Salacious Sedans, Contrary Coupes, Jezebellian Jalopies -- Tales of Heroically Undergunned Cars in Places that They Ought Not Be

Used to be, Volkswagon Beatles would show up in the damnedest places. Hell, the busses too. We don't see much of that anymore.

Now it's Prius. So many times I've been on some rough ass dirt road in my lifted 4wd truck, bouncing and jarring along, only to find a Prius at the trailhead! Surely yall have seen this too. 

Couple of years back, at Usal Camp on the Lost Coast of California, there's two Prius, out on the beach section at a small rave. Legend.

Cherokee Nuneswrote:

Used to be, Volkswagon Beatles would show up in the damnedest places. Hell, the busses too. We don't see much of that anymore.

Now it's Prius. So many times I've been on some rough ass dirt road in my lifted 4wd truck, bouncing and jarring along, only to find a Prius at the trailhead! Surely yall have seen this too. 

Couple of years back, at Usal Camp on the Lost Coast of California, there's two Prius, out on the beach section at a small rave. Legend.

The Prius is a great car for difficult conditions, it's got a great weight distribution, and it's tiny.

I drove mine most of the way up to one of the Shuteye Ridge crags. I was stymied by a literal waterfall, but I was glad I stopped driving where I did. I eventually encountered foot deep ruts on my hike in that I would've been leery of taking my 4runner up.

Great stories!  When I was about 25, my buddy and I flew down to Baja, Caliornia, rented a mini-sub-combact two-wheel drive car, and took a road trip through the Mexican peninsula.  Along the way, we spontaneously met a spanish speaking bike messenger girl from new york city who had ridden accross the country on her messenger bike, using sunglasses bought from a garage, and black plastic garbage bags as paniers.  We loaded her bike and stuff into the (now ver overstuffed) mini sub combact, and kept going.  The highlight was driving over a narrow dirt track, from the west coast of the peninsula, across the spine of mountains, down to to a remote beach and fishing outpost usually accessed only by boat.  That journey acorss the mountaisn took about 10 hours.  It involved much moving of rocks, filling in of ruts, and pushing and pulling of the car to get through the steep, rocky, rough, dry terrain. It is an absolute miracle that we did not flat, fly off a cliff, or just become stranded and die of thirst/starvation.  There was nobody else back there, except a truck, we heard, that came once per week.  I think that the short wheelbase of the car actually helped, because we didn\t get caught up (too badly) on rocks and ruts.  Later, in a different part of Baja, we raced along the sand flats, windows open, wind blowing through, landscape dry and bare.  I loved driving that car.  You just had to let the wheels drift a little and "find their way" over the loose sandy ground, and it worked really well. I'll never forget that trip--it had a feeling of real freedom and adventure.  And out little car was a big part of it!  I'll never forget the look on the rental agency employees face when we brought the car back, covered in dust, salt, grime, and so on, odometer showing some serious milage, air filter absolutely clogged.  If I can find some old pictures, I'll scan them and post them up.

JCMwrote:

As someone more used to the dry granite gravel of the Sierra, and the brown organic loam of the PNW and New England, I can't say I'm familiar with the concept of an adobe road. What's the deal with those? Are we just talking red clay?

Yeah, adobe dirt has a high clay content. When wet, it adheres to itself and builds up. Walking through it quickly renders your shoes into "platform shoes" with five inches of mud underfoot. Bikes become inoperable after just a few pedal strokes. The stuff is heavy, too. It can't be easily sprayed off when wet and instead requires scraping, or letting it dry and then chipping it off.

a classic:

high centered subaru:

"Doin' it in a Prius":

perfection:

My first car was a 1967 VW Kharmann Ghia. Never changed the oil on it but it never complained and never left me stranded anywhere. We took it up to the top of Shaw Butte (Phoenix, Arizona) regularly, loaded down with two hang gliders tied on to the roof and three of us crammed inside with gear, harnesses, etc. That thing did pretty well on supposed 4WD roads. Maybe a statement about VWs in general… low gearing, maybe? (And careful placement of the tires as you drive… along the high points.)

JCMwrote:

As someone more used to the dry granite gravel of the Sierra, and the brown organic loam of the PNW and New England, I can't say I'm familiar with the concept of an adobe road. What's the deal with those? Are we just talking red clay?

