Most standard-issue passenger cars are pretty decent at keeping their composure when the blacktop gives way to the great outdoors, as long as we’re talking firmish surfaces, not-too-steep grades, and no obstacles so deep or tall that your grocery-getter gets high-centered and prevents you from getting groceries.
However, there are some completely regular, not at all off-roady, strictly-street cars that are oddly competent and perhaps even downright good at off-roading. Maybe not great on the scale of legit 4X4’s capability, but on the spectrum of “holy shit, I can’t believe I made it through there” – heck yeah, there are some very unassuming rides that will surprise you with their surefootedness when adventure calls, and that’s what we’re talking about for this edition of Autopian Asks.
For Shitbox Showdown scribe Mark Tucker, it’s the Volkswagen Golf that comes to mind, as he explains: “I did lots of ill-advised things in a VW Golf on dirt roads in college. I actually wrote a post about it on Opposite Lock ages ago. Give me a second and I’ll grab the link … Things I Learned On Mocassin Mike Road.”
Torch and I both have a different Volkswagen in mind as a secretly-great off-roader – you might say it’s the Volkswagen, the good ol’ Beetle. You can watch Jason wheel a Class 11 Beetle below, and as he notes, this race-prepped Beetle is still very much a regular Beetle in the most important Beetle-defining ways (as opposed to a mere shell with virtually every component replaced), and that Beetlness is what makes it great in the dirt.
Now, I’ve never driven a Class 11 Beetle, but I did own a 1974 Super Beetle, and I can confirm it was a hearty machine even if its Mac struts had all the damping of pogo sticks. I can’t say it turned very well, as on anything less sticky than dry pavement it understeered with a level of under that could be classified as “Marianas Trench.” But with the engine over the rear driveshafts and its smooth-ish pan chassis, that Beetle was hard to stop in sand and snow. It was also hard to stop, period, because the brakes – but that’s another story.
But if there’s a GOAT for the automobile with the biggest delta between how off-road ready you expect it to be versus how off-roadable it actually is, it’s gotta be the Ford Model T. The T is the antithesis of rugged-looking, all quivering fenders and skinny tires, and yet it seems to defy physics with its terrain-conquering capability. Just watch:
How does it do it? We asked a bonafide suspension engineer just that! Click the graphic (or right here) and our pal Huibert Mees will explain all:
Now it’s your turn:
What Cars Are Way Better Off-Roaders Than They Have Any Right To Be?
Top graphic image: Jalopnik/YouTube
2005 Mazda5 Sport. Not much ground clearance, fairly low profile tires, mine were actually slightly undersized from standard. Alloy wheels. Took that thing so many places that I probably shouldn’t have. Left a side skirt in the mountains somewhere. The plastic bottom plate on the side of a freeway. Front bumper was held on by zip ties. I once thought I put a hole in the exhaust, turned out I folded a cross member, which pushed up against the exhaust line and made the buzzing sound. So many fond memories. And the looks on people’s faces when we would go camping in a group, and they would ask how we got there and I would just point back at our mini-minivan lol I only got foiled once, on a road that was really a back country jeep trail. A section near the top had loose dirt and a really stepp grade, about halfway up my front tire just started spinning. I later went over it in my sister’s jeep, had I made it another 100 or so feet I would have been clear and gone all the way over the mountain!
Also I am a putz, it was a 2009 model not 2005
My ’56 VW Transporter was amazing off-road, as long as you watched for side-hills–it was scary that way. Well, actually, it was scary in most ways. A friend once described as “the most vague vehicle I’ve ever driven” as in, vague steering, braking, acceleration, lane control, shifting, etc.
But off the pavement, it was a beast. New KYB Gas-Adjusts made the ride incredible. I just loved the reactions from the 4-wd crowd when I’d show up somewhere they thought was exclusively theirs! “How the hell did you get that here?”
The full-pan bottom, compound low and portal axles were a great combination for off-roading a 60 hp. breadbox.
I also had the opportunity to drive a VW Golf on some awesomely bad “roads”. A younger friend’s father bought him a used Golf for his college graduation present. It was pretty well down the “beat” road already and his father explained that if he could drive it to death without wrecking it, he’d buy him a nice rig. He used me as a surrogate driver to take it on anything in NE Oregon that was labeled as a “road” on the map–the term is used loosely hereabouts. We didn’t manage to kill it despite trying. We destroyed a set of front rotors by wedging gravel between the pads and rotors, but good ol’ Dad just got ’em replaced. He was still driving it several years later when he moved away.
I always found my 99 Oldsmobile Eighty Eight performed great when the pavement ended. Long travel soft suspension, amazing FWD traction, and an incredibly easy to modulate GM 3800 Series II in front of the excellent 4L60E automatic.
The Mercedes 280TD/300D and Peugeot 504 are used on questionable and often nonexistent cars in Africa (still to this day, in their 6th decade). So that’s my vote.
What I want to know is what’s going on with Torch’s pants cuffs in the top shot.
I am fully convinced that full-sized luxury cars make the best off-roaders. I’ve been running the OG Gambler 500 in a ’91 BMW 735iL for 5 years now and it’s amazing. The number of panther-bodies out on the trails is incredible as well. Long-travel squishy suspension, a long wheelbase to smooth out those washboards, easy to lift, and a back seat big enough for 4. It’s like off-roading on your living room couch. The ol’ bimmer even has working AC and a cabin air filter, which frankly seems like cheating as I blow past some ratty old jeep whose driver is choking on dust and having his fillings rattled out while sweating buckets. Excuse me peasant while I hit my power reclining *rear* seats and mash the throttle on the invincible M30B35. A $300 German luxury sedan blasting through the Oregon desert, it doesn’t get much better.