Let’s get this out of the way right off the top: needing a truck is not a requirement for owning a truck. We are PRO CAR here at The Autopian, and the “car” refers to anything you can get in and drive. If you want to get the biggest, toughest, off-roadiest 4X4 that money can buy, dump beaucoup bucks into it to make it even bigger, even tougher, even off-roadier, and then just drive it to the office, that’s fine. Whatever makes you happy.
“Wildest load transported in a car? Who needs a car?” Jason snapped this hero on a visit to India.
THAT SAID, there’s a whole lot of truck-stuff you can do without actually having a truck, especially if you’re creative and/or desperate when faced with a not-optional need to move a thing (or many things) from A to B. Move an entire apartment in a Taurus wagon? Done it. Two kayaks in a hatchback? You bet. So much mulch my RAV4 was on the bump stops and I couldn’t close the hatch and I got pulled over but the cop was cool about it because I only live like a mile from Home Depot? That was last weekend.
You tell us …
What’s The Wildest Thing You’ve Transported In A Regular Car?
To the comments!
25 rolls of sod in the back of a 2013 Escape. I was vacuuming dirt up for WEEKS.
Forgot this one: complete windsurfing kit, board sail 2 piece mast. I couldn’t reach the shifter, had to call out the shifts to my friend on the passenger seat who actually had to shift.
I used to help a neighbor with his bees. He used to take them out to people’s properties for the summer…. we transported then in his Chevy station wagon. We’d seal up the hives as much as possible then load them in the back and drive with our bee suits on and the windows up while the bees buzzed all around us.
As someone who is petrified of flyingstingythings I fail to think of a purer hell.
not the craziest but was pretty funny taking home a used big flatscreen sticking out of the passenger seat of my NA Miata. Once saw a guy with a dirtbike in his passenger seat so he definitely wins
1971 FIAT 850 Spyder. Bought brand new 2 months before getting married. Christmas trees, wicker couch from antique auction and a large oriental rug nearly 150miles with the top down 🙂 It was our daily driver for 3 Wisconsin winters too. Yes, rust took it from us 30 years later 🙁
I almost forgot: Full Size rocking chair in the back seat of a 1975 Toyota Corolla 4 door sedan. Not hatchback or wagon, a 4 door sedan. To this day I have no clue how my wife made it fit.
For me, it’s a toss-up between two things:
1) a live sheep in my dad’s ’74 VW bus. I grew up in the sticks and my 4-H project needed to get to the county fair. Unfortunately, my truck was already full of goats (mom’s), a pig (my sister’s) hay, grain, and tack. Plus, the sheep didn’t like the goats, so it rode in the hippiemobile.
2) six people, which doesn’t sound like much except that it was in a friend’s Karmann Ghia. Coupe. No top-down cheating. Ok, we were skinny high school kids, but still packed enough people in the car to get pulled over by the local five-oh.
We put 6 people in a 1971 Triumph GT6+ and cruised the drag in Odessa TX in the 80’s.
Drove a CJ7 in college with a full cage. Needed to move all the lumber for a dorm loft from friends house 60 miles away. Dropped windshield, hung long lumber from cage with plywood sheets on top. Ski googles and down the highway we went, taking back roads never crossed mind……
9 people in a 2009 Jetta sedan.
Unsafe? Yes!
Fun? Yes!
It’s a toss up.
1: twin mattress, box spring and frame at the same time in a 2005 Ford Focus 3-door.
2: An 8′ ladder and a new lawn mower in box at the same time in the aforementioned Focus.
3: 12 foot boards in a 2016 Fiat 500e with them sticking out the passenger window (car jousting)
4: 2 inflatable kayaks with 4 paddles, 4 life jackets, 2 pumps and 4 people in the Fiat 500e
5: And the silliest thing, a 24″ pizza that required me to put the back seats down in the Fiat to fit it in!
I moved apartment several times in my 1.2 Clio 2. I used to travel light but I still packed all of this in a diminutive French base hatchback:
– bed frame
– mattress
– all my clothes
– all my school books
– cookware
– Desktop PC
– …
I filled the fucker to the roof, including the passenger seat, which blocked my view on the right. I even stored some parts of the bed UNDER the seats!
I also got to transport some 10ft steel tubes for a welding project, that was fun!
Several rose bushes sticking out the back of the “Peugeota” on a motorway trip. About a ton of concrete tiles over a couple of hundred meters in the same: Rear suspension down at the stops, suddenly the car looked very youthful and cool 😎
It also took a SMEG kitchen stove on the roof bars at some time, also looked rather silly.
