I'd venture to guess that a good majority of the people reading this would absolutely love to have an EarthRoamer, Sportsmobile, or maybe a custom-designed Fuso-based camper. The reality is that most of us can't simply write a check for one an awesome überland vehicle and we end up buying something on the used market, and modifying it from there. So let's play with some monopoly money here (and a realistic amount of it at that) if $10,000 magically appeared in your account, what would you buy with it? Here's the kicker—you'd have to be able to drive around the world in it.
$10,000 can get you quite a bit on the used market today if you keep your eyes on forum classified ads and your local craigslist. Even pinnacle vehicles such as the 100 Series Toyota Land Cruiser can easily be aquired for that amount these days. Personally, I see two ways to look at it—Buy a capable stock vehicle for more money, which is likely newer, and use that as your vehicle for traversing the globe. This will leave you with less money for useful modifications, for example, if you chose a 100 Series Land Cruiser, you'll have a solid and reliable vehicle that would make it around the world tomorrow, but don't expect to outfit it with a nice bumper and a winch, because there won't be much money left over for anything but basic maintenance.
The other option is to purchase something a bit older, which would obviously leave you more money to outfit the vehicle with a variety of accessories and perhaps tie-up a few loose ends before you took off. A great example could be an older Jeep Wrangler (TJ) like the one shown above, the lower cost of entry as well as the availability of dirt-cheap replacement parts mean that you could almost rebuild the entire vehicle before you left—and we all know there's a million cheap bolt-ons for the vehicle too. If you went this route, it wouldn't be out of the question to have a fridge and some accessories that would make day-to-day life on the road a little more pleasant...although with that budget you won't be able to take care of the TJ's greatest downfall—space. But that's why there's plenty of options in this category.
Tell us how you'd do it, and what you'd do to the vehicle below in the comments—remember, keep it under $10,000...
Image Courtesy of GammaNine. [link]
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