Anything from Icom, Yeasu, or Vertex would be OK in my book. The later Kenwoods are supposedly good too, but I'm gun-shy after dealing with the 261A and have no exerpience with them. The Icom V8000 used to be the default radio for chase crews. I've kinda been out of that scene for a couple years but I understand the
Yeasu FT-2980R is now that or nearly so.
Something about VHF mobiles & HT's that should not be overlooked: remote programming. This can take two forms; A) a program on a lap-top that looks like an Excel Spreadsheet coupled with a comms cable to download the program into the radio; B) radio to radio program cloning done with a simple cable. If the Kenwood TM-261A's had had either of these features perhaps I wouldn't hate them so much. Programming them manually was very painful, and one stupid button push could destroy all or part of the programming! The cloning is a useful feature in the field. Got a radio with a messed-up program? Easy to fix, the procedure usually works like this: Turn off both a 'good' radio and the 'bad' radio, connect the clone cable to both radios, Turn on the 'good' radio, turn on the 'bad' radio & watch its display. Shortly it will indicate re-programming complete. We've done it to the race truck's radio in well under 5 mins in the middle of a race.
Can buy both the programing program and it's comms cable and the cloning cable, but if you look into it you can probably make the cloning cable for less. In the case of the V8k the programming & cloning cables plug into the remote speaker jack and use the outer and middle conductors only. 25' of Cat-5e cable (using only one twisted pair) and two 3.5mm jacks makes a cloning cable for those.
It is good to also make up a laminated frequency list along with instructions on how to dial in to that or one of those freqs and hand one of these out to everyone, vets and nooB's alike. Then should someone's radio get completely messed up they still have a chance at being able to call out. This is what drives my suggestion that any nooB's be directed to one particular make & model radio. So that there will be others who can fix the problem if they can't.
Consider designating a main comms freq and one or more chat freqs to keep the main clear for group needs. Really frustrating to try to call out "Hey, I'm over-heating" to the group when two guys are just BSing and hogging the freq. The chase crew that I used to work with had a 3 ring binder handed out for every Baja race that had all of the info anyone could ever need to know about that particular trip in it. Itinerary, Radio freqs, GPS coords for absolute stops and possible stops, some specific situation formalities (asking for the "weather" when trying to pass a slow vehicle that part of the group has passed), race course map, etc., etc., etc.
I've only ever seen NMO type antenna bases used in desert racing, so those are what I buy. I tend to buy No Ground Plane (NGP) antennas so that they'll work anywhere, and as a bonus they have gain when I can supply a ground plane. However a month ago I talked to the weatherman at a race in Spangler Hills OHV area near Ridgecrest from Lone Pine with a V8k and an NGP antenna on a short mast (to get it above the roof of our pop-top camper) with no ground plane, in Simplex! Google maps says by road that is 94 miles, straight line it is still well over 75 miles. Comms were clean and clear, with a normal squelch setting.
Lately I've been buying coax from West Marine because the cable they sell has a multi-strand center conductor and I'm finding that this stands up to mobile use better than single strand center conductor coax. I suspect that in absolute terms multi-center strand coax is poorer performing than single center strand coax, but I'm not seeing it in my tuning and use.
stop me before I type too much.......
