Jimny 5th wheel

An idle half 4 in the morning thought. On the basis that you at least used to be able to turn a 90 into an articulated tractor trailer combo and therefore tow a greater mass partly because of the trailer imposing a load on the prime mover and also the brake being coupled instead of overrun. Would it be possible to do the same with a jimny, obviously a lot of work and expenses for what you could do with a pickup and standard trailer but the main benefit would be overall length reduction and associated manoeuvrability.  Think modernised Scammel Scarab with a livestock body instead of a goods body but with a higher road speed and the stability of 4 tractor wheels instead of 3. Would that be able to be registered for the road?  If it were as a tractor B then the abs would free it for road speeds but I don't know what else would be required and how much weight it could potentially carry. Just a thought. 

Have you seen this Beetle one before?

Not sure if a towball bolted to the roof would be allowed in the UK, would probably work better on a tray back conversion to keep the CoG down.

Oh yeah definitely need to take the back off the jimny and run the coupling right off the chassis like a proper tractor unit.

The Jimny is mych lighter built over a Defender, which is quite heavy duty. However, I can't see why the same wouldn't apply. Obviously with a Land Rover you could buy a pickup or even a chassis cap variant, which isn't an option with the Jimny, so much more bespoke work.

The Defender was also available in different wheelbases, which might have some impact.

Ultimately the Land Rover is rated much higher in terms of payload and gross train weight than the Jimny. So even within the limits of vehicle class and driving licence you can maximise what is available. With the Jimny you are likely heavily restricted by the factory ratings. I'd guess you'd need to "manufacture/re-manufacture" a vehicle under a different name, and have it officially rated with higher payload and towing capacities to keep it road legal in the UK.

Not impossible, but I'd guess expensive and likely needing some kind of financial backing to make it all happen.

That reminds me that  YOMPER  extend the chassis and get them reclassified for greater weight capacity.  To the point I don't even think they have Suzuki on the log book any more, but Yomper. 

Defenders have a 3,500kg towing capacity and some models have a payload of over a 1000kg. Combined this gives a really useful capacity.
A Jimny has a towing capacity of 1300kg and a payload of barely 300kg. It's a lot of work for very little benefit.