some extra springs, from Ironman 4x4 again, and can be upgraded with big Profender Dakar shocks if you’re going further off-road (as we will later). Chunky BF Goodridge tyres are the only real choice here. 

So, the ambulance. Turns out a rugged off-road ambulance which weighs over 3.5 tonnes kitted out with medical equipment and reinforcements feels like a van to drive. There’s a couple of extra buttons up front, including the big one for the mega air horns that they won’t let me touch, and a small screen to play with some of the other things in the back. But other than that, this is a VW van. 

Obviously with such an amount of kit in the back, acceleration is stifled a little. If you’ve ever seen Casino Royale you know just how steep and twisting the Alpine course is at Millbrook, so the Terrastorm in Ambulance form doesn’t exactly attack the climbs in the way that the Mercedes-AMG GT we drove here a few months back did. But it manages, with the odd forced downshift.

But that’s not the point. What is incredible is how the biggest van I’ve ever been in drives. Not just feeling like a cumbersome, fully laden van, but smoothly. Exactly what you’d need when trying to get a critically injured patient to a hospital. The handling is flat, with the intermediate version of the BF Goodridge tyres (ones made for a hybrid of road and jungle) actually providing more grip than you expect. Steering, fine. Throttle response? Van-like. But this is an impressive machine. An Ambulance that spent last year helping out in Italian floods saving people from where helicopters couldn’t land. The fact that you can to an extent chuck an ambulance into corners is impressive.

But what about off the road? Well, for that let’s move to the second Terrastorm we’ll drive, and Millbrook’s gnarly off-road course. This is where the Terrastorm – despite being from a Czech company and at least part built in Ukraine – was tested. We’re there right after some of the worst weather that has hit central England for a long time, too. Not only are there local roads completely underwater, but the off-road course most recently had military vehicles on it completely ruining the place. So, we’ve got a proper test ahead.

The Terrastorm we’re taking off road is the military spec one, the one that’s going to have a bunch of furious soldiers thrown into the rear and driven to assault some bad guys. And inside it feels even more like a van, actually. The Terrastorm doesn’t even bother with a low-range gearbox, deeming the automatic unit completely fine for the circumstance – it even still has sport mode.

Drop the massive handbrake, stick the Terrastorm into drive and off you go. And that is pretty much the lot. The locking diff is engaged perhaps every now and then, but the reality is that nothing that Millbrook can throw at the Terrastorm phases it. Which would be impressive in an off-roading 4x4, and is even more amazing in a double cab van.

Now we’re off-roading, we should probably go through a different set of stats. The Terrastorm can handle banking up to 28.5 degrees, it can climb up to 65 degrees, wade up to 820mm and has an approach angle of 26 degrees and departure of 26. Not exactly a Wrangler, but a Wrangler can only carry five people…

As we head off to the highest point in Bedfordshire, the Terrastorm is sent through the bits of Millbrook that they don’t normally let us on. It’s pulling itself through the deepest mud, easily hauling up Millbrook’s steepest climb and its hill descent control easily sorts out the terrifying 60 degree concrete descent. That kind of descent is where you put all of your faith and life into the hands of an automatic braking system. And it’s concrete, so grip is a premium. But after the heart-stopping moment that you crest the brow and see the world fall away from you, the Terrastorm catches itself, and then just trundles down as if it was the high street. 

Uphill through incredible mud the Terrastorm’s Haldex system is a marvel. Just keep your foot planted and let it find the grip. A little bit there, a spin of the wheel there, and we’re up a gradient that would flummox many a machine in the dry.

If I could find a criticism, it would be that the hill descent takes an unnerving amount of time to kick in. But in reality, this is off-roading in comfort that I’m yet to experience, even when we went off-roading in a Jeep Grand Cherokee this spring.

Well, this bit is largely up to the use. There are Terrastorms that just look like a normal minibus inside, kitted out with seats for use with tour companies across places like the Atacama desert.

But then there are the interesting ones. The ambulance, for example, has its back kitted out as a full-on medical department. It is able to bring air in and send air out should anything need to be flushed through in an emergency. There are medical bins, light arrays that could blind Bono and electric outputs popping out of every nook and cranny. 

In the front, it’s a Volkswagen Crafter. Even the buttons on the wheel are familiar from the old Passat we had as a long-termer a few years ago. For the rest, well that’s up to your use. In fact it can get even more interesting.

How about the one kitted out to work with mega drone company Evolve? That one looks like an FBI outpost in the back. The kind that you see on a film that’s staking out a terrorist cell on a side street. 

This Terrastorm has been fitted out with enough batteries to run a tethered drone for around eight hours without the engine running, and that could be increased. It’ll run completely black with even the brake lights turned off for creeping into position near a special forces operation, or it could just help to drive a drone into the forest during a search and rescue operation, massively increasing the ability to find people deeper into the jungle. 

Away from that, every Terrastorm gets an air conditioning inlet positioned on the roof, so that if you’re going through a particularly wet area, it will still be able to draw clean air in. The cooling vents for the diffs are also set higher up so that the engine will have died before the diffs do.

Well, what do you even compare the Terrastorm to?

When you think of a specialised off-roading machine it should, to our minds, look mental, be something completely intimidating and require 20 years of hard-core professional driving to use. The Terrastorm is a van that looks like a van and does all the things every kind of van needs to do and can be driven by a complete novice. 

The ability and array of uses for the Torsus Terrastorm is incredible. A first press release about a van that can dig deep into the jungle and climb mountains sounds like a flight of fantasy that only some rich guy might want. But an hour with actual working versions completely changes your mind.

The fact that the basic version of this will be in your hands for €76,580 (about £64,000 at today’s conversion rates) is amazing, that’s way less than a Range Rover for far more kit. You can even get the Ambulance from €130,000 (£109,000), which is amazing.