‘The original plan was just to buy a Land Rover and go on a trip’: Why Tati Reed and a battered Land Rover might be the only honest thing on the internet

It was at 9am on January 29, 2016, that the last of the original Land Rover Defenders rolled off the production line at Solihull. A nation in mourning, as perhaps the most iconic car that we have ever produced ceased production. Tears falling on tweed jackets up and down the land.

But Defenders, traditionally, are hard to kill. They live on, vintage models clattering around the city, the countryside, the desert, the glitzy ski resorts and jungles, unbound, unbothered, ploughing ever onwards.

As things become more scarce, so too do they become more desirable. It is perhaps not a surprise that on Instagram, the great cathedral of desire, the Defender has gained a cult-like following. A cursory search reveals models that gleam, models that rust, models in the mud, models in the rain — models just about everywhere.

The Defender is a deity, and like every place of worship there must be someone in charge. That high priestess might be 22-year-old Tatiana ‘Tati’ Reed, owner and star of the @overintherover account on Instagram which, at the time of writing, boasts 457,000 followers. Tati’s companion is Blue Tit, a dark blue Defender that occupies the ‘rust/in the mud’ section of the Land Rover spectrum. Together, they travel around England and Europe and break down a lot. Videos are a mix of splendid isolation in serene camping spots and Tati’s legs flailing from the engine bay as another spark plug is replaced or air filter cleaned. Some of these videos have been viewed millions of times.

There have been many breakdowns, which will not be news to anyone who has ever owned a Defender. It’s why we like them. For Tati, shock absorbers have flown out. A cylinder head exploded. Once while going over a speed bump, she thought the gearbox had fallen out. Waiting for parts often means camping on the side of the road for days at a time. But that, as she explains, is all part of the fun.

I met Tati in a pub in Baker Street in December and much like how she appears in her videos, in real life there’s an underlying freneticism in the way she talks. She thinks about ordering a beer, but chooses a Diet Coke at the last minute. She tells me that she’s not really done interviews before and isn’t entirely sure what to expect. I say I’m mostly going to ask her what it’s like driving about in a Land Rover Defender for work. She agrees that’s a fair line of questioning.

You would assume, given the success of overintherover, that Tati has been obsessed with Defenders since she was a small child. You would assume incorrectly. When did she first see one? ‘I genuinely couldn’t tell you. I have no idea. Cars didn’t log in my brain growing up, they were irrelevant, they got you from A to B and some of them looked nice and some of them didn’t,’ she says. ‘The love affair started when I thought “Oh, these are quite cool” and I bought my own. Then I was totally in love.’

She was not a ‘petrolhead’ growing up, nor were her parents. ‘It’s a bit of a weird one. Someone close to me had Land Rovers, which I admired, and we planned to go away and do a big adventure, but then I realised I could do it myself.’ That first adventure in Blue Tit was quite something. ‘We went to France, we went to Italy, we went to Switzerland and to San Marino. We crossed Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Belgium and Germany. A pretty big go of it,’ she says.

Blue Tit came into Tati’s life on May 16, 2023. Previously, the car had sat ‘behind a shipping container for 14 years’ before being rescued. Then it was straight across Europe for ‘100,000 miles’ with a driver who was quick to admit that she had no idea what she was doing. ‘A maiden voyage with a girl with one roll of tools that contains nothing useful and doesn’t speak the language,’ as Tati puts it. ‘It was the blind leading the blind.’

That mixture of can-do attitude and general mechanical incompetence is what makes overintherover so charming and successful. But what better way to learn than by doing? ‘I’ve always been practical. I built a bird-feeder once,’ says Tati. ‘But I didn’t have a high skill level. For the trip, I realised I’d need somewhere to put a stove and plates, so my dad and I built a box for the back, but I didn’t expect that I’d need mechanical skills, so I knew nothing. I didn’t know what a spark plug or coolant was. I didn’t know you had to top up oil. What’s a differential? A cylinder? So I learnt it all while on the first trip, on the phone to the guy who sold it to me [who she affectionately calls ‘one-eyed Steve’ and ‘an absolute legend’]. “Poke here, stab here, see what happens”. I didn’t have YouTube, because I’m a dingbat and didn’t buy data.’

