Speed does kill – if you get caught doing it.
We live in the Hut! Hut! Hut! era. Armed government workers (AGWs) wearing Batman-style utility belts packed with multiple mags and high-powered “assault” weapons over their Robocop body armor are far more likely to end your life than doing 70 in a 55.
Every encounter with them is a threat to our safety. 
Even if you aren’t Tazed and dragged out of your car by one of these odd juxtapositions of muscled-up and tattoo’d poltroonery (I feared for my safety!) and hair-trigger brutality (stop resisting!) most people just can’t afford to “speed” anymore.
The extortion note – styled a “ticket” – the AGW forces you to sign at gunpoint (see what happens if you decline to sign) is just the beginning. The Oz Panopticon will take note the moment you’re duly convicted and then comes the second extortion note – this one from the insurance mafia. The already-absurdly expensive “coverage” you’re forced to buy, also at gunpoint (see what happens if you stop paying) suddenly costs 20 percent more . . . for the next five years.
That’s for something like 48 in a 35 – i.e., driving with the flow of traffic – but today it’s your turn to be the one picked from the herd for a shearing. If you’re driving a car that looks speedy, the odds of this happening to you today – and tomorrow – go up.
If you get caught actually using a speedy car – laying rubber, driving faster than 80 on the highway (something an ’86 Yugo could do) you risk a “reckless” driving bust and thousands of dollars in legalized theft, plus the very real possibility of being Hut! Hut! Hutted! by an armed government worker.
Even if you always drive the speed limit and never get Hut! Hut! Hutted! the insurance mafia will make your speedy (in theory) car a very expensive car to own, which will make you not want to drive it. Which in turn renders pointless the buying of it. You pay more to go no faster than the herd – plus the higher gas bills and cramped back seats.
It’s as silly as paying ribeye prices for oatmeal.
This probably explains the declining interest in speedy cars – and the much-increased-interest in 4×4 trucks and SUVs. There are no speed traps off-road and you’re much less likely to encounter a Hut! Hut! Hutting! AGW on your favorite trail. These are usually abundant as well as free – in contrast to track time for a speedy car. Track days are a rich man’s hobby – and a hassle. Drive there, pay there – then drive back. Often, the drive there is hours long.
But you can turn off the paved road pretty much anywhere. If you have land – or a friend who has land – you can go there, too. There is a great deal of appeal in this. What’s down that dirt road?
Let’s see!
You can also enjoy a visually obstreperous vehicle – one that makes the right sounds and provides the emotional gratification that speedy cars used to but can’t anymore because of the anvil-over-your-head constant threat of crossing paths with a bullet-headed (and possibly bullet-spewing) AGW.
Insurance is less oppressive, too – because trucks and SUVs haven’t yet been targeted as an anti-social class of vehicle as speedy cars have been for generations. You can buy a pick-up with a V8 and it’s just a pickup. A V8 Camaro or Mustang is a “high risk” car and your rates will reflect this, accordingly. 
The trucks also have V8s – not just turbo’d fours that are too complicated (and expensive) to modify. The V8s in most new trucks are still pretty straightforward. Most are amendable to the same kinds of mods people used to make to speedy car V8s.
And of course, they’re V8s.
An interesting thing: Observe the proliferation of specialty off-road packages, mirroring what was once practice with speedy cars.
Instead of Z28, Z71 – Chevy speak for the heavy-duty suspension, skid plates and M/S-rated tires offered with trucks like the Silverado 1500.
Ford offers the twin-turbo Raptor – its response to the Z71 and even hairier. The Hut! Hut! Hut! era’s equivalent of a Boss 429 Mustang.
Ram is about to install the Challenger Hellcat’s almost 800 horsepower supercharged Hemi V8 in its 1500 truck as a counterpoint to the two above – and you can already buy the Hellcat’s engine in a Jeep Grand Cherokee (the Trackhawk) and use it because to an AGW it looks like a Jeep Grand Cherokee and thus doesn’t trigger his instinct to Hut! Hut! Hut!
