User Reviews

I have never seen the first season but just watched the second.

It is a really interesting idea and for the first few episodes it is pretty cool. It quickly becomes really annoying though because once they get to Africa it turns out the guy who supposedly planned the whole trek (John Lovejoy) made a couple of MAJOR planning mistakes that pretty much ruined the trip.

But instead of owning up to these mistakes that are entirely his fault he spends the rest of the season blaming everyone else/calling them names and every episode is edited to fit that narrative even though its painfully obvious that the real problem was a lack of proper planning.

Basically If you want to watch a fairly arrogant guy call people names and make up ridiculous excuses for why everything is someone else's fault go ahead and watch this. Otherwise stick to Top Gear/Grand Tour.

I'll start by saying that I did watch both seasons of this, so maybe the following review is worthless, but there are some boilerplate things that bother me.

Minutes into the first episode, I made my own tag: "What happens if you take Roadkill and Top Gear, removed any automotive experience, and added six whiny, useless douchebags? You get Wreck Trek."

The only thing that made this series even remotely palatable was Tony P. I think if you took that guy and put him in the same situation sans useless turds, whispering behind other peoples' backs like some Machiavellian hard-on nightmare, it'd be more entertaining.

Everyone hates everyone and hates the experience and whines about it. Aweful.

I write this review after being half through with the episodes and having read the other reviews just to Encourage people to view it.

It is true, it is some kind of top gear lacking any kind of competence, sympathetic cast, humor or automotive content. It is the pure opposite. Even the mechanic cannot tell a motor problem from a defect clutch and is simply guessing all the time. The organizer is a real bully and failed miserably in his main job: organising (eg Visa) which leads to a lot of the delay. Funny enough he still blames other people.

But i found it fun to watch, because every time when you think " ok, they can't do worse than that" they manage to start a new catastrophe. Obviously it is not scripted (or done by pure genius) and so you really can have a good time thinking "Thank god, that I am not with them".

Its sad, that no one found the time to film the countries they cross instead of endless complaining. But ok, maybe this is the special power of this show.

(I wonder how they were able to get a second season paid though)

This show had an interesting premise (if unoriginal think top gear) it falls apart because of the asshole in charge, john lovejoy spends entire series talking behind peoples backs and blaming everyone else because of his bad planning. The group eventually falls apart because of his toxicity and watching a bully bully a group of people doesn't make for great watching. I hope john lovejoy watches this and realizes he is the problem and if he wants to continue these shows, do it alone (and have no one watch) or don't go on the trip at all. Not worth a watch.

But do it with couples, we will volunteer , and take their ATM cards away or limit their money.

Wow, folks sure rip this series a new one in their reviews. So I figured I'd throw in my two bits:

I'll start with, what I perceived, as "bad":

1. There are no paid actors, therefore, the acting sucks. Oh wait, its an adventure documentary;

2. Lack of multiple "generations" of participants. I.e., instead of picking nothing but drinking buddies, the producers might have improved some things if they had allocated spots for a couple young people, a couple middle-aged people, and a couple of older people. But, older, rational, non-drug-using, non-binge-drinking people usually demand money for their time, so if budgeting was a problem, then that would explain the lack of older people and the majority of the participants being young partiers.

Now, here is what I perceived as "good":

1. It was clearly pure reality. There wasn't anything scripted here. For both seasons they find a group of young, naive, and foolish people and basically throw them into the deep end of life. Absolutely fascinating to watch and observe how a leaderless group of young minds behave when faced with the unknown and insurmountable.

2. Both seasons (Wreck Trek and the recently renamed Trabant Trek) are actual youthfully-foolish-poorly-planned "road trips", again, this is clearly pure reality. Young people are typically poor planners...sometimes due to youthful laziness, sometimes due to youthful indiscretion, and sometimes its just simply youthful inexperience. I don't think many of the previous "reviewers" have experienced long stressful road trips driving an unreliable vehicle. Anyone who has will immediately watch and be like "OMG, that reminds me of that trip I took in college with so-and-so and so-and-so!" This is because people are people. When faced with the stressful unknown, different people show different true colors. They show stress-colors, they show anger-colors, they show depression-colors...in fact, people go through pretty much the entire range of ALL emotions when experiencing what these kids experienced.

