"So if you're going into the unknown, man, I tend to bring everything."

That's our guide, Taylor Congleton, before ticking off the list of items he's packed into his Land Rover for the afternoon: extra gas cans, fuel filters, jump pack, caulk, screwdrivers, wrenches... The list goes on and on.

We're about to embark on an exploration of Vermont's old logging roads, many of which are designated Class 4 roads, magnets for adventurous off-roaders looking to test their vehicles and their own skill. Spending a few minutes prepping with Taylor makes clear that off-roading is serious business. "There's a perception that it's like load the cooler full of beer, grab beef jerky, and hit the trail," he cautions. "And for me, that's kind of my worst nightmare of being off-road with people. I treat being around five or six thousand pound trucks that are off-balance as kind of a serious thing because heavy metal and soft bodies don't go very well together."

Like any good guide, Taylor is methodically checking the boxes and making a plan with the utmost attention to detail. He's a mix between a backcountry ski guide and a military commander - which makes sense; much of this is informed by his time in the Marines.

We're standing in the middle of a nondescript industrial park in Colchester, Vermont. This is hardly the first place you'd expect to stumble across what is arguably the country's premier Land Rover restoration outfit. However, a quick scan around the lot reveals a sort of heaven for the automotive enthusiast: Defenders, Range Rover Classics, Discoveries, and the occasional Series III are scattered on the premises in various states of disrepair.

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Walking past a rusty Range Rover Classic frame with wiring sticking out in every direction, we poke our heads inside the garage door and are greeted by a 1995 North American Spec Defender 90 in a stunning Arles Blue, looking like it just rolled off the floor in Solihull. It's in the final stages before the customer takes delivery, and Taylor starts visualizing the truck's future. He knows it's destined to be driven over sand and into the ocean, so he starts outlining what the road test will look like: 600 miles of rigorous testing across on-road and off, in the sand and in the water. It's the only way Taylor knows before he'll hand over the keys to a new owner. "Working on the trucks, I always choose to do it the hard way," Taylor says. "And that's not because I like spending 12 hours a day here. It's not because I want to charge the customer for 1.2 hours versus 1 hour. It's because I know that when that vehicle leaves my shop, it's just going out into the world, and anything can happen to it."

Taylor's backstory is fascinating. He took a loan from his parents to buy a 1995 Range Rover Classic when he got out of the Marine Corps. Back then, while on scholarship at the University of Vermont, you were more likely to find him in his garage working on the Range Rover than you were to see him in class. "I got into some trouble," Taylor laughs.

While that truck honed his mechanical skills through years and years of trial and error, the seed was planted well before that. "When I was little, we had a 60s Land Rover that was very broken down that we used to plow our driveway in Huntington," he recalls. "And that introduced to the shape of the vehicle and the silhouette. So I think that probably imprinted itself on my brain somewhere."

"I didn't have any tools besides a Craftsman 48-piece tool kit," Taylor says, thinking back to his "college" days. "And I would put my Range Rover in the garage and you know, I'd have a class going on, and I would just sit in the garage and take that axle apart and look what was in there and put it back together.

"And I definitely put it back together wrong. The first couple of times I didn't know what I was doing, but I'd drive it. It would make some noise and I would learn something.

"I was spending all of my paychecks at this outfit in Westford that, interestingly, is North America's largest supplier of Land Rover parts. And I was showing up there every Friday with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket from my job and spending my entire paycheck at this place, just handing them my paycheck. I would do that every Friday for months. Eventually, the owner was like, hey, thanks for paying for the new wing on my building, but you might have something going on here. Do you want to come and help me with a couple of things in the shop?"

From there, the rest is history: Constant immersion in the trucks and the brand, the parts, the aura of the vehicles combined with passion and attention to detail. It's how Taylor went from self-taught Land Rover mechanic to entrepreneur, building some of the most exacting Land Rovers for some of the most discerning customers in the world.

