Buy Me an Old Russian T-50 MBT (Main Battle Tank) For My Birthday So I Can Run Over Some SUVs On My Block

Garrett Mok Lays Rubber on SUV Lane.

Archive: Psycho Killer, Kill Yourself

If you are like me, the smell of gasoline reminds you of a certain truck stop near Dubuque, Iowa when you'd realized you'd just drove five hundred miles straight without stopping so many years ago.  To me, the smell of Unleaded Premium in the morning is like, victory...  No, more like freedom.  As an avid outdoors person, I dig cars, motion, wind and bugs and the whole nine yards. And trucks and 4 x 4 vehicles of all sorts.  However, over the past decade, or more specifically in the last five years or so, I've been noticing with not-so-secret disdain the new American motor trend called the SUV, the Supposedly Utility Vehicle.

I'll be frank: SUVs are for diaper warriors.  What's alarming is that these suburban mall-busters are popping up everywhere in New York City.   There are more SUVs cranking down Bowery than there are hobos and punk rockers.  Where are you going to go off-roading in New York City?  In Central Park?  I tried to do that once on my mountain bike (the pedaling kind) and almost got ticketed a hundred bucks by an equestrian cop. 

Let's get real.  The last motorized vehicle I owned was a '82 Chevy S-10 Longbed pickup with a 14-gauge steel toolbox, 4-speed stick, that was used for hauling wood in Duchess County, New York and occasional joy rides on muddy fire roads through Fahnstalk State Park.  An old girlfriend of mine couldn't even steer it without using both her hands (read: no power steering).  But it hauled wood, lots of it, and did its job.  It did its job.   Now that was a truck.  Toyota Rav 4, or Lincoln Navigator for that matter with tilt-steering and mocha leather seats, ain't.

The facts are there:  SUVs for the most part are less safe than their passenger car counterparts, due to their top-heaviness and lack of braking power.  They are gas guzzlers, and produce more exhaust fumes--therefore more harmful to the environment.  And the worst of all, the SUVs are plain embarrassing, because you know, I know, they (the owners) know and their cousins and co-workers know that they have never taken their untrailworthy, behemoth-sized Expeditions and QX4s anywhere remotely near dirt or mud.   The compact SUVs such as the Rav 4--SUVettes--are no better; they are underpowered and structurally questionable.   So why are they so popular? 

The automobile manufacturers take sedan engines and bolt them to existing pickup frames with almost no structural modification, put some square, tough-looking body molding over it, mark up $5,000 to $10,000, and voila!, pops a SUV.  It's a theater of hollow maximization, much like silicon breast implants.  We somehow know they are fake, but some of us like the way they look, for a while anyway.  In a way, the monied suckers who casually buy these wannabe hotrods almost deserve them, except for the fact that their badly-handling, gas-guzzling mausoleums-on-wheels affect other drivers and pedestrians in a bad way.  I have a friend who admits he drives less carefully when he is enthroned in his Dodge Durango, because in case of a crash, "it's the other guy who's gonna get hurt."  True to his word, he has backed into an Escort not so long ago with his high rear bumper and put a mean dent in the Escort's side door like it was a soda can.   

So why doesn't somebody ask, Detroit, what have you done?  Alas, it is not their fault, since we live in a wonderful world of market economy.  SUVs are like the coca, and GMs, Fords and Dodges of this country are merely the fancy-hatted pushers, matching supply for demand, and raking in billions annually. 

My question is, do you still want an off-road truck after all this?  This would be a perhaps good time to differentiate between a true off-road truck and a SUV, but for the sake of expediency, let's just say I am talking about a 4x4 vehicle.  But the more important question is, do you want to go off-roading?  Think about this carefully.  If the answer is a genuine, no-holds-barred Yes, then we'll roll up our sleeves and step into the shop.  Otherwise, there is no need to read any further. I have organized the following advice into three sections: Must-to-Avoid, Half-Decent, and Kick-Ass.  Needless to say, your actual mileage may vary.

Must-to-Avoid:

Jeep Cherokee & Grand Cherokee: bad in crash tests.  Chevy Blazer (except the Seventies and Eighties full-sized Blazer) and Tahoe; Ford Explorer (except the 2-door "Sport" version with a V6 or V8 engine swap and aftermarket suspension lift) and Expedition: basically pickups with extra seats and roofs over them, and not trailworthy.   Same with off-the-shelf Dodge Durangos.  Some are not even four-wheel drives.  They should have four gear settings: Malls, Groceries, Movies, and Park.

Oldsmobile Bravada, Cadillac Escalade, Lexus LX470, Infiniti QX4.  Any four-door large luxury SUVs.  Please, people, grow old gracefully.  Don't fight it.  Just let go. Buy a respectable BMW 7-series sedan or a Jaguar XJ8: you' ll get better performance out of them and you won't embarrass your all-knowing grandkids.

