No for most of the distance. Yes for the part you went there to see.
We drove the Pan-American Highway in a 4x4 van and spent about 98% of the trip in two-wheel drive. The remainder reached the camps, the riverbeds and the tracks we still talk about.
So the useful question is not whether four-wheel drive gets you across a continent. Two-wheel drive does. The question is whether you want the last 2% open to you.
This answer comes from three vehicles: a part-time 4x4 pickup from London to Tajikistan, a permanent 4x4 wagon across the Sahara and Mongolia, and a switchable 4x4 van down the Americas.
What stops you first is rarely the drivetrain
Four-wheel drive sends power to all four wheels. Nothing else. Three other things end a day long before the drivetrain runs out of answers.
Tyres come first. Road tyres on wet clay turn to slicks inside one wheel rotation, and on loose gravel or wet grass a two-wheel-drive vehicle on all-terrains will out-climb a 4x4 on road rubber. Deep mud is the exception, where four driven wheels beat good tyres and an all-terrain clogs anyway, which is why we run mud-terrains when the season calls for them. Our own all-terrain set covered close to 75,000 miles across three continents with no flats, a return no drivetrain upgrade matches. The long-term BF Goodrich KO2 review has the detail. Change one thing on your vehicle, change the tyres.
Ground clearance comes second. Four driven wheels do nothing once the chassis rests on a rock or on the crest of a rut, because the chassis is carrying the weight and the tyres have left the ground.
The driver comes third, and decides more outcomes than the hardware. Line choice, momentum and knowing when to turn back matter more than a badge. The worst bogging described on this page was a line choice, in a vehicle with permanent four-wheel drive.
For the mechanical differences between the systems, read our breakdown of 4x2 vs 4x4 drivetrains. This page deals with the trips.
Three vehicles, three drivetrains
Mitsubishi L200, part-time four-wheel drive. London to Tajikistan in 2014, our first overland trip. Long off-road sections and camping the whole way, with four-wheel drive selected by hand when the surface changed and switched out again on tarmac.
Switching out again matters more than most buyers know. A part-time system has no centre differential, so front and rear axles turn at a fixed ratio. On grippy tarmac the axles fight each other through corners with nowhere for the difference to go, and the driveline winds up until something slips or breaks. Part-time four-wheel drive belongs on loose surfaces only. Permanent four-wheel drive uses a centre differential. All-wheel drive uses a centre differential or a clutch allowed to slip. Either one absorbs the difference, so neither binds on tarmac.
Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, 2006, permanent four-wheel drive. The Sahara, West Africa and Mongolia. All four wheels driven all of the time, with no switch to think about, no wind-up to worry about, and no fuel saving on tarmac either.
Iveco TurboDaily 4x4, two-wheel drive by default, four-wheel drive on a switch, two differential locks. The Americas. A genuine off-road van, driven almost entirely as a two-wheel-drive van. Our Iveco TurboDaily 4x4 review covers living in one.
Three systems, and the same pattern each time. The drivetrain stayed unused for most of the distance, then paid for itself in short, specific places.
Where four-wheel drive earned its place
The clearest case is deep sand, where flotation and steady momentum do the work. Four driven wheels hold momentum on a surface where two dig in.
Our hardest day of sand ran from a desert camp near Bou Lanoar towards Atar, in Mauritania. The organisers set the entry requirement for the stage themselves, and the list ran to four-wheel drive with low gears, two jerry cans, sand mats and a kinetic rope.
Not long after we set off, a Discovery in the convoy bogged down badly in soft sand. The reason turned out to be a driveshaft shed somewhere earlier the same morning. Another driver found the shaft a few miles back and handed it over, which is a fine story and no help at all: his day was finished. Four-wheel drive brings parts a two-wheel-drive vehicle does not have, and every one of them is a part able to break in the Sahara.
Eighty miles of the route ran between and over dunes. We spent hours picking lines through them, pulling each other out whenever somebody stopped, and reached the paved road by midnight, having bogged twice ourselves. The full day is in overlanding in the Sahara Desert.
Sand rewards pace and punishes a stop. Keep moving and the vehicle floats, and the drop behind a dune crest is the thing to watch rather than the climb.
We found out how little pace you need to lose at Erg Chigaga. Slowing for a photograph on a sand patch too small to call a dune, the Prado sank on the spot. Permanent four-wheel drive, and 40 minutes before the sand mats got us moving again. Our guide was driving the same Prado 120 as ours, completely standard.
The tall dunes beyond the camp we reached on a camel. The full account is in our Erg Chigaga write-up, and the route out there is driveable without a guide by following the tracks west from Mhamid, with a GPS and satellite imagery to keep you on them. What four-wheel drive bought in soft sand was the confidence to keep moving across it, rather than permission to stop.
Wet ground does the same job in reverse.
We were crossing the mountains south of Orkhon Valley in heavy rain, on a rocky track carrying puddles deep enough to hide whatever lay underneath. Rather than drive through a large one, we went around on the wet grass beside the track. Under the grass was soft wet mud with cow manure through it. We were stuck instantly and completely.
The vehicle had permanent four-wheel drive, sand mats and a shovel. None of the three moved the car. We were both knee-deep in manure and getting nowhere, and two men on motorbikes who stopped to pull the car out by hand were never going to shift a loaded Prado. We were stuck for about two hours in all. Half an hour after we gave up trying, a 100 Series Land Cruiser came past. Our kinetic rope achieved nothing as a straight pull, and the Land Cruiser’s winch had us out in minutes. We gave the crew our beer and followed them to the next town.
Set the hardware against the outcome. Four driven wheels did not prevent the bogging, and our own recovery gear did not free us. Another vehicle did. The full account is in a lot of wild camping and some manure.