Off-roading in a Land Rover is undoubtedly a common automotive fantasy: taking these almost mythical vehicles into extreme terrain, pretending to be a competitor in the legendary Camel Trophy series. We've heeded Taylor's earlier warnings about taking it seriously, but we're still like kids in a candy store picking out the vehicles to take on the trail later in the afternoon. Taylor uses it as an opportunity to educate on the relative benefits of the different models. "It's kind of interesting," he says. "Most people think about Defenders as being the ultimate off road truck. If you take a North American Spec Defender, North American Spec Range Rover Classic, and a North American spec Land Rover Discovery, which are all the solid axle trucks from the 90s, and you took them stock and unleash them off road, what's interesting is the Defender 90 is kind of too short. A properly driven Range Rover Classic or Discovery can outperform a Defender on the trail because it has a better wheelbase."

We settle on two trucks for the journey from entirely opposite ends of the spectrum: a Series III and Taylor's 101 Forward Control. It's an exercise in extremes: the Series models were the first mass-produced four-wheel-drive vehicles for civilians. The 101 Forward Control is a behemoth built solely for military purposes (initially created as an artillery tractor). It's overkill, perhaps, but we're here to have fun after all.

We ask Taylor what he does to prep customers' trucks for off-roading, his answer is an insightful one. "The truck doesn't need to be prepped; the customer does," he slyly reminds us. It sounds smart, but it's a necessary mindset to have as you get behind the wheel. These are some of the most capable vehicles ever produced, and they're that way right out of the box. They really don't need much else; they just need to be driven properly. The truck provides the platform, the operator offers the skill.

Seeing what your Land Rover can do out in the elements is part and parcel to ownership of the vehicle, a natural and irresistible extension. The concept of a vintage Land Rover as a platform becomes really illustrative of this relationship. "The Range Rover Classic was just incredible in bad weather and in terrible traction environments," Taylor remembers. "Maybe because I was a young kid and didn't know any better, but people were like 'oh, the weather's too bad to drive.' And I would get in the Rover and just point it. I was like, well, maybe the weather's bad, but the Rover's totally in its element and I feel totally safe. That led me to ask, 'what else is this thing capable of?'"

There are perhaps only a handful of vehicles capable of providing that rush of adrenaline. The intersection between having the right platform and the right skill to tackle a difficult driving situation, just like the original Rover designers envisioned in the late 1940s.

“I always choose to do it the hard way. Not because I like spending 12 hours a day here. Not because I want to charge the customer for 1.2 hours versus 1 hour. It’s because I know that when that vehicle leaves my shop, it’s just going out into the world, and anything can happen to it.”

— Taylor Congleton

Providing that perfect platform for customers to live out their own adventures has become the driving force behind Taylor's work, an almost maniacal quest for perfection in the vehicles that he builds. It's also why he started teaching students on off-road driving, to give operators the skill to go as fast as possible but as slow as necessary on the trail and choose their own adventure. Off-roading is much like skiing in this way; sometimes you want to go for a leisurely drive, other times you want to push yourself.

"On a Range Rover Classic, there are 7667 parts," Taylor says. "Right now, I can build them to where there are only about ten parts on it that upset me. And with those ten parts I have to make something that is acceptable to everybody else.

"And everybody tells me it looks great. But I know those ten parts, and I'll never tell anybody else what they are. But I know those ten parts on the car that I know could be better and could be built exactly to the factory way, but I just haven't figured it out yet. So my thought is if I make myself uncomfortable every day and identify a problem every day and try and move forward on it and get closer to a solution, that that will build a wall of expertise and knowledge that will get us to the point where hopefully I will be able to build one to where I'm 100 percent happy with it.

"The trucks that we turn out right now, when the customer takes delivery, they're 100 percent happy with them. But I'm not there yet. Usually, when I deliver a truck, the OCD in me really wants to just take it apart and start over because I found some flaw."

With that, we loaded up and headed for the trail, beyond confident that we were in good hands. Pulling out of the industrial park, it dawns on us how unlikely it is that this remote corner of Vermont has become a world epicenter for Land Rover. It’s perhaps the best possible place though, and Land Rover enthusiasts can be confident that the brand is in good hands - Taylor's guiding that legacy just fine.