Mercedes Benz ML55:  this is actually an innovatively-designed, well-built (of course, it's German) truck wannabe that may even be trailworthy.  It even got very good crash test results.  However, due to its brand-namesake--the very conceivable fact that no one in their right mind will want to drive a $50,000 Mercedes through paint-chipping rocks and corroding mud, therefore defeating its very reason-for-being-a-mud-stud--I have to say it also should be avoided, unless you want to scream midlife crisis. It's your choice.

Kia Sportage, Toyota Rav 4 and 4 Runner, Isuzu Rodeo, Geo Tracker, etc.  These are motorized equivalents of day-glo flip-flops.  Imagine wearing flip-flops to go rockclimbing, or to a party.   They'd better stay on boardwalks.

Half-Decent--SUVs that I don't at least flinch from when I encounter them on the street:

Toyota Landcruiser.  The TLC has a legacy of off-road motorsports under its hood since its birth in the Fifties.  Once, on a Brooklyn street, I saw a beet-red early-Nineties TLC with a bumper sticker that said, 'I survived the Alaskan Highway.'  Although the Alaskan Highway, or ALCAN, is hardly off-road, I have a respect for any vehicle that has choked on at least a bit of permafrost outside Aspen city limits, or for that matter, Poughkeepsie Galleria Mall.  That particular TLC also had what looked like polar bear claw marks under the driver's side mirror--received ostensibly during the epic sojourn on the frozen ALCAN--which impressed the hell out of me.

The new Nissan XTerra: looks pretty good for an off-the-shelf mud toy.  I have once actually muttered, 'You sexy bitch,' to the presence of a brand-new forest-green XTerra.  I personally don't know anyone who's ever taken the XTerra off-road, or anywhere resembling ex-terra, but looking at the specs in those fancy spreads in Outside magazine, it may actually be trailworthy--MTV X-Games style--granted with some minor suspension upgrades.  Say about 2-inch body lift & 4-inch suspension jackup (which will make it less stable on a highway, and even dangerous at high speed, but this is an off-roader, right?   Right.).  Actually, the only reason I like this X-factor is because it has a built-in internal bike rack.  Excellent, dude.

Now, the ones you've been waiting for--the real Kick-Ass trailworthy baddies:

Late Eighties & early Nineties Jeep CJ-7 (no Seventies CJ-7: they lacked stabilizers and rolled over like a pregnant penguin.  I personally knew a couple of  people who were killed in a roller during a cold upstate New York winter.).  Good old Jeep.  The Volkswagen of dirt-and-sun fun.

Land Rover Defender 90: this is built-up to the British Army specs, and saw action in Desert Storm.  If it's good enough for the famed Desert Rats regiment of the Royal British Army, it's good enough for me.  Need I say more?   It's a bloody shame, then, that Land Rover doesn't make these beauties any more.  Even the venerable British toughies gave in to the cloying consumer demand for leather-seated couch wagons, and dropped the badass Defender line entirely in 2000.  I will trade in ten Lexus for a pearl '95 Defender hardtop any day.

AM General Hummer, or the Humvee.  Sure, the thing's wider than a city sidewalk and costs almost as much as an one-bedroom co-opt in a Park Slope brownstone, but the only thing that has a better off-road capabilities than the mean Hummer will be a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and those ain't for sale.  The Hummer is the ultimate party weapon for a vehicular Woodstock, granted you can pay the ticket price.  It can stomp over an Acura, and pull your waterlogged butt out of Gowanus Canal.

Finally, indulge me and my brief high-school boy fantasy in this ultimate 4x4 getup.  The down home, slightly rednecky, all-American off-road package, and you merely have to put a small dent in your trust fund to do it.  This is it.  Picture a '96 (the year is somewhat arbitrary: any late Eighties or Nineties model will do) metallic-blue Ford Ranger XLT Supercab.  4.0 liter V6 stock engine, good enough straight out of the box to take it off-roading.  But wait.  Like your ex- once probably told you, If You're Gonna Do It, Babe, Do It Right.  Rig it with a high-performance K&N Filtercharger for starters.  You can later add a Paxton Supercharger if you really want to get serious.  Jack up clearance with Skyjacker Softride 6" suspension lift, add Rancho torsion bars, and 31-inch BF Goodrich All-Terrain tires mounted on 15x8.5 Centerline Hellcat rims.  Then add Smittybilt front bumper with 100-watt foglights and heavy-duty skidplate to battle bad visibility and protruding boulders.   If you don't know what the hell this is all about, just pretend that you do.  Because that's what SUVs are all about.  But I can guarantee that this Ford--the SUV-Killer Ranger--is the off-road getup you want.  If  that's what you really want.  The Real Thing.

Garrett Mok is the Publisher of 12gauge.com, and a lover of pickups--trucks, that is.

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