Much has changed since that summer of 2023, not least in terms of mechanical knowledge. More than 450,000 people now want to know Blue Tit and Tati’s every move. Success has come and it has come quickly. ‘It’s a bigger number now than it was a year and a half ago,’ laughs Tati, nervously. ‘The original plan was just to buy a Land Rover and go on a trip. I wanted to give Instagram a go, as a cutesy little travel thing. Where we are now was never the plan. I wanted to travel, which I hadn’t really done. I had a bit of wanderlust, I made one stupid little video and it went peow.’

‘Suddenly people were looking at me,’ she says. ‘I said to my parents: “there’s people looking at me, a lot of them are probably a bunch of weirdos, but there’s a lot of them”. I said I’d just delete the account, it’s fine, it’s all a bit scary, but they told me to keep going. As long as you have a nice time, see where it goes. So that’s what I’m doing.’

The concept of accidentally falling into 450,000 followers seems absurd, but it doesn’t take very long with Tati to realise how it’s happened. Instagram is as curated as any museum. Those with big followings reveal only perfection. A lot of people want that, but it is also obvious. What makes overintherover so interesting to so many is its earnestness. In an ocean of manicured content and identities, it is relatable. Here is a young woman, driving around, and breaking down in a Land Rover. Sometimes she goes camping. The rest of the time, she is a bit stressed and covered in engine fluid.

She admits that she thought there was a chance those videos from her first trip in Blue Tit would at least look semi-professional. ‘I did photography A-level, I can make things look nice’, she says. She also says that now she does not make things look nice, because the people do not want things to look nice. ‘There’s a lot of emails,’ she adds. ‘I spend 99% of my time sitting at the computer. It’s not very glamorous. You might think I’m meant to be jet-setting, or that I’m meant to be with my suitcase. It’s all bollocks, it doesn’t happen. I basically have a desk job.’

Is there pressure to succeed? To grow the channel? ‘Unless it all goes tits up and I end up becoming an annoying influencer, it will always be a little Land Rover and me tootling around. That’s all it is. It’s so great when it’s just that, because that’s my happiest place. It’s what I love.’

Tati is also acutely aware of being a woman in a traditionally male space. There are positives and there are negatives. ‘If I was a boy, would we be sitting here and doing this interview? Probably not. But I’m not just doing this to prove that girls “can do things”. I am more than capable.’ She has had her fair share of stupid comments, ranging from people telling her to put diesel in her petrol Land Rover, to asking if she has an OnlyFans account. Oddly, she finds a certain comfort in that. ‘Some people try to devalue what I’m doing because I’m a girl. But when those stupid people make stupid comments, there’s a reassurance in that because I just think everyone on the internet is clearly a moron.’ Having spent the best part of 20 years ‘on the internet’, I am inclined to agree.

So what does the future hold for overintherover? ‘Well this evening I’ll probably get a beer,’ she says. ‘I want to go everywhere. Since I was little, I’ve had a big map with pins on. I wanted to go swim in a lake and climb a mountain in every country in the world. I want to go everywhere and I want to do everything, and it’s just a matter of time and money, and apart from security issues, nothing is off limits in my head. Because why not?’

First things first, she’ll need a new car. ‘Blue Tit will become a UK car, I want to make sure she’s always happy and healthy. I’ll never get rid of her, but it’s not fair on a 40-year-old car to take her on the Autobahn.’

‘I want a 110 that’s a bit newer. A land rover with a bit of grunt, that won’t complain. I’ll build a camper in the back, and then paint it a cool colour, then sod off many miles away on a big old adventure, and many more adventures, until I’ve done all the adventures, which will be never. And, hopefully, I won’t end up as a horrible person in the process.’

It seems unlikely she will. She’s been offered sponsorships and gifts, as is traditional to those who can command a large audience. ‘I want to do it my way. I get people offering to do camper-back builds for me, but I say no. It's sweet and it would save me thousands of pounds, but I’m so happy just chopping wood and sticking it all together and drilling holes in things. I love it.’

The Defender’s beauty is in its simplicity. Easy to fix and it will go anywhere. No bells and whistles. Blue Tit and Tati have a lot in common: a simple and singular drive to explore, and a lack of interest in the fame that follows. Theirs is a partnership and one that is oh-so English. Within the sea of ring lights and endless takes and perfection is an island of rare honesty. It is profoundly compelling.

When everything else on social media seems to be determined to race to the bottom, to sell you something, to make you do something, Tati and Blue Tit capture the essence of what makes the Defender so great: keep it simple and keep exploring.