Many vehicles are designed to be really good at certain tasks, which comes at the expense of other abilities. A Ford F-350 can tow 20,000 pounds without breaking a sweat, but wouldn’t be particularly spectacular on a track. A Subaru BRZ could be your autocross weapon, but isn’t going to tow your 7,000-pound camper. Despite this, some cars have some real hidden talents. What cars are surprisingly good at doing what they weren’t designed to do?
I have a reputation in the American Smart community for doing things with the Smart Fortwo that nobody else would dare to do. There was a span of time of about seven years when I owned nothing but Smarts. Whenever I ran into a situation that would normally call for a different vehicle, I often made my Smart do it, anyway, instead of paying for a rental or borrowing someone’s truck.
For years, this meant that if I needed to tow a new motorcycle home, move some furniture, or move out of an apartment, I hitched a U-Haul trailer onto the back of my 2012 Smart Fortwo. These cars are not officially rated to tow anything, yet I managed to tow trailers around Illinois and Wisconsin for some 20,000 miles.
Now that I’m older, a bit nicer to my own cars, and not as willing to play with something of such questionable legality, I don’t tow with Smarts anymore. Instead, I take them off-road! I love proving that you do not need a three-inch lift and 35-inch tires to make a Smart decent off-road. In my experience of actually off-roading a Smart, a decent set of tall snow tires and some good technique are all I need. I’ve gotten my Smarts pretty much anywhere that a 2WD pickup truck can go.
But perhaps my favorite example of making a vehicle do what it wasn’t built to do was making a bone-stock, base Jeep Renegade rule at rallycross. At best, Jeep designed the Renegade to handle some soft off-roading. It was not designed to launch off of tabletop jumps and it was not designed to lay down some seriously hot laps on the track. But that’s what my group of friends and I did one weekend.
Our Renegade laid down some of the fastest lap times that weekend, and even the organizers were shocked because the field that weekend included modified side-by-sides, some rallycross-prepped cars, and at least one real rally car. Yet, here we were getting close to their times on regular street tires in a crossover with an automatic transmission that shifted slower than a teen driver learning a manual.
Here’s where I turn things over to you. What cars have you driven that were unexpectedly good at a job that they were not designed to do?
Mercedes, you are gonna like this one.
Last year, i bought myself a ok-ish 98 MGF Brooklands (As the “Abingdon” Special Edition was called in Germany). After replacing the done-for-hydragas-units, it is – although lowered – a surprisingly nice Road Trip machine. Of course, don’t expect S-Klasse levels of comfort, but the suspension is pretty great, the weathered old leather seats surprisingly comfortable (although i will lower the drivers’ Seat a bit) and it is overall a very nice experience.
Proof: Roadtrips to Split/Croatia and Sorrento/Amalfi Coast this year, each over 2.500km, with a pregnant wife. Great fun, no regrets.
Mercedes, your elite, unmatched MS-Paint skills have been brought to our attention(unfortunately leading to crisis amongst our best artists), and are greatly needed in the fight to protect our country and freedoms. Please consider joining the NSA today as a computer graphical sketch artist!
(A lighthearted joke)
1. 1991 Geo Metro LSi convertible- outside of its econobox “just do it” engineering(which it excels at, netting ~53MPG hwy w/5-Spd, YMMV), I’ve found it to be a seriously impressive contender when it comes to navigating snow and ice, easily climbing atop the snow and nimbly crawling across it due to its light weight(note: non-studded snow tires, had cables available but never needed them), even stopping reasonably well.
2. 1984 Volvo 240DL wagon- perhaps unsurprisingly to some, due to Volvo’s rally performance, this station wagon is so well-balanced and predictable in its on-road handling that one might not immediately think of it as the ideal choice for transporting a couple guys and their gear(+beer) through muddy mountain trails, though it easily skipped across mud that had swallowed several trucks(and a skidsteer), faithfully tracking wherever I pointed it. With its automatic transmission, it was difficult to keep highway speed through the steep WV/VA/KY mountains(turning off A/C helped a lot), but otherwise I have no complaints.
We put a set of very aggressive all-terrain tires (Coopers) on our Highlander Hybrid and it offroads very well – dirt, mud, snow, water crossings, etc. The AWD system is excellent, no matter what we throw at it.
It’s intended to be a suburban station wagon and the design and styling are archaic/bizarre, but it goes off-road very well. Who needs a 4Runner?
You can carry quit a bit of 10 foot long half inch schedule 40 PVC pipe in a 2010 Prius or maybe a 10 foot 2×6 board. The guys at the Home Depot get the giggles when I walk to the car.
When my friends Mercedes S class finally stopped working, he turned into a fish smoker. I would have loved to be present when he finally took it to the scrap yard.
My grandfather used a 1962 Mercedes 190 diesel as a pickup, pulled a hay rake in an alfalfa field when the Ferguson was unavailable,
Oh, and I can’t count the times I’ve see various old cars turned into hoists. You drive the car to where you need to hoist some things weighing a couple hundred pounds or less like a bunch of hay bales or sacks of feed.
Jack the rear end up, and replace one of the wheels with a rim with a 50 foot piece of cable attached to it at one and a hook at the other.
Oh, part of the preparation is have two independently operable breaks one on each rear wheel. There are a number of ways of doing this.
Anyway, in operation the operator has the engine running at a constant speed. To engage the hoist, the operator applies the brake to the wheel opposite the wheel with the cable. When the object has been hoisted to wherever, the operator releases the brake on the opposite wheel and applies it to the hoisting wheel then to lower it both brakes are released and the weight of the hook pulls it down. Three men that are in sync with each other other can work amazingly fast, they would get paid by the bale or sack so they worked fast. You would also hear about some really gruesome accidents. One guy was really proud of his 55 Cadillac that had been rear ended and he just cut away the body behind the rear window.