It didn’t seem weird to me, but I used to regularly transport my International Moth (scow version) strapped to the roof of my Datsun 1600 (510 for our American friends). Home was a good 40min from the yacht club where we used to race, so that was pretty much an every weekend event
Somewhere there’s a pic of me in the passenger seat of my gf’s 2010 Impreza Hatch, we removed the glovebox so I could sit there with the seat all the way forward and have a huge coffee table and a wine rack in the back!
I once transported an Acoustic 2×15 speaker bass cabinet in a 1986 Ford Escort hatchback with the seats folded down. This was impressive, as the bass cab was the size of a medium-size refrigerator.Complete set of dresser and end tables in a Volvo wagon. I hated this car, but it’s one redeeming feature was that I could put the back seats down and stretch out fully for a nap in the back.My current DD is a Subaru Impreza Outback Sport, which has a surprising amount of cargo space with the seats down. I’ve carried bookcases, tables and whatnot in this car.
Two medium size shopping carts, side-by-side, in a Honda Fit. (Yeah, the Fit’s a cheat code).
Managed to fit most of a ’65 Vespa scooter into the back seat of a 90s Chevy Nova once.
Bathtub in my model 3. Folded down the seats and got it all but about 1 foot in. Tied the trunk shut and drove the 3 miles home without problems. I’d upload a photo if it was possible!
When the rear axle blew out of my Scout, I couldn’t find just one with the right ratio, so I bought a pair at the junkyard. But the Scout was my truck. Took the passenger seat out of my Yugo and brought the axles home in that.
Full size folded in half table tennis table on top of my ’06 Prius. Placed a box between the folded boards to hold that distance and keep the folding mechanism intact.
A used washer AND dryer sticking 60% out of the back of my uninsured ’85 Honda CRX with a VA cop car behind me for 20 miles of the trip. It was the only time I drove it uninsured, naturally.
Oh yeah. I hauled a full size pleather sofa to the dump in a 2000 Prizm.
After skinning and processing it like an elk, with a sawzall in the driveway.
3 trips to bring above ground swimming pool to transfer station in NA miata. 1- vinyl liner. 2 – aluminum coping and posts. 3 – rolled up corrugated steel siding. all tied onto top of trunk with roof down.
A monocled albino asiatic cobra, a medium sized American alligator and 150 anoles and the same amount of European tree frogs… in the rear seat of a 1995 civic hatchback.
Did you have a yellow caution sign on the back of the car saying “WEIRD LOAD”?
I’m imagining a 1995 civic hatch pulling up alongside, say, a Rolls-Royce, then the back window slowly descends to reveal a monocled cobra.
“Excussssse me, do you have any Grey Poupon?”
I am writing this comment while sitting on a full-sized red leather couch that I brought home on the roof of my Alltrack. The guy I was going to buy it from turned out tobe a VW guy, and he ended up giving it to me for free and throwing in a coffee table and sideboard as well. Anyway, he didn’t think I was gonna be able to get that couch home but once it was up there and I was tying off the tails of the straps, he conceded that it looked like I’d done this before. Damn straight.
I also once transported a 14′ diameter fiberglass satellite dish in (and on) a Pontiac Montana.
When I rebuilt our porch, I hauled all the lumber stopped to the Thule rack on top of my 2005 WRX wagon. It was all treated wood, with 2×8 framing and several 4x4s for temporary supports. It was also stored outside at the lumber yard and quite damp.
I really hadn’t thought about the weight until I was most of the way through loading it up and realized the car was riding pretty low front and back. At the time I estimated at least 500-600 lbs was up there, which is way over the limit for both the roof and the rack. Luckily it was only a few blocks drive home on city streets.
Been there. In my twenties, not knowing what a cubic yard was exactly, I used my 97’ four banger Ranger to pick up mushroom compost for a friend’s garden.
The guys at the place we got it must have thought I was a fool.
But those fools just dumped it in the bed with a front end loader. It felt like I had reclined my seat.
I could hear the mud flaps scraping the blacktop whenever I hit a bump.
So stupid.
Eh, it’s just the pickup equivalent of an “Italian tuneup”, keeps ’em flexible. I’ve hauled a 1/2 yard of gravel a couple times in little Nissans. The rear springs were juuust off the bump-stops.
The truck handled it like a champ. I was more worried about the stopping distance.