In the event it does trigger him, it’s feasible to escape the Hut! Hut! Hutting! because the Jeep has 4WD and can leave the road – and hopefully, the steroid-enraged AGW – fuming at the road’s edge.
The market is like water in that it always finds a way to “leak” past whatever is trying to hold it back. See Prohibition. See the War on (some) Drugs. See the War )not officially declared) on cars.
It may not be possible to do much with a speedy car other than admire it for what it could do.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to have just as much fun – without risking the mulcting or the Hut! Hut! Hutting!
. . .
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Except that many of the off-road capable vehicles since 2010 are not designed for anything other than Very Light off-road use.
Love 4-wheeling, but to do this more than one time on a dirt road you need a vehicle which can handle getting beaten about.
FCA has the worst transmissions, even the manual ones they had until 2015. The axles are not anywhere as stout as pre-2004 models, and most of the front axles cannot take too much hammering without leaking or eventual failures of the differential.
Nissan had OK 4-wheel systems until about 2010, but they changed to some unnamed manufacturer and now they are worse than all of FCA.
Suby 4-wheel drive has also not improved over the years. They have the audacity to show them hammering down a dirt road, but you can’t do that very often without damage to your steering and transfer case.
And, the rest of the cars have such high complexity that even if the suspension could handle True 4-wheeling, you will eventually have an electrical/sensor/relay/cooling failure from shaking the vehicle too much.
So compared to a used, beaten 1990’s off-road vehicle, a brand new 2019 vehicle with minimal off-road skills is 3 times more likely to fail on the trail.
Which is funny to me when they get out and try to call a tow truck and there is no mobile phone signal!
Sorry, but I don’t want your bloated behemoths on my hiking trails.
You’re gonna shit when you see a D7 pulling my tri-axle rig hauling tower equipment up that trail. You’ll be wondering about “my” hiding trail.
Ladies & gentlemen, I couldn’t possibly provide a better exhibit than this of the non-driver mentality. I literally don’t even know what to say to this.
Not much to say. I’m just steering and hope nothing breaks. Non-driver, 4 million miles in a lifetime of trucking with no caused accidents. Non-driver, ha ha. Don’t say anything, just move out of the way and wave to the dozer operator. It’s not really my ideal day but it’s certainly exciting….in a balls drawn up way.
I think chuck was replying to bob 😉
This is correct.
He went full retard, you never go full retard
It’s the hunt for taxes, in this case fines (the same thing to any government) and the failure of courts to support the constitution. Many local and state governments are starved for funds to operate and pay for promised pensions. I can go on any x-way, set my cruise to 70 (or the speed limit) and drive 70 miles and all the while group after group of vehicles, except maybe the semis, pass me by. Very few are at or below the limit. Speeding is alive and well. Even on the surface streets, there is usually someone passing by or hanging on the bumper if you are doing the limit. You can blame Homeland Security for going bonkers and pushing maximum police intervention with the average citizen. No one is safe from a Rambo-cop exercising his non-Constitutional authority and sending you to the graveyard. All in the name of protecting the Homeland from a non-thug and law abiding citizen. Maybe speeding is now a criminal act and the Gods in DC just haven’t told us yet.
Here is an interesting one – shows what people really want:
“The most profitable car launched in the past year was not a Tesla. Nor was it some crazy hypercar. It was the new Porsche 911. ”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-11/the-porsche-911-is-the-most-profitable-car-of-2019
Its interesting how the media tries to push the fact that electric cars are the future and everyone wants to buy electric…. but the real profitability actually lies in the proper old school petrol head cars like the 911 !!
Well it would be a Porsche, when you think about it. They can all but double the base price of a car with overpriced options and get away with it because of their brand.
I remember living out in the mountain west 30-some years ago, had a ’74 Chev 3/4 ton longbed 4×4 with a seriously built 350 in it, we would disappear into the old logging/mining roads for long weekends raising ned and never even think of seeing the flashing lights. Hell, we knew all of the Forest Service folks, just as likely to share a beer with you, make sure everybody was safe and leave. Sad to say, those days are gone…
I was reading a couple days ago about psychedelics and the origins of over 6000 years ago. There was a long document with detailed info and it included everyone who ever worked with them all the way to the present. The feds got on a kick of charging people with crimes for doing so. People got various prison time but after 2000, the times really went off the charts.