I have not seen a setup like that in years. I can’t even remember the funny name for one.
I had 2 Honda Fits, an 09 and a 17, and hauled all kinds of stuff in them. I remember feeling like a total badass renting a medium-duty tiller at Home Depot. The guy was like, “Pull your truck up to load it” and I was all, “Okay, I’ll get my *car*”. Boy howdy did he think I was stupid until I got that thing right in there.
Porsche 911 (996-997 gen) as a family car.
– Rear engine puts infants to sleep
– When the kids are old enough to sit up, the low belt-line means they can see out (meanwhile, in a minivan they are lower than the windows and get car sick easier).
– The front seats are easy to flip forward (leaver on both sides of the head rest) and the door sill is sufficiently curved as not to hurt your knee to kneel on to buckle up kids in the rear.
– The rear parcel shelf perfectly fits a folding umbrella-stroller, and the front trunk perfectly fits a baby carrier.
Well, I don’t think the OG Mini was designed with rallying in mind. But…
RENTAL CARS as track cars, off-roaders, moving vehicles, getaway cars, etc etc.
I was quite surprised that with headrests removed, the seats mostly fold flat and I can nicely fit a folding twin mattress in the Bolt. It’s a bit awkward getting in and out, but is about as comfortable as the bed at home and quite easy to set up. I didn’t expect it to make a good RV.
I moved from one SF apartment to another with my 987 Cayman and my girlfriend’s E550 convertible. We did get a UHaul for a few hours for the bed frame and dresser, but I was able to move 4 Eames-style plastic chairs, 3 fans, 2 plants, leftover groceries, 2 complete sets of tools, a floor jack, two jack stands, and a 40″ TV in one trip in the 987 alone. I probably exceeded the GVW of the little Cayman about 4 times during that move. Aside from any large item that dimensionally can’t fit, I have never had a situation where I was stuck not being able to haul stuff in my car.
Her E550 convertible was another workhouse, the top remained down while we hauled 2 flat packed dressers from IKEA along with anything else remaining in that run that wouldn’t fit in my Cayman.
Another proud moment back around 2020 was fitting an entire BMW S54 along with an engine hoist with my sister and best friend into an E83 X3. Maybe I should play more Tetris.
I imagine some will get out their pitchforks for this comment, but my 2023 Crosstrek Limited is actually a great highway car despite being a compact crossover based on the Impreza. I didn’t expect it to have as good of a ride quality as it does, and was surprised to learn that it has the same wheelbase as the larger Forester despite being much shorter overall. That certainly helps it.
My wife will concur…she’s put a lot of interstate miles on her Crosstrek…many times over the limit in left lane flashing her lights for people to get out of her way.
Mazda RX-8
It was designed as a grand tourer, but is an exceptionally good sports car. Don’t really need to explain this one, but the rotary engine is legendary, it’s mid engined, multilink front and rear, great brakes, and classic Mazda handling, dynamics, and transmission shifting. The contemporaneous MX-5 was based on the RX-8, just shrunk down slightly and made a bit lighter.
If you mistakenly think of it as a sports car (an iteration of the RX-7), then you’ll find it’s an exceptionally good grand tourer. Admittedly, I’m on the short side (5’5″), but I can get both of my children IN CAR SEATS, with one still REAR FACING, AND my wife and I can have our seats properly adjusted. Additionally, the suicide rear doors make getting said children into and out of car seats EASIER than doing the same in our 4-door Jeep Wrangler.
I tow with my Prius C worker bee all the time. Usually a motorcycle, sometimes a riding mower. Always gets looks on the highway. I have a Gen 1 Sequoia as a boat truck, but I loathe burning fuel unnecessarily that could go into my boat or motorcycles.
I also took it down the wrong road in the UP of MI last fall and spent 50 minutes on wet forest gravel roads that were pretty sloppy. Made it through just fine.
At 6.5-7¢ per mile fuel and oil cost, this car is truly a Swiss army knife at a box cutter price.
I hear a twin mattress fits quite well in the cargo area of a SAAB 99 turbo, making it a fine
stealth shagging wagon.
My parents BMW e38 740iL with the ski pass through in the rear seat. We were once able to fit an 11′ 3″ long piece of cabinet trim in it, entirely inside the car. It could cary long narrow items very well.
Our Ford Freestyle would haul 8′ lumber with hatch closed if you folded down passenger seat (why do most cars not do this?), 10′ if rested on dash.
Foresters actually have some performance cred! They’re great in the snow, handle well (at least the 2nd to 4th gens, can’t speak for the others) and the turbo ones got lots of pep, throw on some mild coilovers and sway bars and you’re keeping up with BRZs and GTIs on twisty mountain roads. Steering feel is surprisingly good if you find one with a WRX rack, even better if you pair it with some firm tires. (Yokohama Advan eco tires will do)
Of course, the price you pay for a practical sleeper Subaru is the horrendous fuel economy 🙁 and oil consumption
Another one, When I was coming back from college in my ’94 Thunderbird there was a crash that shut down an intersection of this small town. The fire department said the only way we were getting through was to cut through the corn field and go around. The pickups in front of me went for it, and being a stupid college kid, I went for it too. That Thunderbird had no trouble going through it.
A 97 miata with snow tires on steep, snow-covered Pittsburgh hills is unstoppable!
I signed up for an autocross instructional event with the only car at the time that I trusted to not die, my 89 LTD Country Squire. Turns out the bigger wagon back-end really helped balance out the car and it handled surprisingly well on the Uniroyal Laredo tires it had at the time. Had to do the course in first gear as the power steering pump couldn’t keep up if it upshifted.
My Plymouth Horizon was really good at running up bills at my local mechanic’s.