Nothing Good Ever Comes from Burying a Range Rover for a Year
After one YouTuber buries then exhumes mechanically trashed Ranger Rover, he discovers that some things can’t be saved.
It’s true Land Rover builds some pretty durable rides, including the original Defender and Range Rover Classic. The latter, in fact, was designed so that it could be hosed out after a weekend tackling the mud and dust. It was only in the past couple of decades or so that the Range Rover — and the Land Rover brand overall — became known more for their luxury than their off-road cred.
That said, there’s just some things a Range Rover can’t ever overcome. Like a year-long burial in a Kansas field, followed by a ton of rain weeks before its exhumation. This is what YouTuber Freddy ‘Tavarish’ Hernandez discovered for himself when he visited his friend and fellow YouTuber Tyler Hoover to attempt to resurrect yet another basket case.
“Today’s gonna be a different kind of day,” Hernandez says. “I’m actually not in Florida, even though it really does feel like Florida; it’s a hundred degrees. I’m in Kansas, and I’m standing in front of my brand-new car. This is a 2003 or [2004] — I actually don’t know what year it is — it’s a Range Rover, and I just spent some time taking it out of the ground.”
And by he, he meant the pros with their backhoes carefully digging out the Range Rover Hoover buried a year earlier. Unfortunately, Kansas (and the Great Plains as a whole) has experienced more than its fair share of rain over the past few months, pushing the water table up to the SUV’s doors. The immense flooding of the hole certainly did not make anyone confident that the Range Rover survived its year underground, especially once the SUV was finally exhumed with a broken windshield.
“It was mechanically totaled,” Hoover tells Hernandez as to why he buried it in the first place. “It’s a beautiful Range Rover — or once upon a time, it was — but is probably $8,000 worth of work to be running and driving again, and then it would only be worth about $3,000 or $4,000 once you did that. So, there was no point. I could have junked it, but burying seemed much like a better idea.”
Following a quick bath, Hernandez had the busted Range Rover delivered to the shop owned by Hoover’s friend, mechanic, and fellow YouTuber, David ‘Car Wizard’ Long. There, he discovers the rear suspension is bonked, the electrical system is shot, and there’s water mixing in with the oil and fuel in the engine and fuel tank. Oh, and the interior smells like a porta-potty. For the time being, though, Hernandez wants to get the rear back up, then run 12 volts through the battery to determine if anything works, or to start a big fire.
“I think if we didn’t have so much rain here recently in Kansas, it would have been a viable project as far as getting it driving and everything,” Long said. “But the water table came up while it was buried, and pretty much decimated the poor thing.”
Once Long lifted the Range Rover’s rear with a forklift for Hernandez to slide a jack underneath, they discover the rear tires popped off the bead, and the spring conversion is no longer springy. The tires and wheels are then hosed off some more, filled with air, and replaced on the SUV. Alas, the left rear can’t hold air, and to add insult to injury, the engine is super-flooded with water and mud, and the electrical system did not come to life after the 12 volts were applied.
“The question remains: what can we do with this,” asks Hernandez. “This used to be a nice car. Somebody — not me — paid almost $100,000 in today’s money for this car, and it sort of looks like it if you squint really hard from 1,000 feet away. It’s probably worth saving to the right person if you wanted to maybe make it a convertible or something, but this would require tens of thousands of dollars of work and parts. It just isn’t worth it.”
Rather than take the Range Rover to the scrapyard, though, Hernandez has it brought to YouTuber Matt Carriker and his Demolition Ranch for a proper send-off. All because its previous owner decided to put it in the ground for a year. Such a waste of opportunity.
Photos: Screenshots