This is what adobe mud can do:

After selling this truck, I ended up with a CRV and while visiting family in BC decided to go up to Mt. Slesse for a hike with a friend. The access road was a little on the rough side, but the CRV made it with careful driving. Coming down however, I went a little too fast over a water bar and a protruding rock just in the right place smacked the oil pan and put a 3/4" hole in it. We were able to coast down a little ways with the engine off, and then push a bit until it got too uphill. Fortunately we were able to get cell service and call a tow truck, and we had gotten to a point where the road was smooth enough for the tow truck to get to the car. He dropped us off at a Canadian Tire parking lot in Chilliwack and my dad and I came out the next day with some steel epoxy and steel mesh to patch it up. To our surprise, it worked and mostly held oil with just a drip here and there for probably another 10k miles, before I got rear ended and the car was a write off. The AC also had quit, so it was good riddance to that pile of metal. I also have busted the radiator fan from a rock on a VW Jetta while driving up a gravel road in North Carolina; I think I'm just not a good enough driver for low clearance vehicles and now own a Tundra that's been amazing to me.

Is it normal for cars to have exposed undercarriages? The Mazda's I've driven all have a plastic housing protecting the bottom from salt, rocks, etc.

J Lwrote:

Is it normal for cars to have exposed undercarriages? The Mazda's I've driven all have a plastic housing protecting the bottom from salt, rocks, etc.

My Fit had a plastic shield but it was a pain to reattach after changing the oil. So I left it in Clifton, CO, where it would have plenty of likeminded friends.

The only time I have ever driven somewhere to go bouldering ...

... I ended up placing a nut.

It was actually the Traveling Stopper, which was sufficiently suffused with good luck to patch together our tire cables and get us back to the highway in a snowstorm.

I don’t have pictures of it, but I did witness a Porsche Boxster (?— not particularly good at telling the different models apart, but it was a convertible) halfway in the ditch on the Motherlode hill. It was Rocktoberfest weekend Sunday afternoon ~10 years ago. 

my buddy Peter is a man of many talents. Driving was one of the legal ways Peter made money and he usually had to drive oversized logging trucks. Be it tiny roads in Atlanta or dirt roads in rural North GA Peter really could turn a wheel. When I first met him he was driving a ‘02 Chevy Impala. Our first trip to the Red we took that car, $40, and Tortillas. we ran out of money before we got there but we scraped by thanks to the lack of a dumpster diving policy at Miguel’s.

much has already been said about the hill coming out of the lode area, but I’d like to report that that  Impala sang it’s way up that hill in the rain even before they freshened it up four or five years ago.

Pic is the death of said impala, frozen in the GA clay 

Not Not MP Adminwrote:

This thread needs way more photos. Pics or it didn’t happen 

 I didn’t document it, so it didn’t happen

If only Layton Kor could chime in here - he’s be odds on favorite to win the thread   

When Elliot and I went to Norwich Ledge for the first time it was mid-April and there were still 1 foot snow drifts on the hilly dirt roads. All was swell until we started plowing up a hill through deep slush. Couldn't make it up or reverse out. Elliot was resigned to spending the entire day shoveling a path out, but I found some birch bark to slide under the tires and get us the traction to blast out of there. Probably would have been better if we just stayed stuck and didn't have to experience the choss kingdom that is Norwich.

We brought the big guns but I was very worried about my battery dying and being stranded. Also drove across a WI2 that went over the 2 track on the way out, did not record because we almost slipped off the cliff and were too focused on being afraid of dying

35's save lives

I took gMaps' suggestion for getting to a crag somewhere near Canada. I ended up getting suckered into an ATV trail and before I could find a spot to turn around, the Fit got high centered.

One wheel was in the mud, the other wheels suspended. After trying other solutions for a half hour, I ended up jacking up the driver side even higher to push the other side into better traction. I then drove off the jack -- kachunk!

We escaped without anything more than cosmetic damage, and I managed to send a sport route on gear, so all was well.

F r i t zwrote:

I took gMaps' suggestion for getting to a crag somewhere near Canada. I ended up getting suckered into an ATV trail and before I could find a spot to turn around, the Fit got high centered.

One wheel was in the mud, the other wheels suspended. After trying other solutions for a half hour, I ended up jacking up the driver side even higher to push the other side into better traction. I then drove off the jack -- kachunk!

We escaped without anything more than cosmetic damage, and I managed to send a sport route on gear, so all was well.

Another win for the fit!!!

I must echo the praise of the Honda Fit. Mine is first year, first generation (2007). I never did swamp it in the wild because it is very capable yet I know its limits. I did, however, leave the highway backwards at 60 MPH just outside of Corinth, Mississippi after an icy bridge. Completed a full 360 by the time I came to a stop, hopelessly stuck 20 feet down a steep embankment. Never underestimate just how icy a bridge can get when the road is dry.