I honestly don’t believe that brand exclusive offroad events and gatherings are a thing to be crazy about (except for the bosses of the car industry). Marketing departments of various brands do invest quite an effort to organize them, as well as support brand exclusive clubs, which is understandable. They want to position themselves as THE ONE AND ONLY TRUE OFFROAD BRAND, to thrive on a tradition and get to the emotions of people, to tie them closer to the brand and secure future sales. But, from a purely personal, psychological point of view, such bonds are unnatural. By choosing friends with the vehicle they drive as the main criteria, we’re making too much of a compromise. We’re forcing ourselves to tolerate some jerks that we normally wouldn’t be ready to, only because they’ve chosen to drive the same brand of offroad vehicle as we do. And that can be very stressful, and influence your mood in quite a bad way. It’s bad compromise.
Brand owners keep telling us that all the guys that drive their brand share the same passion. That you’re almost like identical twins, so you’re natural friends. Bullshit! If you try to be honest to yourself, you’ll admit that you choose your friends by their character, and not by the car they drive. And after all these years of experience (which includes several years of leading a brand-exclusive club) I can be quite certain that character, wits and charm is evenly distributed among the Jeep, Toyota, Land Rover, Mercedes, Nissan, Suzuki, Isuzu, you-name-it owners. Of course, every brand will try to convince you that you’ve chosen their vehicle because you’re a pure genius with magical powers, and that their vehicle will help you retain those powers, but you know as well as I do that’s crap and cheap marketing. You’ve chosen your vehicle because you thought it was best suitable to meet your priorities at the moment, so the vehicle should be at your service, and not the other way around – you don’t have to take more compromise than the absolute minimum. And that means that YOU choose your friends, there’s no need to let your vehicle manufacturer do it for you. You’ve done enough for them already by giving them your money.
What is offroading and overlanding all about? I’d say it’s our secret ticket to freedom. And there’s no freedom in forcing ourselves to be members of a sect, travelling for hundreds or thousands of kilometres only to get densely packed under one flag and badge. Getting from a pack called big town, to another pack of hundreds of people called camp, jamboree or whatever. Release your mind. Choose the people you ride with by their essential qualities, by their passions and dreams, by their honesty, which has nothing to do with the badge on their grill. Only then you will be truly happy and able to fulfill your desires. Without car industry imposed compromises.