► Purpose-built Torsus Praetorian driven
► Off-road bus for the harshest terrain
► It’s bigger – and better – than it looks
When even the instructors at the Millbrook proving ground think this ranks in the top three of weird stuff they’ve been asked to shepherd round the military-grade off-road testing area, you know you’re driving something out of the ordinary. Meet the Torsus Praetorian, a bus for the End of Days if ever there was one.
Yes, I said bus. But this is to your average pensioner chariot what a Ford Ranger Raptor is to a pedal car. It’s built on a modified MAN TGM truck chassis – in fact MAN builds the entire skeleton frame on behalf of Torsus, which does the final assembly in its factory in Slovakia – but it’s easy to miss the scale of the Praetorian. Until you see a person standing next to it.
With 35 seats, 6.9 litres, 12 speeds, a serious amount of four-wheel drive and a paint finish called Bullet Liner, it is easily one of the wildest machines I’ve ever been temporarily in charge of.
At a glance
Pros: Immense off-road capability, well put together, surprisingly easy to drive, plugs a gap in the MPV market
Cons: Finding a parking space won’t be easy (but then, who’s going to complain)
What’s new?
‘Call that a niche? This is a niche!’ said no-one at Torsus, ever. Probably. But the concept for the Praetorian sprung out of a realisation that nobody was building sensible, safe personnel transport for harsh environments – such as the mining industry and international aid programmes.
With a background in supplying vehicles for the latter in particular, Ukrainian-born but now Prague-based firm Pulsar Expo set out to change this by repurposing its fleet business. In 2017, CEO Vakhtang Dzhukashvili and director of strategy Yuliya Khomych swerved Torsus into a bespoke off-road vehicle creator, developing first the Praetorian and then the Torsus Terrastorm. The latter being an upgraded version of the MAN TGE large van for less supersized but still extreme civilian and military applications.
The key to what makes the Praetorian stand out among whatever you might call its peers is that it’s fully homologated as a bus. Rather than simply being a truck with seats in. This means proper protection for all 34 passengers as well as the driver, including roll-over protection. Not easy – or cheap – to achieve with a vehicle the size of a bungalow that’s also capable of crossing very inhospitable terrain.
Development has been if not constant then certainly determined, and on-going. Passengering somewhere in the back during my efforts to avoid doing too much damage to the Millbrook scenery, Dzhukashvili cheerfully remarks that travelling in the original version was akin to being put through a washing machine. Now the structure is far more rigid and the part-air suspension eases you over even quite dramatic obstructions in something close to comfort.
Fancy your own ride in one? Then as an alternative to joining some kind of aid convoy or a mining operation, get yourself to Mount Etna, where a small fleet is used to ferry tourists up the side of a live volcano.
What are the specs?
The Praetorian is propelled by a 286bhp variant of the MAN D0836 engine, a 6.9-litre six-cylinder turbodiesel. Doesn’t sound like much power for a vehicle that weighs around 10 tonnes, but the horses are supported by 845lb ft of torque – so although I don’t have a 0-62mph time to quote for you I am pretty confident the Torsus could pull down a house if you needed it to.
The engine talks to all four wheels via a 12-speed ZF automated gearbox with what’s described as an offroad shift strategy – more on that in a moment. There are three locking differentials, the one on the front only really for use when travelling in a straight line, and Michelin off-road tyres.
Approach angle is 28 degrees, departure angle 22 degrees, and breakover angle 41 degrees. It’ll climb a 65 per cent gradient, traverse a 33.5 degree side slope (would have been fun to be there when Torsus discovered 34 degrees was 0.5 too much), and can wade depths of up to 680mm, albeit with an upgrade.
The darn thing is nearly 9 metres long, over 2.5 metres wide and almost 4 metres tall. Fuel economy figures are suspiciously absent from the spec sheet, but it has a 300-litre tank, so range shouldn’t be a problem – and the Euro 6E version carries 35 litres of AdBlue; that’s about as much emissions additive as a Toyota Yaris carries petrol.
Don’t need 34 passenger seats or got your own upholsterer you want to keep in business? In addition to the fully fitted bus variant, Torsus will supply the Praetorian as an empty shell for your own conversion requirements. That said, it also has an inhouse R&D department that will be happy to explore any client’s individual requests.
