I buy the Cobra line all the time for my wheeling rigs and they work just fine. You need to remember it isn't like a cell signal and will only broadcast dependent mostly on length of antennae and line of sight. You can bump up the power on some models to 12 watts+ and it will give you amazing range, but if you are caught by FCC (yes it happens still) you are in for a big fine so set it up on a switch if you go that route and make sure you get an antennae that won't glow too bright pushing that kind of power (yes they will literally glow with huge amounts of power).

I used to run a 30 watt setup in my truck when I was in Nebraska and was able to transmit about 40 miles reliably on average and bounced to 180 with the right conditions. It is fairly easy to surpass that but you really have to tune your gear to get that kind of range and not many can reply to you out that far, it is good for an SOS signal though if you are in the sticks.