Why do we get excited when we hear the words 鈥渞oad trip鈥? For me, it鈥檚 not the prospect of sitting in traffic or logging long hours on boring highways that鈥檚 exciting鈥攊t鈥檚 the adventure. Which means that, in my humble opinion, the best adventuremobile is my old Land Rover Discovery.
There are only three Land Rovers that matter in this realm: The boxy Defender is more fashionable than my Disco, but it has the road manners of a particularly unrefined tractor. The Range Rover is luxurious, but its plush air suspension is fragile. The first-generation Discovery, on the other hand, managed to combine most of the off-road capability of the Defender with most of the refinement of the Range Rover.
Describe the perfect formula for a truck and you鈥檒l probably end up with something that has a short wheelbase, four doors, a fuel-injected V8 engine, solid axles, and coil springs on all four corners. The Discovery鈥檚 100-inch wheelbase is nearly as short as that of a two-door Jeep Wrangler, but in a body that actually has space inside for people and gear. Based on an old Buick motor punched out to 4.0 liters, Land Rover鈥檚 all-aluminum V8 is both light and, for the time, powerful. Its solid axles maximize articulation, allowing you to keep all four wheels on the ground through truly gnarly terrain, but unlike most similar designs, it handles聽well on the road too, thanks to the coil springs.
On top of that solid stock platform, my Disco has been lifted onto large tires and fitted with steel bumpers and rock rails. Together, those modifications give it the angles, clearance, and protection necessary to clear pretty much any obstacle you find off-road. Underneath, Land Rover鈥檚 unique full-time four-wheel-drive system has been augmented by locking differentials, front and rear. If you鈥檝e taken the time to learn how four-wheel drive works, you鈥檒l know that it鈥檚 only with those components that you can truly lock the speed of all four wheels together, achieving maximum traction. All together, those changes work with the merits of the stock platform to create a vehicle that鈥檚 not only unstoppable off-road, but actually pretty decent on it, too.
What that means for road trips is that I never have to sleep in a motel or a group campground. Instead, once the day starts waning, I just look for a patch of public land (the green stuff) on Google Maps and find a dirt road that winds up into it. There, I can camp anywhere I please, away from other people, and often as deep into unspoiled nature as you鈥檇 get on a backpacking trip. Every single night.
In those national forests and on that BLM land, with no real planning or effort required, I鈥檝e had some of my best nights outdoors. Once, in Oregon, I sat by the campfire with my dog, listening to wolves howl. One night in California, a Native American woman on an LSD trip wandered into camp and slept by my fire. In the morning, she gave me a fan she鈥檇 made from turkey and pheasant feathers before walking back into the woods. If I have the right license and it鈥檚 the right time of year, I might put an arrow in a rabbit and cook it over the fire for dinner. Sounds better than a night at a Motel 6, right?
Of course, road trips are as much about meeting new people as they are about seeing new places. As you can see, the Land Rover really helps there, too. It鈥檚 classy enough that valets park it out front at the fancy hotels I occasionally book on the way home from a really big adventure. But it鈥檚 oily enough that I don鈥檛 get shaken down for bribes south of the border. This thing is kryptonite for 5-0 back here in the United States. I鈥檝e never gotten a ticket in it, and not just because it鈥檚 slow. Maybe it鈥檚 the shovel, or the winch, or the big dog sticking his head out the window, but if I pull up in a small town, the local sheriff will inevitably swing by to say hi and speak to me like an old friend. This is generally the opposite reaction I get when I鈥檓 driving something newer and fancier.
Those newer, nicer vehicles cover miles easily, but there鈥檚 just no sense of occasion in them. Where they鈥檙e just appliances, getting me where I want to go with efficient ease, my Land Rover feels like an old, cantankerous friend who鈥檚 along for the journey. Its heavy driveshafts thrum harmoniously as the landscape rolls by outside its greasy fingerprint-stained windows, giving even the most mundane trip a sense of grand occasion.
Bogged down in the day-to-day reality of buying our first house and moving to Montana, I had actually resolved to sell the Land Rover back to the guy I bought it from. It鈥檚 too tall to fit in our new garage, and the roads up there get heavily salted in winter鈥攁 potential death sentence for older vehicles. But you know what? After writing this, I鈥檝e decided it鈥檚 worth solving those two problems just so I can still take this thing on summer road trips. I鈥檓 going to keep this truck forever.