[Graham]

The Ford Ranger's played a strong supporting role throughout - and continued to do so right to the end. Perhaps it needed more work than just detaching it from the display case.  The Touareg didn't do much better either, I suspect for a similar reason.

Well at least nothing fell off - I hope! 

I would say that ballast in the right places was a key advantage, and perhaps smaller front tyres, although they should still be in contact with the track surface to give good stability around the obstacles. Tyre compound did not appear to give much advantage in this plastic track based competition, both the winning SCX Mitsubishi Touareg had standard SCX or NINCO rear tyres.