“We can take my car,” says your friend as a solution to traversing an aircraft-worthy distance. That’s very kind of him; he loves to drive, and any journey in your own aging ride involves constant fear of ending up with a 4000-pound paperweight in the middle of nowhere at one in the morning.
There’s only one problem: your colleague’s car is more commuter than king of the road. “It’ll be fine,” he assures you, as you begin what might be the most uncomfortably cramped car trip you’ve ever been on, worse than riding six-up in the cargo area of a Malibu wagon with your sweaty little league team.
As a teen, the rear seat of the 280Z 2+2 our family had was no longer quite as enjoyable as it was when we were in elementary school. If you aren’t aware of this car, it was the famous S30 Z-car that began life as the vaunted 240Z and then had around a foot added to the wheelbase and what purported to be a rear seat shoehorned in. Naturally, it was not going to cause a Cadillac Sixty Special to lose any sleep in terms of space.
The seat was quite cramped once we grew over five feet tall, to the point that you lost circulation in your extremities after an hour or so. Still, I didn’t dare complain even on longer trips. Why? Well, if we did, it’s likely that Mom would claim that it was time to get something else. “Something else” was likely not going to be akin to a Porsche 928 or a Supra but instead a Volvo 240 sedan, a Toyota Cressida, or other practical product that was equally Not As Good to a teenager as a rusting Z.
No, I kept a lid on it and suffered the pain. In typical pre-decontented Japanese car fashion where no expense was spared on inexpensive cars, you had an ashtray, courtesy light, pop-out vent windows, and even a separate set of rear-seat-accessible latches for the doors back there. No way bean counters today would approve two interior door handles, especially for people in a useless back seat:
I heard that my college roommates once drove from Michigan to Wisconsin three-up in a one of those criminally underrated FC RX-7, with one of the taller individuals in the “rear seat.”
Yes, the American Market second-gen RX-7 could have been purchased with the JDM-standard back bench, a scale-model seat that was really a padded package shelf. This friend must have just folded himself up and wedged himself into the space like Houdini in a barrel. This is the kind of thing you could do when, like those guys, you were in your twenties, but today you’d feel it for a month, so long as it didn’t cause permanent damage to your half-century-old internals. Seriously, that had to be like a seven- or eight-hour ride; that’s an experience that would be outlawed in some nations, like waterboarding.
Now, I’m not saying these have to be all-bad experiences; some of the most fun adventures you’ve probably ever had involved critically limited leg, head, and shoulder room. But comfort was definitely not part of the fun.
What have been some of your most comfort-challenged road trips?
Top graphic image: A Better Way Wholesale Autos
The one with the nice young lady who didn’t believe in using the ventilation system of the cars or opening the windows.
It was during the heat of summer. We were all dressed in full suit toward a fancy wedding party. She had a big car (berlingo), but we were five young adults.
Just before driving us, she had taken her dog for a swim.
It was a two hours drive, but I seriously considered just walking back.
The most recent actual car I can think of was a recent Beetle. I somehow got into the back of a 2019. Just a few miles was almost unbearable.
I would have to cast my mind back a ways to truly answer this question, but I will apologize to everyone in recent years who have had to ride in the back seat of my previous and current BMW 2 series for anything more than a short hop across town.
1992, northern NJ to Wildwood for Memorial Day weekend in a DSM 1992 Plymouth Laser Turbo. 3 hours stuffed into the backseat (I’m 6’3″) that was already occupied by my buddy and his girlfriend! Great trip, not a great ride!
Orange County to Lake Tahoe. One summer, I drove my lifted Jeep Wrangler TJ on 35″ mud tires—with no doors and no top—from OC up to wheel the Rubicon Trail.
The 9+ hour highway drive was miserable. I was constantly blasted by the wind, fighting to keep the steering straight, and dealing with temperatures fluctuating between the 30s and 100+. The trail, however, was epic! I definitely suffered, but I don’t regret it one single bit.
Driving from Portlock Island in Canada to Olive Branch, MS. It took 15-16 hours which may be the longest single trip I have ever done. I was pretty much done around Nashville and wanted to stop. My wife was like “but we’re so close” mush doggy!
We pulled into a 24 hour McDonald’s for some caffeine and they weren’t serving while they did the end of day count, bastards!
I’ve done plenty of 13 hours trips and been fine but that one, oof.
*Edit: We didn’t drive from the island. We took a boat from the island to the parking area on the mainland first which was not included in my trip time.
Norfolk Naval Base in VA to New Orleans and back. My friend’s new Hyundai Excel 4 speed manual. 20ish hours each way if I remember.
Me, him, his wife, and 6ish month old baby. Back seats folded down and the wife/baby spent most of the trip laying down in the back. For safety.
I had never driven a manual, but I realized if I learned quickly I could have the driver seat to myself for part of the trip. I didn’t do too bad.
Pretty much any “passenger van” from the 70s or early 80s. Just a few rows of vinyl bench seats. Leaf-spring light truck rear suspension. Noisy. Air conditioning was whatever managed to waft back from the dashboard; heat wasn’t much better.
The coming of minivans made the passenger van concept so much more civilized.
Now, ask my kids about at least their most memorable back seat rides, and it will inevitably be the back of our old 7-passenger Discovery, in the two inward-facing jump seats. With three kids, there was inevitably a rock-paper-scissors contest to determine the lucky two who got to climb into the way-back section. They even had their own air conditioning ducted back there! I’m not sure riding behind the rear axle was all that comfortable — probably a lot like the back of the school bus. But kids love that, too.
One time as a kid my brother, my cousin and I rode home from an auction about an hour away in the bed of our grandpaps old 90s 2 door Ranger.
