I’m very interested in the space of vehicles that aren’t exactly cars, but, at the same time, really are very much cars. Things like the Changli fit into this blurry gray space, and the whole class of side-by-side utility vehicles – sometimes called UTVs (Utility Task Vehicle, or something) – definitely fit in here, too. I was just loaned a very exciting Polaris Ranger XD 1500, which is one of these kinds of vehicles. So what the hell should I do with this thing?
I realize these are primarily intended to be off-road work vehicles, ideally in places like farms or ranches or cult compounds or dilithium mines or off-road trails or stuff like that, but I don’t really have anything like that handy. I have a house with a yard and two driveways, both of delicious, chunky gravel, but it’s hardly enough to justify something as capable as this Ranger.
What I’m thinking is that for the time I have it, I’ll just try and use it like a normal car. Because, really, it seems as capable as one – it has a 1500cc inline-three engine making a shockingly good 110 horsepower, over twice what my normal daily driver Nissan Pao makes, with an engine about 500cc bigger.
That engine is also located under the bed, ahead of the rear axle, making this one of the vanishingly few mid-engine ICE pickups you can get in America today.
This thing is no joke; I took it for a test spin and found that it’s shockingly comfortable and smooth to drive. I went over these huge speed bumps my neighborhood has – called, goofily, “speed tables” – without braking at all and it just glided over like I was on a sheet of plywood with a bunch of cubic feet of marshmallow fluff sprayed underneath it.
I got it up to about 50 mph or so, and it did great. The cabin is comfortable and has power windows and a heater and, get this, three speedometers for some baffling reason.
Oh oh oh get this – the bed tilts, like a dump truck!
Now, these things are not cheap: I think this one goes for about $40 grand. This is real car money.
So what do you want to know about this thing? What do you want to see me do with it, given that I don’t feel like getting a trailer for it, and I’m in a college town, and I’m willing to take it on the roads.
At first, I was just going to take it on the roads with my usual cavalier and idiotic lack of consideration of the law, but as it turns out, these seem to be street-legal in North Carolina!
If the beautiful mountains and lovely beaches that birthed aviation and being the home of O.Henry, Edward R. Murrow, singer Libba Cotten, and ex-Globetrotter Curly Neal aren’t enough for you, then you have to admire North Carolina’s delightfully permissive automotive laws.
I have a tiny and oddly capable little truck. Tell me what you want to know about it!
You already have a chainsaw. This would look perfect with the bed full of wood for a future bonfire
Roadtrip it the 130-ish miles to Charlotte Motor Speedway, get lap times for the oval and the roval, then take it across the road for some laps at The Dirt Track, and finish up with quarter mile runs at zMAX Dragway next door.
How much bark dust will it haul, or how many concrete pavers
ChaingLi tractor pull…
You should cruise the vistas with it!
Terrorize the greenways in Chapel Hill. It looks like it’s just narrow enough to fit. Just remember to yell out ‘on your left’ when passing people.
Can you fit the Changli in the bed of this thing?
Drive it to the beach, then on the beach, then back.
Can it do bleach burnouts?
Cause for 40 large, it better…
My dad has a XP 1000, I can assure you, it will do burnouts. It even has a selectable diff, you can choose open, locked, and 4wd. It does donuts with ease in all 3
This sounds excellent. Please excuse any unintended snark in above comment.
It does sound like an amazing machine just the same though.
Go camping with it.
tow something ridiculous with it? Launch a boat with it! Will it fit inside of a uhaul van? take it to a drag strip.
sidenote i love how this has two seats(three?) and FOUR cup holders!
You need a full mountain dew to drink and an empty mountain dew to spit in (preferably glass bottle). Everybody from the south knows what I’m talking about.
You could watch side by side videos on YouTube, OR you can watch SAE Mini Baja videos on YouTube.
I second everyone who’s suggesting finding an ATV area or private land, getting Otto behind the wheel and finding out Will It Teenager?
Especially for the very Autopian incongruity of the pics knowing what you’ve shown of his personal style and the fact that most kids with access to these probably dress like Tate Dutton in the later seasons of Yellowstone.
Leave it in the garage with the Changli, put on some Barry White, give them some privacy and let nature take over.
