Most people would agree that British cars are utter rubbish. Period. Alright, I’ll admit it—some of them do look stunning. An Aston Martin DBS, for instance, is an extremely gorgeous marvel of a car. So is the DB5. But looks can be deceiving. Because unless you derive some perverse satisfaction from perpetual humiliation or have an unfulfilled desire to be the punchline of every cheap joke, go ahead and get yourself a Land Rover Defender from the 20th century. Or, better yet, a Range Rover Classic.
(I should clarify here—I used to love them both, by the way.)
Owning one of these magnificent disasters will teach you a priceless lesson: the true scale of suffering you’re capable of enduring.
An opening excerpt from What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Chronicles of Chaos and Courage remains available here. The full book can be ordered here.
💥 BRITISH CARS = BRITISH CURSES — MAYHEM MEETS RAMBO 💥
“Welcome to Bowie, Arizona — Rambo’s hometown and the beginning of yet another breakdown. That green Range Rover Classic? British design at its finest: it leaks, it groans, and it collapses on command. By now, I’m convinced it was less a car and more a mobile oil slick with headlights. This was the start of ‘Do Cars Have a Soul?’ — Part 1 of our long, humiliating love affair with automotive despair. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Everything, obviously.”
“There she is — scrubbing away years of grit, trauma, and structural integrity from our green British disaster. This was the $600 car wash that preceded a full systems collapse. I knew it was over the moment the dirt started crying. Behind that mossy shell lived the soul of a wounded warhorse. Or maybe just corrosion. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Oh, you sweet summer child.”
💥 DESERT SUNSET, DEAD HYDRAULICS, AND ONE VERY PATIENT WOMAN 💥
And her expression? 100% “I told you not to trust Alan, the Gollum of Falconworks.”
“If this Range Rover had a soul, it chose to evacuate through the clutch line. Hydraulic fluid gone. Hope gone. Sunset? Absolutely stunning. Wife? Radiating the kind of controlled rage only achieved by watching your husband spend $600 on a car wash right before the car dies in front of a Harley-Davidson dealership that won’t help. Welcome to Tucson. Welcome to What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”
“Don’t let the golden hour lighting fool you. This was the exact spot where our Range Rover’s clutch line burst like a hydraulic aneurysm. We were parked in front of Old Pueblo Harley-Davidson — a bastion of retail silence where even the mechanics communicated exclusively in prehistoric grunts. But just out of frame? The real saviours: the Kawasaki guys. Tools, advice, moral support — and not one ounce of judgement. Heroes wear green.”