It had a low pappy cap, a hard plastic ribbed slide in bedliner, my dad was terrible at driving stick, and keeping us company back there was a nanny goat that my pap decided to buy. It kept trying to stand up but couldn’t get grip on the plastic floor, so the damn thing kept falling on us, thrashing around with her hooves hitting us, and of course all the little goat crap nuggets that kept sliding forward and back to us every time my dad had to struggle away from a stop sign.
Good times, man. Good times.
Somewhere very uncomfortable?
Like the back of a Volkswagen?
For a honeymoon, the wife and I decided to do Route 66 from Joplin to Vegas. I had a newer v6 AWD Escape or an older , but still decent convertible Olds Cutlass Supreme that I was waffling on which to take. My mother had just purchased a Honda Insight and she suggested we take it since it got Hybrid Fuel economy. We ended up taking the plunge on that and wished we had the escape most of the trip. that thing could be camped in, it was like a billy goat on bumpy dirt roads, could sort of handle some basic offroad stuff(which we found out is necessary to access some parts of the old Route) and the 3.0 V6 was peppy enough that we figure it would have been far better in the colorado passes in retrospect.
As it was, the seats made you feel like a dog dragging a turd all the way to Vegas. The fuel economy was indeed decent, but the low resistance tires were trash in the rain or god forbid snow, and it barely made it to the top of the pass into Utah. I think we were at like 40MPH at the top. The sandy washed out roads to Oatman to see the Donkeys was damn near a failure that would have necessitated a donkey train to pull us out. All in all, we definitely would never take a car on that trip again.
My senior year of college. A 2,000+ mile resource management “field trip” from Reno to northern Montana and back. In January. Sitting in the very back seat of a Chevy passenger van with no functional heater. I’ll never forget the joy of sliding around on snow-covered two-tracks in -30 F weather somewhere west of Choteau MT looking for imaginary elk that never showed up…
I got driven to and mostly from high school by my cousin who lived up the street once he got his license. From trips usually included his girlfriend (now wife of many years!) so of course she rode shotgun.
His first car was an early 80s Cutlass Supreme 2 door so riding in the back seat wasn’t bad and getting in and out of back seats was a normal thing due to the popularity of the ‘personal luxury coupe’ at the time.
Shortly before I got my license which was a year after he did, he got an (89?) crx. Trips home involved 6 foot me crawling into the hatchback and going into the infant position to fit. Thankfully it was only maybe a 10 minute drive at most but it was better than the bus!
back seat area of a TR4 with 4 pairs of ski boots..
I’m horrifically claustrophobic so I will go out of my way to avoid small back seats and/or other cramped accommodations.
One comes to mind, though. When I was 15 or so, I went with my brother as he test drove a new 1999 Mercury Cougar with a manual transmission. As he was driving and the salesman was in the passenger seat, I (about 6’1″ and 240 lb. at the time) got stuck in one of the tiny back seats.
Getting back there was challenging, but not the worst part. Due to the cramped quarters and virtually non-existent headroom, my head (despite tilting my head severely to one side) was pressed against the rear window. I knew the ride wouldn’t be comfortable, but it never occurred to me how problematic this would be given his minimal experience driving a three pedal car.
The car constantly bucked as he tried (and often failed) to pull away from a stop. I whacked my head on the rear window **every** time he started from a dead stop, as well as several times when he shifted gears. The ride was mercifully short (maybe 20 minutes at most), but I think I managed to get CTE on that trip. He bought that car and drove it for maybe 8 years, but I never again rode in the back seat.
I’m 6ft 2″ and sitting in the back of a Porsche 993 targa in the queue for two hours to get into the Le Mans Classic in 95F heat was not fun.
My worst ride was in the back “seat” of an MGB GT. I couldn’t even make it out of the parking lot! I then drove my own car. I’m not a contortionist.
NYC-MIA in the back seat of a 3rd gen Camaro Z/28.
SO many: The turkey hunting trip in the back of a pickup, the overnight on the side of the road in a ford escort, the vaporlocking ford ranger across south dakota in 100+ degree temps. SO SO many.
I did a driver school at Mid Ohio a few years back. As part of it the pro drivers loaded up a Honda Odyssey and tore around track. I have never had issues with carsickness before so I chose the middle seat in the middle row. That was a mistake. I stopped short of hurling but I am now familiar with what motion sickness feels like.
I rode for about four hours in the backseat of a 80s Corolla, which comfort-wise wasn’t too horrible, but the stereo was broken in such a way that it could either be completely off or play a cassette single of “let’s give them something to talk about“ by Bonnie Raitt on an endless loop. And that’s what the driver wanted to do. That song is forever stuck in my head.
That’s a running gag with Marshall’s car on How I Met Your Mother.
The Proclaimers’ “500 Miles.”
Gonna be the man who’s haverin’ to yeh
Back seat in a crew cab in a mid-2000s Tacoma for a 5-ish hour drive to the Carrabassett Valley. Terrible seat, no support, lots of NVH sitting there even though it was relatively new at the time. Got out feeling like I had been there for 1000 miles
Two trips come to mind: (1) a near-500 mile trip to Destin FL in a Mk2 Scirocco as one of four guys all 6′ or taller; (2) a 5-hour ride in a Geo Tracker soft-top at interstate speeds with an epic hangover (the interstate speeds meant the top was all BRRRRRRRRRRRZZZZZ the whole way
I’m on a one-year detail right now, away from my normal job. The new job requires taking a shuttle to campus, which can take anywhere between 10 and 25 minutes in traffic.
All shuttles are 24-people bus conversions on E350 chassis. They are loud and smelly, with a shitty rear suspension not fit for this duty. Seats are slidey plastic. Hate the whole thing.
I think I would quit.
I get motion sickness easily, and I can stand those airport shuttles for exactly 10 min max before I turn green.