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
Citron 2cv and not the later 4wd models. But the original base 2cv
The suspension on those things is wild.
The innocent-looking cute Citroen 2CVs and Dyanes and their derivatives are tough off-roaders underneath. FWD limits them of course, but they are still surprisingly capable.
Very lightweight and the unique suspension has really long wheel travel and decent ground clearance. Narrow tires also help a lot. They can drive through a plowed field.
The frame is fully enclosed from the bottom, there is almost nothing that hangs down under the frame level.
Inboard disc brakes are protected from mud, and there is no radiator that could be punctured.
The 2CV design brief was to drive across a ploughed field, so off-roading is very much what they are for.
I swerved to avoid an on-coming truck once, bounced through a ditch, the front windows popped open, then back over the ditch and on to the road again. Not a scratch on it. It would have written off every other car I’ve owned.
I have to say that the earlier cars with inboard drum brakes were not great at stopping.
my 2000 mercedes S500! it gambled like a champ with amazing ground clearance and no wheel spin in steep gravel!
2wd Ford Rangers, pre-‘98. The Twin I-beam front soaks up huge bumps way better than it has a right to. My ‘97 is 2wd and with some decent tires it will go pretty much anywhere on the farm. Had an ‘89 Toyota pickup prior that had similar tires and it was constantly getting stuck.
There’s a reason that PreRunner kits exist for those rangers. They’re awesome off road. That twin i-beam setup is easy to add travel to.
4th Gen Dodge Colt with a “Twin Stick” transmission
I’ll nominate my son’s 2003 Buick LeSabre which probably spent more time on dirt than most Subarus
Old LeSabre’s with a teenage driver seem to be capable in going anywhere. I remember my friend’s mid 90’s Buick back in highschool spent more time driving through road ditches than it did the road.
I had a 1999. It was a beast on snow tires. It wasn’t the car I wanted but the car I needed.
I was always impressed by what a rear wheel drive pickup could accomplish. Even with four wheel drive the common knowledge used to be that you only engaged it to get yourself out of trouble. Now people use four wheel drive to bury themselves so deep in the wilderness that it takes a satellite phone and a search party for rescue.
My 2wd F150 is very comfortable on dirt roads that have the 4×4 Tacomas creeping along. A 157″ wheelbase and soft springs are underrated on dirt
Craptastic Toyota Tercel wagons.
Good flex on the rear coil sprung live axle, Extra low in 4wd and 50/50 weight distribution can suprise a land cruiser!
Any rental car.
Followed very closely by the “Community Pickup Truck” from yesterday.
Ditto! When I was just out of college, a friend and I went to Maui. We had some sort of economy hatchback rental car and we drove on many of those “dotted line on the map – don’t take your rental car” roads.
Didn’t P J O’Rourke write that the fastest car is a rental car?
Previa. No idea how my scoutmaster got up the (barely) forest roads we went up.
I was driving my 1G Scion xB down a very sketchy BLM “road” when I encountered some folks in a Jeep CUV who were high-centered. I stopped to see if I could help, but soon learned that the driver had “attitude”.
“What the hell are you doing way out here with *that thing*?
“Significantly better than your “Jeep”, I said, as I drove off.
My Econoline would probably have been a beast with grippier tires (even with RWD and an unweighted back), but of course I wanted to get as-good MPG as I could possibly squeeze out of it.
The ride height felt pretty impressive at times.
My favorite “survived an obstacle” moment was a deer on the road. (It’s not “offroad” but it feels adjacent.)
I was on the highway at night, coming up to one of those curves that you figure is the highest degree of turning a highway can have before being required to lower the speed limit. I’m blissfully driving with cruise control, paying no heed to the blinking deer crossing signs.
I pass a car with its hazards on. Suddenly I come to the aforementioned curve and there is an injured deer splayed out right over the center line, front legs aimed straight into the left lane and back legs into the right lane.
With fractions of seconds to react, I did what came natural: I centered over the deer so that my tires would go over its legs, and hopefully the body of the van would be high enough to clear the deer’s body.
I was right, as it turns out–it just felt like a small speed bump, but at 70 miles per hour, so a bit more violent. By the time I’d gone over it, my foot had just gotten onto the brake, at which point I didn’t even push it because everything was still going fine. I left it on cruise and continued on my way.
When I got to a gas station just before home, I walked around to check for any obvious problems and noticed more blood on the back doors of the van than usual, so I went through a car wash before anyone could ask questions.
Scary but retrospectively hilarious.
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Back on topic, haven’t done this myself, but worth sharing:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZrFJN5iRvG4
But if it were the usual amount of blood, you wouldn’t have washed it, right?
Of course. Need a little reminder labeled “donated by people who don’t like my van”
#vanlife.
With this statement in mind, I nominate the Nissan Pao.
How can you have this discussion and not mention the corvair? 2 of them (almost 3) crossed the Darien Gap in 1960, stone stock to the whitewalls. And apparently the first to do so.
