eBay Motors has the stuff you need to mod your rig for overlanding

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A faint smell of gasoline in the air, the 1999 Jeep Cherokee 4×4 fired to life. The turbocharged 4.0L engine breathed with a raspy throat, but the inline-six-cylinder idled with exceptional smoothness. Here was pre-Millennial car design at its best: cassette deck, a seat that could not be raised, door handles with square buttons, rattles and squeaks everywhere, and a squared-off look that, 25 years later, still captures the imagination.

Showing 160,999 miles – that’s 259,000 km – on the digital-green odometer, this Jeep was also upfitted with Black Rhino wheels and Nitto tires, a Rough Country 50-inch light bar, Rusty’s Off-Road suspension and steering, DirtBound bumper, sliders and skid plates, plus a Smittybilt winch, all married to an ARB roof-top tent and Yakima EXO rear kitchen set-up. If the apocalypse happened today, we were ready.

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And all this stuff on this off-road rig wasn’t put together by some specialty shop or excursion company; it was found and assembled by a couple of gearheads at eBay Motors, to show that every single accessory on this truck — including the Jeep itself — could be found and purchased on that website, each part coming with a “guaranteed fitment” to ensure the equipment would properly bolt up to the ol’ Cherokee Sport.

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Even if the parts didn’t, eBay Motors would – if the parts were returned within 30 days – issue a full refund, and pay to have the items sent back along with a return label. While “guaranteed fitment” applies to eligible inventory and transactions on eBay’s U.S. site only, Canadian buyers get the same protection when they shop at eBay.com (not eBay.ca.)

While there is also some grey area around the return of tires and rims that could be covered under eBay’s buyer protection plan — it also covers vehicle purchases of up to $100,000, too — eBay Motors is increasingly the go-to source for all kinds of vehicle parts. Last year, more than $10 billion worth of automotive parts and accessories was sold on eBay Motors, the 550 million global listings representing a large portion of a pie coveted by other big online sellers, such as Amazon and Walmart (who also have fitment programs).

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But unlike Walmart, eBay also knows that “trust” is vitally important to its existence, hence the guaranteed-fit program that works simply by entering the year/make/model/trim/engine and clicking “Find Parts.” Behind the scenes, there’s also a huge investment in people and technology to root out fraud and in vetting sellers; in title checks; and in a constant monitoring of sales. Only very heavy and international orders are not covered under the program.

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EBay also knows that “overlanding” is growing. The boom in YouTube channels catering to overlanding adventures and the audiences that follow, plus eBay online searches and sales, are evidence of the need for accessories that fit this particular lifestyle. EBay says it has seen a 3,500% increase in sold items from listings that included the term “overlanding.” It sees nearly 20,000 searches every day for vehicles such as the Ford F-150, Jeep Cherokee, and Toyota Tacoma. It has seen huge increases in globally sold items for popular overlanding parts and accessories, especially bead-lock wheels and skid plates.

Unlike off-roading, overlanding takes place on all kinds of road types – some of which can be straight through a city, or across a forest service road – with the ultimate goal of simply enjoying the journey itself, not just being off-road in the mud or rocks for the day. Which makes overlanding more accessible and more appealing to more people, who will ultimately need the gear to do it. A properly lifted Jeep isn’t always the steed required for such; the vehicle can be any lightly modified SUV or even a mostly stock AWD car, but the camping gear, recovery items, and go-anywhere accessories are the kinds of things more and more people will need and want.

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That is why eBay also included a 2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo, a 2024 Toyota Tacoma SR5, and a 2009 Lexus GX in the mix of vehicles equipped entirely with eBay Motors parts and accessories on a two-day overlanding excursion in one of the most beautiful spots in Colorado.

“Camp Hale,” about a 40-minute drive south of Vail, sits within the 2.3-million-acre White River National Forest, the public land boasting 10 peaks surpassing 14,000 feet in elevation, an ideal haven for camping, hiking, exploring and overlanding. Everything from elk, trout, moose, cougars, and hummingbirds thrive here, the magical setting woven with rivers, streams, forest and grassland interconnected into a genuine national treasure.

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To illustrate what can be found on eBay Motors and confidently fit — and work — on the vehicle intended, the Jeep, for example, tackled the rock-crawling trickery of McAllister Gulch, the Lexus ambled comfortably and smoothly over the historic East Fork and Ranch Creek Road, while the Tacoma easily dispensed with Pearl Creek Road, and the Taycan took on the challenge of Homestake Reservoir Road.

The Taycan, a nearly $200,000 car when new, was fitted with nothing more than Nitto Nomad tires on Aero wheels and a Porsche Tequipment roof rack and tent. The all-electric sedan easily manoeuvred the roughly 12-kilometre dirt road that winds through a glacial valley flanked by pines and lush meadows to end up at Homestake Reservoir, a 250-feet-deep lake of snowmelt that provides drinking water to the cities of Aurora and Colorado Springs. The tent didn’t even rattle.

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The Jeep, however, rattled plenty, its age and decades-old assembly process revealing how times have changed. Hey, let’s be fair — times have changed, too, when it comes to finding and buying specific parts for unique purposes such as overlanding. Where newspaper classifieds, word of mouth, and magazine ads were once the only place to find such parts, today’s online universe is a busy hive of sellers and buyers: eBay Motors alone sells roughly 10,000 parts or accessories every hour of every day. So, yes, they’d better fit.

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