Last weekend, Pat joined the team at Clearview Accessories to celebrate a pretty significant milestone: 20 years in the Australian 4X4 industry.
The birthday bash brought together plenty of familiar faces from across the touring and aftermarket world, marking two decades since Clearview first started building towing mirrors for Aussie conditions.
It’s a milestone worth celebrating because lasting 20 years in the 4X4 aftermarket is no small feat. Products change, trends come and go, and plenty of brands disappear along the way. Clearview, though, has become part of the Australian touring landscape.
Head down almost any highway towards the bush, beach or red dirt and chances are you won’t have to look far before spotting a set of Clearview Towing Mirrors hanging from the side of a loaded touring rig.
That makes the 20th birthday more than just an excuse for a party. It’s a chance to look back at how a home-grown towing mirror became one of the most recognisable accessories in Australian 4X4 touring.
From one towing mirror to an Australian 4X4 brand
Clearview’s story started back in 2006, when founder Mike Cowan went looking for a towing mirror that suited what he needed and couldn’t find one.
The solution was simple enough: build one.
What started as a solution to one bloke’s towing problem eventually became Clearview Towing Mirrors, and from there the business continued to grow.
Those early mirrors established the formula that Clearview has stuck with ever since: build something specifically for Australian conditions, make it properly, and make sure it can handle the sort of punishment touring vehicles inevitably encounter.
Today, Clearview manufactures a much broader range of touring accessories, but towing mirrors remain at the heart of the company. Clearview says its mirrors are Australian owned and built, with final assembly, inspection and testing carried out at its Melbourne facility.
Twenty years is a pretty good torture test
Anyone can claim an accessory is tough. Twenty years of customers dragging them across Australia is a slightly more convincing test.
Corrugations have an amazing ability to expose poor engineering. Add bulldust, rain, coastal salt, vibration, thousands of kilometres of highway driving and the occasional tree branch and touring gear lives a considerably harder life than most aftermarket accessories.
That’s especially true for towing mirrors. They’re hanging outside the vehicle, constantly exposed to the elements and vibration, while also needing to hold a stable image behind a caravan or trailer. A mirror that’s brilliant in the showroom but shaking itself silly halfway across the Plenty Highway isn’t particularly useful.
Clearview’s current mirrors use vehicle-specific mounting bases, diecast aluminium bases, steel arms, stainless steel cams and corrosion-resistant finishes. More importantly, they’re designed around the vehicles they’re fitted to rather than being a universal accessory strapped over the factory mirror. That philosophy has helped make Clearviews a common sight on Australian touring vehicles.
Built to be repaired, not thrown away
There’s another part of longevity that doesn’t get talked about enough in the 4X4 industry: spare parts. Touring gear gets damaged. You can build something as tough as you like, but eventually someone will clip a branch, misjudge a tight track or simply wear something out after years of use.
Clearview recently retired its Original Towing Mirror after 17 years. What impressed us wasn’t simply how long the product remained on the market, but what happened afterwards. Clearview says it’ll continue supporting Original mirrors with spare parts and honour existing warranties despite production ending. That’s exactly the sort of thing remote-area travellers should care about.
The latest Next Gen and Compact mirrors also carry a three-year manufacturer warranty covering parts and labour, along with seven years of parts replacement warranty. It reflects an increasingly rare philosophy: good gear shouldn’t automatically become disposable gear.
Australian touring has changed
The vehicles Clearview mirrors bolt onto today look very different from the touring rigs running around when the company started in 2006. Dual-cab utes have become Australia’s touring vehicle of choice. Caravans have become bigger. Vehicles carry more electrical equipment, more cameras and increasingly complex driver-assistance technology.
Clearview has had to evolve with them. The Original mirror eventually spawned newer generations including the Compact and Next Gen designs, while Clearview itself expanded beyond mirrors into fridge slides, steps, storage and other touring accessories.
Yet the basic job remains unchanged.
Build something a tourer can bolt onto their 4X4 and trust when they’re hundreds of kilometres from home.
Here’s to the next 20
We’ve spent plenty of time travelling with Clearview gear fitted to our vehicles over the years, which makes this anniversary a particularly good one to acknowledge. Because twenty years in the Australian 4X4 industry isn’t achieved through one clever product launch.
It’s built through thousands of trips, millions of kilometres, corrugations, creek crossings, towing holidays and touring vehicles heading into places where equipment simply needs to work.
Clearview started with one bloke trying to build himself a better towing mirror. Twenty years later, those mirrors have become one of the most recognisable accessories hanging from Australian touring 4X4s, while the Clearview range has grown well beyond mirrors to include gear like fridge slides, Power Slides, pantries and other touring accessories designed around the same idea of making life on the road easier.
That’s not a bad legacy. And if the first twenty years are anything to go by, we suspect there are plenty more kilometres still to come.