How does it drive?
Even getting into the driver’s seat is an adventure in one of these. For some reason we’re using the passenger access via the side door, which means climbing over the substantial centre console and dropping down into the chair. It’s like getting into the cockpit of a fighter jet, somehow, albeit one with a steering wheel the size of a bass drum instead of a joystick.
A both pedals are crammed to the right side of the steering column while manual gearchanges are requested via a chunky stalk that you rotate back and forth on the same side. The result is not instantaneous, but better than leaving the bus to its own devices offroad, according to Millbrook’s instructors, as you don’t want it to go into neutral while going up or downhill; when manually in charge of those situations you pick a gear early and stick with it. The moment between ratios is… ponderous.
A sequence of switches on the dashboard control the diffs, which I’m told in no uncertain terms to leave well alone unless commanded otherwise – Millbrook’s team clearly not willing to risk me lunching any significant pieces of undercarriage. This is actually a bit of a theme for my test drive, but to be fair to them, I’m the very first motoring writer allowed out in this monster contraption, and they’re clearly worried about the damage I might do. To Millbrook more than the bus, I’m sure.
As such we take a rather leisurely trip around the available obstacles, getting no higher than sixth gear, and that for only the briefest of moments – I can sense Dzhukashvili in the back, restraining himself from urging us to go faster. But trundling along, perched over the front axle, and conscious of the vast turning circle, it’s not speed that’s on my mind so much as inevitability.
Driven in a considered fashion like this, taking care not to inadvertently crush small communities by mis-judging the steering angle, it really doesn’t feel like very much could bring the Praetorian to a halt. On a whim, the instructors direct me over a sort of log and ditch arrangement they haven’t previously attempted, and the bus just sails calmly over it. We ford a pond. We climb innumerable hills, engine roaring away seemingly ambivalent to the choice of gear. We knock branches aside. Small trees. Mountains. We nose our way down steep banks and overlook several counties from the height of the cab. I feel like planting a flag and declaring myself conqueror.
Almost none of these are offroad experiences I haven’t had in other vehicles before – including at this very proving ground. Yet never have I felt quite so unstoppable, and never have I been in a position where an entire class of school children and their teacher and their resident assistants could have comfortably come along for the ride. Not that I’d want that level of responsibility, but as a device for hauling people over challenging territory it’s hard to imagine anything being more effective – or necessary.
Wouldn’t fancy trying to negotiate the Hemel Hempstead magic roundabout in it, mind you. Though I suppose not many other drivers would want to argue about the right of way.
What about the interior?
Well, it’s spacious. Cab aside, which is essentially truck on stilts and lots of buttons, the rear rows of seating look nicely finished – very much akin to a luxury coach, in fact.
Torsus offers a selection of colours for these, but also a choice of Comfort and Extra Comfort, the latter reducing the passenger seat count from 34 to 32. There are storage lockers underneath and at the back, plus an overhead shelf around the entire rear compartment.
Before you buy
We haven’t yet talked about price. Tempting to tell you to sit down, since there are so many seats to choose from, but actually, given the bespoke nature of the beast, the fully fitted Praetorian Transporter variant’s €240,500 starting price (around £200,500) doesn’t seem bad value. Afterall, that’s less than £6000 per passenger, and by that measure you pay more for an entry-level Volkswagen Tiguan.
Prefer to do your own interior? The Praetorian Shell costs from €223,510 (£186,300). Got an excavation in the middle of nowhere? The Praetorian Minesite starts at €236,900 (£197,400).
Other features worth noting include the paint, which comes in a choice of coloured Bullet Liner – an ultra-tough industrial coating intended to enhance an already impressive amount of corrosion and damage protection afforded by the frame finishing process and exterior plastic composite cladding. And as well as a number of existing accessories, the Torsus R&D department has scope to offer bespoke solutions, including for items such as doors and right-hand drive conversion.
Torsus Praetorian verdict
Want one. Obviously. Preferably as a fully fitted camper. Parking it outside the house is going to be an issue unless you can live without daylight, though, and the supermarket run will be a little trickier due to all the insurance claims. But you wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else dinking your door, and the views at the campsite would be spectacular.
More seriously, the Praetorian appears to be a remarkable solution to an identifiable concern – keeping teams of people safe while travelling where roads don’t usually go.