My take is that overlanding is more about the journey, so camping spots are effectively waypoints on a 'wheeling adventure. Kind like a poker run on motorcycles or boats -- it's an excuse to get out and enjoy one's rig and not really about playing poker.

But I'm an onlooker and my own practice is the opposite, so I could be off base. Driving offroad is a way for me to get to a campsite and hunker down for ~14d.

Car camping => Destination is the camping spot where you spend mulitple days.

Overlanding => There are no Destination. You have to find some place nice to sleep so you can continue traveling, every day.

It didn’t used to be that hard to define overlanding, until people started realising that calling yourself an overlander sounded cool and had sexy connotations. Now the definitions have become really loose because “overlanders” love buying expensive gear and have seemingly bottomless wallets.

If you go back to the original overlanders I expect most of them only stayed in tents because it was cheap and you could do it anywhere. Imagine the original overlanders trekking across Africa, I doubt they’d ever skip an opportunity to stay in a nice hotel when they got the chance. I live in Africa and I see plenty of actual overlanders here, there’s barely a rooftop tent to be seen.