“Aww baby…I just love the tilt of your tailgate. Come get side by side with me…”
As a professional polaris powersports mechanic. Yeah. 20 years 10 manufacturers certified. The xd is a very impressive machine. They stepped the game way up. Sure it will trickle to the trail units. If I was you. I’d be putting 4-6inch portal lift good truck tires and go damn near wherever I want. The down side to the xd like the ranger is seating position doesn’t make for a 200 mile per day trail rig. To upright. I have beat my body to death like everywhere blue collar worker. I’m in market for a general 4. Rzr is cool for kids but I’m to stupid and will yardsale it. The general is it forntrail rig. Tender springs are a must for all of them. The portals give the ground clearance plus bout any amount of reduction so it’s easier on machine and it’s all unsprung weight. The steel drive is incredible. Down side is the industry is going towards auto industry. They are not ment to be worked on by a shade tree. No offense is someone is but hurt but don’t mess with a man and his trade. I’m not a plumber and don’t blame to be. If you’re a farmer or such and spend your life in a sxs. This is it. Ni doubt.
Man, I wish I had one of these back in my land surveying days. Would make getting around a snow-covered farm, field, or construction site a lot easier.
Ha, yeah, and quite a few decades too late for my grandmother; she was a social worker in the deeply rural parts of Michigan in the 1930s and 40s and would use snowshoes and cross-country skis to get to her clients’ houses in the wintertime. Not exactly for the faint of heart. A UTV like that Polaris would have been utterly decadent luxury (heck, it still is today at 40 thousand bucks.)
Those GI Generation folks were daredevils.
Ha, my grandmother would find it greatly amusing to be called a daredevil. However, she did have a brain tumor removed in 1939 or ’40 where she was one of the very first people (if not actually the very first one) at her hospital to undergo such surgery (before the 1940s and 50s open brain surgery was extremely uncommon) so that could qualify her as a bit of a daredevil.
Ironically, speaking of utterly decadent luxury, my grandmother came from a very wealthy family where her parents could afford a car on which she actually learned to drive at the age of nine (!!) which would put it at around 1912; since she could just get in and drive it was possibly a Cadillac Model Thirty which was the first mass-produced car to have an electric starter, starting (ha) in 1912, though a handful of other cars did have electric starters available as an option and a number of manufacturers produced cars with alternative starters such as air starters which used compressed air stored up by previous operation of the engine or even a dedicated motor to turn the engine over and spring starters, also called clockwork starters, using the energy stored up in a spring also from previous operation of the engine or a dedicated motor. Also, I’m given to understand that Model Ts were much easier to start after having warmed up from very recent prior operation though I find the prospect of a nine-year-old kid being able to hand-start even a warmed up Model T highly dubious. Alas, no one is left who can provide details as to what car my grandmother drove at age nine in 1912.
Kids, this is why it’s so important to write down family history in the moment no matter how trivial it might seem.
I hate to make Utah richer, but yeah, get an Ancestry account and store everything in there.
I want you to do two things.
First, if you so not get at least three feet altitude by 25 feet distance in four wheel air, we are all going to be very disappointed in you. Please get video.
Whenever anyone scores some kind of performance vehicle, everyone says “Do burnouts! See how fast it is!” Blah blah blah.
For the second thing, I want you to do something different: see what’s the best fuel economy you can get out of it. Hypermile that thing! Build aerodynamic aids! Tailgate box trucks around town!
Then go do burnouts and such.
I was going to comment but you seem to have everything covered.
Torch, get video of all of these post it.
I’m interested in the hypermiling aspect as well. UTVs and even quads don’t usually get very good gas mileage.
I’m gonna be boring and say you should determine exactly how much you can treat this like a regular car (well, truck) on the road without any sacrifices.
I work in the off road suspension world and some people here are convinced that side by sides are going to be the next big thing and start surpassing trucks in sales.
I’m not convinced. I think they’re expensive for what they are, and are not half as comfortable or capable as a full blown truck. I’d buy a new Nissan Frontier in a heartbeat before one of these.
Put it in the middle of a gasoline-soaked circle spelling “Stop sabotaging Kei-cars you dirty c%nts !!!“, light a match, fly a drone above, publish a link to the live feed here ?
Remove the doors, find a gravel road, and have the time of your life.
What the Hell should you do with it? Oh I’ll tell you what to do with it: You need to treat that bastard like the red headed rental mule it is!
Hop curbs! Wallow in mud!! Bolt in a(n easily removable and fully deniable) nitrous kit!! Really push the load limit of that tilt bed!! Teach Otto to to drive!! Teach a random cat to drive!! Have a tug of war with a Kei truck!! Drag race a tractor! Deliver wheelbarrows of shrimp to the needy! Have Otto review that tilt bead as a BMX ramp.
You’re in the South, unlock your inner Duke boy!! Run some moonshine! Jump a stream! Haul a pig! Go trash can bowling!! See how many raccoons can fit in the cab!!
So much to do!
Tow it to western NC. Deliver dry ice to people without power.
Use it to pull the tiguan to the place that’ll give you the most money for it? I say that only to minimize the risk of mechanical failure on the tiguan while driving it to its future home.
Body swap with the Chang-Li please.