Land Cruisers and Humvees are all very well in their way and a Unimog will go up the side of a house with the right tyres - but they all yield pride of place to this heavily modified Russian Ural 4x4.
This uber-Hummer of the Urals was built by SpecAutoTrans, bespoke purveyors of unbreakable transport to Russia's hunting fraternity - and it has an automatic transmission.
Off-roading in the uncompromising terrain of the Ural Mountains is hard going and most customers specify a manual gearbox in the belief that it's better suited to the difficult conditions.
But the Ural has an American-made, 127kW Caterpillar engine so when SpecAutoTrans decided to challenge this perception, fitting an Allison automatic transmission was a relatively straightforward conversion - but how would it work?
Russia has a rich variety of game and hunting seasons often overlap so "snowfari" vehicles have to operate all year round in any weather, with air conditioning, heatable seats that convert into bunks and specialised stowage for hunting equipment.
SpecAutoTrans CEO Sergey Schleiger said: "Early spring is a bad time to travel in the Urals because there's still deep snow in some places, ice and sleet in others - but we took the Ural automatic on a hunting expedition to Rostov-on-Don and it was more than a match for the weather and the rugged terrain."
Getting to remote destinations such as Rostov-on-Don entails hours of driving over uneven terrain, sometimes up 1200m slopes.
Schleiger said: "The transmission automatically selects the best gear so the driver can focus on navigating the terrain - and the engine and driveline are protected from over-revving."
The big surprise, however, was that fuel consumption improved by 2.5 to three litres/100km compared to a truck with the same engine and a manual gearbox.
"That was an unexpected bonus," said Schleiger, "Savings like that add up on long trips."
He now considers an automatic transmission a better choice for hunting vehicles.
"Getting there is less tiring," he said, "and you have more energy for the real purpose of the trip - hunting."