land rover trek 2021

Land Rover Trek 2021: We came, we saw, we won

The Land Rover Trek 2021 competition takes place at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. The many acres of trails and forest provide a perfect place for the automaker to put its vehicles and people to the test. This competition serves as a platform for dealer teams to show how well they know the product, what it can do, and how capable they are as well. I competed in a media wave of the event and I, along with my teammates Tommy Mica and Bryon Dorr, kicked a whole lot of butt.

Our vehicle for the event is the Land Rover Defender P300. It’s the four-cylinder turbocharged model, and this particular truck is a limited-edition Trek version. Each of the 70 or so Trek models is bought by the competing dealerships, so it’s a good thing we didn’t bash ours up. These trucks get extra off-road lighting, a roof rack with a host of gear, a winch, limb risers, the onboard air compressor system, and a bag full of recovery gear in the rear. Also, the Land Rover Trek organizers put foil-wrapped breakfast sandwiches under the hood for us so we had a nice hot treat later in the morning.

The challenges themselves are extremely varied. From real-deal mud-slinging and rock crawling off-roading to showing that you know how to use the winch, navigate using a compass or UTM coordinates, change a tire on the trail, and use the devil’s device known as a hi-lift jack.

Each challenge is scored based on both time and how well you accomplish the given task. And the very first task is actually finding your vehicle. We ran a half-mile or so to a point where we were given coordinates. That’s where we’d find our truck, which was another mile or more in a different direction. We got there in good time and saw most of the other trucks still there, which meant we could execute our strategy as we planned the night prior.

Start with the far challenges, and work our way back to then past camp for the other challenges before returning to basecamp prior to the cutoff time. After which, you’d receive penalty minutes. We got there with seven minutes remaining. And then at the award ceremony that followed, we learned that we won the whole thing. In fact, if you look at the scoresheet shown in the video, you can see we kicked quite a bit of ass.

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5 responses to “Land Rover Trek 2021: We came, we saw, we won”

  1. OA5599 Avatar
    OA5599

    Were the vehicles different from each other in any obvious way (such as slightly different graphics or a competition number)? It would be interesting to find out whether the dealers tried to get the winning truck from your round, so that when they bring it back to their dealership for eventual retail sale, they can stress to the customer that it came in first place.

    1. Jeff Glucker Avatar
      Jeff Glucker

      These were already owned by the respective dealers, as each had that dealer team name (e.g. Land Rover Mission Viejo) on it with the team member names on the glass.
      Each truck is the same. I took a picture of my truck with the team member names on it so I could later let them know that I farted in their truck, if I ever met them.

  2. Fuhrman16 Avatar
    Fuhrman16

    Congrats on the win Glucker! Sounds like it was a fun time, high-lift jack part not withstanding.

    1. OA5599 Avatar
      OA5599

      Jeff won an award for jacking, with Lindsey Vonn present. What a happy ending.

  3. Tiller188 Avatar
    Tiller188

    “Also, the Land Rover Trek organizers put foil-wrapped breakfast sandwiches under the hood for us so we had a nice hot treat later in the morning.” For whatever reason, for me this lent a lot of charm and dirt-under-the-fingernails legitimacy to this whole deal, nevermind the fact that the various challenges already sound plenty real. That was just the cherry on top of an event that I’m quite happy sounds like it was a serious test of the competitors’ and the trucks’ mettle, rather than the marketing cakewalk it could have been, especially for a brand like Land Rover that, as capable as it is, is definitely positioned as a luxury make.

    Also, of all the things that “the devil’s device” could have been a euphemism for, I wouldn’t have picked “hi-lift jack”, but maybe I just don’t have enough off-roading knowledge…

    I regret that I have but two thumbs up to give for your team name.