For sure. While they did have a couple of 4WD pickups with winches to help out, it’s pretty amazing what the Corvair was able to tackle itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghgRH9m2fOI&t=1304s
Saab 900. Never, ever in 30 years got mine stuck, regardless of where I was driving. Hilly pastures? No cow cow blues. Hurricane flooded roads? Blow right through. Sand dunes? Ship of the desert. Rocker deep mud holes? Happy as a pig in shit. Fresh powder? Schuss your mouth! Icy mountain two-track? Take me home country roads. Boulder crawling in Moab? Dude, I’m not an idiot. Not certain why the Saab was so surefooted, but it did make for a superior rally car and I’m thankful. I did bend the floor pan under the back seat when I nearly high-centered on rock, but scraped through. Front-wheel drive helped pull me off that time. I’d say the Saab 900 was much better off road than expected, but for all I know, those crazy Swedes may have planned for that all along.
The 99s were also quite adept at going where pointed even on heavily rutted roads. Peugeot 504s were legendarily unstoppable in Africa.
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okay…
I had no idea front wheel drive could be so handy.
Ha!
Any rental car with full “walk away” insurance coverage.
Years ago I owned a Dodge Omni GLH turbo, and somewhere on the internet is a video of me driving it up a steep dirt hill in the desert of Ocotillo Wells, CA, passing a Jeep that couldn’t make it all the way, and eventually cresting the hill. I remember when I got to the top of the hill there was a guy in a 4WD Toyota who literally did a double take when he saw what kind of car I was in,
The Model T was the first car I thought of, but it wasn’t really a vehicle intended for on-road use that managed well off-road. When it hit the market there were paved streets in the cities but not anywhere else to a significant degree. It was priced for and intended for people like outside salesmen, doctors, and farmers (smallholders made up a much larger share of the population at the time) – people who needed to take themselves and their products on the road to do their jobs. A lower-middle income urban worker probably wouldn’t have been interested in a car until after World War I because the additional utility in a city served by transit wouldn’t be worth the expenses, even though they could afford it. Once the economy went from postwar recession to boom and lower-density housing became more common and more affordable did the accounting clerks, first-line supervisors and the like consider getting a car, starting the vicious circle of declining transit ridership causing service cuts which caused ridership to decline further, etc.
It varied depending on locale – a car wasn’t necessary to feel lower-middle class or better in New York until that income class started moving past the denser parts of the outer boroughs, whereas Red Car-driven sprawl, fast growth and higher net disposable incomes drove the real and perceived need for a car a lot further down the social and economic scale in Los Angeles a lot earlier.
Once people had a car they were loath to give it up (even during the Depression the ratio of cars to population held steady), but the Model T as a universal tool was something envisioned to be used outside the city long before it became the kind of thing people with universal access to paved streets and no cargo to carry expected to have.
Here’s one I’ll have to explain: AMC Eagle. Why? Everyone thinks it’s a wagon on a Jeep chassis, it actually has absolutely nothing to do with a Jeep aside from the engine, which is really more the other way around (Jeep has the engine from a Rambler). The Eagle has front and rear open diffs, IFS, limited suspension travel, and a center differential style AWD system. The suspension design has more to do with the 1971 Trans Am winning Javelin than it does with any Jeep ever made, and no, it was not an XJ prototype, there is no structural similarity (there is a majority structural similarity to the Hornet). Despite all this, people still manage to make them work off road and it just seems to work. Much like it’s chassis mate the Spirit AMX winning class at Nurburgring. But that’s another story.
Volvo 240. Though limited by overhangs and modest ground clearance, the narrow-bodied 240 can go places you wouldn’t expect.
The vehicle has a ton of droop suspension travel front and back, and the sold axle will flex pretty well, keeping wheels on the ground. Despite being rwd, 50:50 weight distribution keeps plenty of traction over the driven wheels.
Well I was going to say the model T when I read the headline, but you already got that., I would say the Citroen 2CV, actually most French economy cars, Peugeots in particular seem to be pretty capable off-road.
Oh, and once I got driven out in the woods by a woman in a Fiat 128 driving remarkably fast taking jumps, “If I go slow there I get stuck” and generally hooning on trails designed, constructed, and for the most part used by cows. I think it may have been mostly down to conservation of momentum and nothing terribly important on the bottom or sides they could get scraped off. So yeah, Fiat 128.
Have to agree the basic Beetle is a hoot off road. The neighbor had one and would drive up huge dirt hills and down into 3 foot deep puddles down trails in the woods it was amazing
First time I ever saw a picture of it, the ’84 Porsche Paris-Dakar 911 blew my mind. Seemed the complete antithesis of what a 911 is born to do.
(also loved the Rothmans livery and think it’s a minor-key classic, but that’s not the question)
Probably any small 80s/90s manual hatch? I had a Festiva and only ever ran into one really steep logging road where I had to back out for fear of getting stuck if the road got any worse.
A rental.
Well, one way rentals.
Dang, beat me to it. When I was a kid my dad got rentals every week for work and would spend every Friday afternoon with some polish buffing out the scratches from a week of off-roading going from well-site to well-site. It made sense when he would have a K5 or Bronco for a rental, but if he ended up with a Capri or a Maverick it was still the same situation – he made it work and the car suffered for it.
the Altima 😀