These guys tried to drive the whole way across America off-road in a $2,500 unreliable car to see if it would survive
- This guy bought a $2,500 Land Rover discovery to drive across the US
- The journey mainly took place off-road
- The goal was to test the car’s reliability
Published on Jan 18, 2025 at 12:00 PM (UTC+4)
by Alessandro Renesis
Last updated on Jan 13, 2025 at 7:56 PM (UTC+4)
Edited by
Tom Wood
These guys tried driving across America on the TransAmerica Trail using a Land Rover Discovery they bought for $2,500.
The Land Rover Discovery can be notoriously very unreliable, especially if it’s a used model with a lot of miles on the clock.
Amazingly, this one did better than expected.
The only question is whether that proves the Discovery is reliable, or it’s just the exception that proves the rule.
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The reason why they chose a Land Rover Discovery
Jackson Kessler, the man behind the Captain Crankshaft YouTube channel, said the whole point was to verify whether the Land Rover is truly as unreliable as people think.
“Will the car make it? We genuinely don’t know,” he said in the video.
The idea was to set off from North Carolina and stay off the beaten path as much as possible, along some sections of the TransAmerica Trail.
Obviously you can’t travel across the United States without using highways and freeways from time to time, but their idea was to avoid them unless absolutely necessary.
They took the Land Rover on a journey through Oklahoma, then across the Rockies, the Moab and Mojave desert.
The section between the Great Smoky Mountains and Oklahoma was the most challenging one, with the car breaking down a few times, chiefly due to battery-related issues.
However, the car evidently found its footing and the rest of the journey was (almost) trouble free.
Are Land Rovers really unreliable?
Land Rover vehicles are often considered unreliable, and even though this is partly a myth, there’s also an element of truth to it.
Some Range Rover models, for example, have a terrible track record when it comes to reliability, and this is why they often end up abandoned in large car graveyards.
It’s because they’re just too expensive to fix.
By the way, the next Range Rover will be electric so the one thing we know for sure is it won’t have the same problems as the old one.
Having said that, sometimes old Land Rover age like fine wine.
Another YouTuber bought an old Discovery and it coped surprisingly well with tough off-road terrain.
With the old Defender, it was a bit hit or miss, but there aren’t any complaints with the current-gen, and hopefully it’ll be the same with the one coming later this year.