Steep loose climbs make a third case. A loaded vehicle on gravel switchbacks wants traction at all four corners, and low range keeps the climb slow enough to read the line.
Rock steps and riverbeds took the rest. The short sections where we engaged the van’s four-wheel drive in the Americas were mostly the last few kilometres into places with nobody else in them.
Where two-wheel drive was enough
Graded gravel. Washboard. Forest tracks. Border roads. Mountain passes. Thousands of kilometres of Mongolian dirt, where the hazard is corrugation rather than traction.
Our own Mongolia write-up reaches the same conclusion: you reach most of the country in a two-wheel-drive car.
What a 4x4 costs you
The capability bills you every day, including the 98% of days with no use for any of the hardware.
You pay before you leave the dealer. A 4x4 van costs about twice what the same van costs in two-wheel drive, and prices move too much for a figure here to stay true. The gap is wider than the multiple suggests, because the cheapest usable two-wheel-drive vehicle starts far below the cheapest van of either kind. Whether the multiple is worth paying is nobody’s decision but yours.
You pay again in weight and fuel. A transfer case, a front axle, a second driveshaft and the heavier chassis around them add mass you carry every day and fuel you burn every day.
You pay in payload, which bites hardest in a van. Every kilogram of drivetrain is a kilogram of water, food, fuel or spares you no longer carry, and an overland build runs close to its limit already.
You pay in parts. Our van has never been sold in North America, so anything needing replacement there would have arrived by shipment rather than off a shelf. A common two-wheel-drive vehicle gets fixed in any town.
And you pay in complexity, because more driveline means more to service and more to fail far from help.
None of this argues against buying one. Buy knowing what the capability costs you daily, rather than buying capability as insurance against a trip you have not planned yet.
How to overland without a 4x4
In order of return on money spent.
Fit all-terrain tyres rated for your loaded weight. The largest single traction gain available to any vehicle, 4x4 or not.
Carry a compressor and deflate on sand. Lower pressure lengthens the contact patch and floats the vehicle instead of letting the tyres dig. The right pressure depends on your tyre, rim and loaded weight, so find yours on a beach near home rather than on a dune. Two rules hold everywhere: drop far enough and a tyre rolls off a standard rim under hard steering, and a deflated tyre overheats at speed. Stay slow while down, and reinflate before tarmac.
Carry traction boards. Two boards recover a two-wheel-drive vehicle from sand or mud with no second vehicle involved. We carry them in a permanent 4x4 and still reach for them. See our comparison of MAXSA and MAXTRAX boards.
Carry a shovel, a recovery strap and rated recovery points. A strap on a tow ball or a tie-down loop turns into a projectile under load.
Plan an exit, and avoid descending anything you doubt you will climb back out of.
Read the weather. Dry clay is a road surface. Wet clay is a trap, and the change arrives with the first rain.
Travel with a second vehicle on remote routes. Another vehicle outperforms every recovery device sold.
What not to buy first
A winch before recovery points. A winch needs a rated mount at your end and an anchor at the other. Open sand supplies neither.
A suspension lift before tyres. A lift raises the body and the centre of gravity together. Articulation comes from longer travel, softer springs and corrected geometry, none of which a lift supplies on its own, and a spacer lift fitted to standard dampers gives none at all. Tyres add grip and ground clearance for less money.
Differential locks before practice. A locker rewards a driver already reading terrain. We have two in the van and have reached for them rarely.
Is AWD enough for overlanding?
For gravel roads, forest tracks, snow and graded dirt, yes, and the distinction worth knowing is how your system splits the power.
On-demand all-wheel drive, the clutch-based kind fitted to most crossovers, sends power rearward through a clutch pack rather than through a differential, and current versions pre-engage rather than waiting for a front wheel to spin. Sustained low-speed work on a steep climb heats the clutch pack and the brakes, and some systems cut power to protect themselves.
Centre-differential all-wheel drive, as used in manual-transmission Subarus and Torsen-equipped quattro cars, divides torque mechanically and has no clutch pack to overheat.
Neither type has low range. Choose routes to suit, and all-wheel drive covers a great deal of country.
Do you need low range?
Low range is the most useful part of a 4x4 system for a loaded vehicle on steep, rough ground. Low range multiplies torque, holds a crawl with no clutch slip, and gives engine braking on a loose descent where a brake pedal only starts a slide.
Do you need diff locks?
Rarely. Lockers earn their keep in cross-axle positions, where one wheel on each axle lifts and an open differential sends the power to the wheel in the air. Sand and wet ground reward tyres and pressure long before lockers.
Is a standard car enough to start?
Yes. Our first overland trip ran from London to Tajikistan on a pickup with part-time four-wheel drive, and most of the route asked for none of the capability. Match the route to the vehicle on your driveway, go, and buy the next vehicle once you know what the first one stopped you doing. Our guide on how to start overlanding covers the rest of the first trip.
So which should you buy?
| Where you will drive | What you need | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Tarmac, graded gravel, campsites with a track running to them | Two-wheel drive on all-terrain tyres | Tyres handle the loose surface. The drivetrain never gets asked. |
| Remote gravel, snow, forest tracks, light sand | AWD or part-time four-wheel drive | Traction at four corners when the surface turns, without the transfer case and low-range gearing a full 4x4 carries. |
| Deep sand, wet clay, loaded weight on long climbs, long distances from help | Part-time or permanent four-wheel drive with low range | Low range and four driven wheels are the only answer to soft ground and slow steep work. |
We spent 98% of a continent in two-wheel drive and carried the 4x4 for the rest. Work out what the 2% is worth to you, then buy for the trips you take rather than the trip you picture.
