Tarzan. That’s who you’ve got to blame for all this off-roading malarkey. If it wasn’t for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ choice of using Toyota Land Cruisers on set during the films, this whole wheel-to-wheel desert racing business wouldn’t have happened.

How the hell have we drawn that conclusion? Well, back in 1964, the National Off-Road Racing Association (NORRA) founder Ed Pearlman bought one of the Land Cruisers from the film set to take his 14-year-old son hunting. Unfortunately, days before the father and son trip, he lent the car to a mate. Who grenaded the engine. D’oh.

Instead of cancelling the holiday, he took off the bell-housing, went to a junkyard, and said, “This looks like it’ll fit,” as he stumbled upon a V8 Chevy motor. Being a keen spannersmith, he threw it in the front of the Land Cruiser, welded up the engine mounts, and went hunting. But instead of having the normal Sixties rock-crawler, he had a blooming fast off-roader. From here things quickly snowballed into the first Mexico 1000.

Since that first Land Cruiser, the off-road game has moved on quite a bit. With technology always progressing, off-roaders have gone from cutesy Meyers Manx beach buggies, to rip-snorting 800bhp trophy trucks capable of skating over dishwasher-sized boulders at over 100mph.

As it’s a celebration, the Mexico 1000 incorporates literally everything. For the uninitiated, there are six eras to this rather fabulous vintage race, and they are thus: Pioneer, Legends, Challenger, Vintage, Historic, Evolution.

The different eras are restricted by period correct technology, and then refined even further into classes to even out the playing field more. This is to avoid the temptation of competitors to update their trucks to the highest, fastest and most modern specification possible. They want to keep vintage, vintage. Something classic circuit racing could learn from.

So let’s go into more detail. The Pioneers are the oldest cars, those that were the forefathers of fast off the beaten track. It’s technology that was around from 1967 to ‘75. That’s then sliced up again into four classes; buggies (which are basically tube-frame creations), Volkswagen Beetles, pickup trucks and four-wheel-drives.

Next is the Legend era, representing tech from 1976 to ‘82. The biggest difference here is that independent rear suspension is allowed. Everything VW-based is still on diddy 33-inch tyres and tiny two-inch shocks, so it’s basically the same rules as the Pioneer era, except the body style can be newer.

Challenger era is from 1983 to ’88. It’s when the game started to move on, especially in the suspension department. Custom, off-road-specific shock absorbers are allowed with larger diameters so that they can flow more fluid through the piston and dissipate heat better. Engines are also bigger, as the better damping means the cars can run freer.

Then we’re on to the biggest era: Vintage. This is everything from 1989 to a rolling 20-year-old truck, and is pretty much anything goes, bar modern-day trophy trucks: big engines, big suspension travel and lots of different classes and a wide variety of donor cars.

Historic is up next. That’s for historic trophy trucks that are at least 20 years old. These are still really bloody fast, but not as fast as a modern, cutting-edge trophy truck. It’s also the era that introduces the excellently named truggies – which are essentially a Class 1 trophy truck without fenders.

Finally we have Evolution. This is an umbrella category that encapsulates all modern cars. From Dakar rally raiders to Robby Gordon’s trophy truck, but also UTVs and replicas of older cars.

So now you’ve got the lowdown on what’s what, flick through the gorgeous array of cars above and tell us what’s your favourite. We’ll bring you pics of them, bloodied, bruised and bouncing round the Baja in the coming days. Once we’ve learned our entire book of pace notes, that is…