It's true that a new vehicle may have problems early in its life. A friend went through two brand new Range Rovers before getting one which worked for more than a few weeks (the dealer replaced the first two). This says something about Range Rovers, obviously, and to be fair two other friends have had no problems with theirs. I wouldn't consider a Range Rover for overlanding, mainly because of the complexity and difficulty of repair/maintenance anywhere outside major cities.
We bought our Nissan new and ran it for a few months before setting off, to make sure there were no problems - which there were not. This vehicle is still running reliably after 120,000 Km (we sold it however know the subsequent history and have been driven in it a few times).
We bought the Montero new and used it for 17,000 Km before the 3rd "big trip", having no problems at all in this time. Initially we had simply planned to use it as our "local" car - still covering a fair number of off-road Km, within Colombia and potentially other parts of South America, however when we did the evaluation of options for the third "big trip", to Australia we concluded that it was the right vehicle and so then did the modifications and headed out. The car is home again and running perfectly (although not for the last three months since we've not been allowed out in the pandemic).
Our Land Cruiser was clearly at the right hand end of the "bath tub curve" however to be fair, the problems were few and we covered a lot of Km in tough conditions, and felt that the decision was the right one. We did look at some newer Land Cruisers, however the more recent ones are less capable than the Series 80, have become very expensive, and the ones available in Africa were not in good shape, so in our estimation would have had more problems. This vehicle, the last we heard, was fine.
An observation: the "bath tub curve" is a good way to look at products in "standard service" conditions (valves, pumps, etc.) however I think that for vehicles the story can be somewhat different. With care and regular maintenance the failure rate after a "critical point" does start to climb, however it can be flattened for a long time with some vehicles. One example is our 1981 FIAT X-1/9, which is still more or less as reliable as it was when I bought it new [space here for people to comment that a FIAT was never reliable, even when new - however this one has been perfectly reliable for the last 39 years - we haven't started to climb the unreliable bit of the bath tub yet]. Another example was my 1947 MG 1-1/4L Y-type, which needed constant care and repair (I used to carry a spare rocker box gasket and starter motor all of the time). This vehicle started up the unreliable bit of the curve after about 20 years.
). Not to mention rough roads, tree branch scratches, etc. Generally, all those things are best avoided in a new vehicle.
