Personally I would not put good money into a Bedford, too old, no PS as mentioned and horrible ride, the Leyland Daf is better but built to a price and not very capable off road, the clutch is weak IMO and there are much better options.

Renault is served well in Europe, parts of Africa and South America, but not anywhere else the TRMs have been going a long time and I would take a newer model over the British vehicles.

Magirus build very good trucks with generally excellent off road ability, they are also very well engineered, would be fairly high on my list.

MAN or Steyr - its difficult to get past these, a friend did a very nice conversion of a Steyr 12s 4x4 from a grit spreader to an overland truck and it was an excellent base vehicle, extremely capable in the Sahara and very reliable

Mercedes, Ive driven a lot of them and they are good vehicles, they have good spares worldwide though I find them quite heavy, but should not be overlooked, the V8 diesels are very good engines and I much prefer them to the turbo straight 6 for power and reliablity, though with my money I would choose a MAN or Steyr base vehicle. The Unimog/Overlook have great off road ability and are excellent vehicles but not everyones cup of tea for an overlander.

Zil/ Ural sorry never driven or worked on them, if you are going to be driving through Russia in colder weather the gas/petrol engines are the way to go - as long as you can afford the fuel here in Europe - (buy in Russia/sell or store in Russia?)

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Cheers
Grif

'11 KTM 450 EXC
'09 Suzuki DR650
'00 Discovery Series 2 V8
'95 Defender 90 300 Tdi Overlander
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