3. Keep in mind you are watching an actual, real-life documentary, of a bunch of foolish young people approaching the world with the naivety and inexperience of youth that we all wish we still possessed. I refuse to Monday-morning-quarterback these kids or even the kid who planned the whole thing. The only difference between these kids and the kids I ran with as a younger man is that these kids foolishly decided to videotape and record even their most embarrassing and foolish moments.

4. This documentary is one I made my teenage son watch with me. It is an excellent example of why having an old person along for "wisdom", "grounding", "mediation", and "authority" is always a good idea. Nearly every single episode contains a lesson on WHY the wisdom, life-experience, and knowledge of an older person would have saved these kids a major headache, or helped to deescalate the temporary personality conflicts that inevitably arise during these types of high-stress situations.

In conclusion, this is a unique, interesting, and fascinating documentary of human behavior, unscripted, raw, and as nasty as real-life people can get when under stress or overwhelmed by responsibilities. The fact that it includes cars is simply a bonus and adds some excitement for the gearheads such as I.

P. S.: I so hope that these young folks have matured enough to recognize that none of them did anything "wrong"...unless being young, excitable, eager, and hungry-for-adventure is wrong. I hope all participants have buried whatever hatchets need to be buried, forgiven each other for words spoken in anger, and can recognize that the entirety of both seasons is something everyone involved should look back on with absolute pride, fondness, and a certain romance. Regardless of any bad blood, all participants have done something few others can claim to have done.

This should be required watching for anyone who is interested in why modern society is in free fall. If you can stand to watch it all the way through it's like a modern Capturing the Friedmans and you feel the same horror as you watch it all fall apart...

So they are driving from Berlin to South Africa through fascinating parts of the world that most of western civilization has never seen and the cameras are always pointed at a bunch of twenty year olds who can't stop bickering.

This show is nothing but constant repeats about what happened and what's still to come.

What is to come is constant bickering about stopping for petrol. You can literally fall to sleep for 2 hours and they are having the same conversation when you wake up.

I can only imagine it wasn't as exciting as they pitched it and couldn't fill the number of episodes with marginally decent content.

Each episode probably has 5mins of utterly unique content, very poor.

Okay, so some other reviewers have noticed that these adventurers are underprepared, bitchy, and annoying. That aspect of the show gets established early in the first episode. If you don't like it, no need to keep watching!

However... As a huge lover of Top Gear's epic road trips, I decided to stick with this show for the simple reason that this trip was at least five times longer and more gruelling than anything attempted on Top Gear, and lasted for 20 episodes, providing infinitely more scope for adventure. And it delivered.

Classic Top Gear adventures give us three pretty smart and experienced drivers/mechanics doing mostly scripted stupid things over the course of 1-2 hours and 1-2 thousand miles. Great. I own every single DVD and re-watch them constantly.

Wreck Trek, arguably, offers a lot more, albeit without any laughs, and has the benefit of a genuine sense of danger since it is very obviously NOT scripted, and has minimal support for a bunch of incompetents who could genuinely get into serious bother at any moment.

So that's the adventure box ticked. And the peril box also ticked. Epic scenery box? Ticked. Lots of driving and breakdowns box... ticked. Enough screen time spent covering the adventure box, ticked. No sense of BBC political correctness and censorship - big tick there! Hey, what's not to love?

It seemed like an interesting premise and was going to be a low budget top Gear. It would have been better if the main guy wasn't such a toxic bully, it really ruined it for me.

this would be cool to do... and its raw and real... these guys get on each other nerves... i recommend it... ill come back and do a better review once finished. I don't get why it got such a low rating. You also learn a lot bout cars because these cars are put to the limit. i want to do a trip like this!

The Leader is toxic, end of story. Narsissistic personality disorder.