By Jon Crowley

If you’ve been around the UTV world at all in the last five years, you probably know that I’ve given Robby Gordon and Speed UTV a bit of a hard time. But in my opinion, he brought all the negative press on himself by continually over-promising. While it is true that COVID-19 threw a wrench into all the manufacturers’ plans during 2020-2021, Robby seemed to struggle to meet expectations more than others. 

Our first example of this was broadcast for all to see during King of the Hammers in 2023. Robby was on the entry list, but did not show up for qualifying.  He barely had any time to pre-run and when he did get out to Chocolate Thunder to do so, he had to get towed off the hill. Come race day, He started dead last, but did not show up on the line until 5 minutes after the last car left. He actually finished the first lap (desert) just a few minutes before the top competitors finished the race. And once on his second lap, he broke so deep in a rock canyon that he had a heavy-lift helicopter extract him the next day during the live broadcast of the Every-Man Challenge. Robby’s concept of any exposure is good exposure was never more true.

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Later that spring, at the SxS Adventure Rally in Sand Hollow, I had my first chance to get in a Speed UTV. Nick from Chupacabra had a four-seat El Jefe at the event and let me jump in the passenger seat for a quick rip in the desert. The El Jefe is a good-looking four-seater, and the suspension handled really well.  But it was obvious to me that there were several issues with the car.  In my opinion, While other manufacturers may have their own quality issues, Speed UTV had just not done a thorough job testing the vehicle and customers were basically doing quality assurance. The interesting part for me at the time was that Nick threw me under the bus for my views while trying to stay in good graces with Robby, only to sell his El Jefe soon after…

First Ride: Speed UTV Four Seat El Jefe

Since 2023, I have been fairly quiet on social media regarding Speed UTV, but hoping that Robby could pull it together and bring a solid car to the market. During 2024 and 2025, it did appear that production of Speed UTV vehicles had ramped up, and customers who had been waiting 4+ years for their vehicles were finally being fulfilled.

During the summer of 2025, Kawasaki introduced the new Teryx 4/45 H2, and during that time, Robby had been quite active adding comments to our social media. I responded to Robby that at least Kawasaki and other “real” manufacturers had press events where media could evaluate new vehicles. That prompted Robby to invite me to get in one during UTV Takeover at Sand Hollow.

Fast forward a few months, and I was attending UTV Takeover and was busy covering the event and going on rides. I still had meeting up on my to-do list, but talking about doing something before an event and doing it at the event are two different things.  We all get busy during an event like this, and Robby certainly was.

We finally zeroed in on a time and place, and we made it work.  I met Robby at the Speed UTV trail, and he wanted to take me out in a new Speed UTV El Diablo Rock Edition.  Since we were at one of the premier rock crawling destinations in the country, I thought this was great timing.

According to the website, the new 2026 El Diablo Rock Edition comes with 35-inch tires, full UHMW skid plate, lower transmission gearing (80MPH top speed), and a 6,000 lbs winch. In true Robby fashion, the car we were in did not have the right tires, lower transmission gears, or the winch, but it did have the new “Rock Edition” graphics and probably the right skid plate. We only had about an hour before Robby needed to be back at UTV Takeover for the short course race, so we headed to Double Sammy and Triple 7 to do some rock crawling.

On our way to the rocks, we drove hard through some nasty whoops, and the car performed very well. Since we were pressed for time, I let Robby do all the driving and focused on getting some video clips of him navigating the El Diablo Rock Edition through some technical spots. The takeaways I have from this experience:

• Don’t try to show off a new vehicle that is not properly equipped. The lower transmission gears and more rock-specific tires would have made a big difference in performance.  As it was, Robby had to attack The Chute in “King of the Hammers” style to get up.  Sometimes momentum is your friend, but this doesn’t help illustrate how well a vehicle can crawl.
• As you would expect, Robby has the vehicle set up well for rough terrain – taking on big whoops and ugly g-outs better than any other stock two-seater.
• Front and rear cameras are great for rock crawling.
• The chassis and cage look very well thought out.
• Visibility in the rocks isn’t that great, but Robby did say the seats could be raised without any helmet clearance issues.
• Window nets and 5-point harnesses are nice safety features.
• Bed storage is excellent (able to handle a 35-inch spare).
• Three-speed transmission felt a bit awkward to operate.

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While I believe that Robby Gordon has many great off-road concepts that he has incorporated into Speed UTV products, he greatly underestimated the complications of delivering a production UTV. Building a specific race vehicle for SCORE or Dakar is where he excels – building thousands of production UTVs is not. That being said, Speed UTV continues to improve on its quality and delivery, and I hope they will stay on that trajectory.

I am looking forward to Robby and Speed UTV coming to 2026 King of the Hammers fully prepared and ready to take on the competition. They’ve had plenty of time to get the kinks out, and it is time to put up or shut up!