We see same for everything now. I could probably list 100 things that didn’t even used to be illegal but are most often felonies now. What Cheney and Bush did to this country don’t appear to ever be able to be reversed. They and their henchmen that still work for Trump turned this country into a militarized totalitarian regime. Call it what it is. Everyone govt. doesn’t like now lives in a “compound” but the wealthy live in palatial mansions that closely resemble walled forts. I’ve seen “compounds” that were mobile homes with a couple outbuildings. You knew their occupants were bad people because they lived in a compound…..sorta like the first time I ever heard it applied to regular people outside Waco.
Darn, 8,
No wonder they’re always trying to use ‘zoning” to get rid of all them “compound” parks where all of the ‘domestic terrorist’ perpetrators of ‘hate crimes’ like to hang out and attract illegal sex-trade workers and tornadoes!
Nunz, call OKC, they need to know.
8, are they looking for new patsies?
I’m more of a Potsy….. (Screw Fonzie; Potsy was the cool one!)
Burger World manager: You don’t get workers compensation for fighting, it has to be an accident.
Potsy: You mean we, like, need to poop in our pants?
It’s what I’m telling my friends and family lately; there’s no point to speeding unless you got an out of state license and address, and even then…
It’s a shame, I love performance cars, but it’s like what’s the point when Uncle sic’s the AGW’s after you for something trivial or for keeping up with traffic, or God forbid, “Speeding” when it’s the perfect conditions and the only one to get hurt is you
At least off road, they won’t bother you, and while it’s not same, offroading will wind up filling the itch speeding does in due time
Just how long until Uncle notices…
Unless one already has an older real 4×4, the cost of entry for off-roading is generally too high for young people and most blue-collar types. The current real, capable off-road vehicles are too expensive for most (How much will that Raptor cost?), and even if ya can afford ’em, ya’d have to be nuts to risk scratching the paint ($$$); scraping something underneath; getting a ding or dent, or even having some electro solenoid buried deep in the vehicles bowels take a dump and needing to get flat-bedded out of BFE.
And the older, capable 4×4’s, if they’re not beat or rusted to Hades, are getting so pricey, because of the demand for the limited supply, that you don’t really want to beat on them either; they’re getting to near show-car status.
And depending on where ya live, there may not even be a place to four-wheel that is not state-owned- for which ya need permits and stickers and fees…and for which there is “enforcement”….i.e. where you will not be left in peace- Just ask the ATV(quad) community how they get hassled and how many of their mounts gets impounded for just essentially taking a ride and not “doing anything”, in any place where the only option is “public” land.
They are not leaving one stone of our former liberty unturned in this techno-tyranny…..
I’ll bet that for better than 90% of these newer expensive trucks, they never leave the Walmart parking lot(or whatever the local “cruising spot is)….. ‘cept for the ones in commercials and professional Youtuber’s channels.
Nunz, you’re right. I wouldn’t do the gummint land thing for any price. State police and esp. Federal(game wardens) in Texas are notorious for hassling people over stuff they had no idea was illegal. I’m not sure it is but that doesn’t slow them down. Cleaning fish and throwing the parts you don’t want is tantamount to murder it would seem. For the life of me, I don’t see how it’s hurting aquatic creatures but in fact, should be helping those other species that specialize in part and pieces.
The “rules” concerning hunting and fishing make you need a lawyer to do so “legally”. I just found out when buying a hunting license I can now legally hunt wild hogs and coyotes. News to me since I’ve been doing same forever without a license. It’s always chapped my ass that creating food plots and other such to provide food for wildlife still leaves the state owning them. You cannot hunt over a shredded field of sunflowers in Texas for dove. It’s your land(well, you get to pay taxes on it)and your sunflowers, ok, the state’s sunflowers but the state tells you what you can do with it.
When I shoot one of those cat-eating coyotes you’d better be well-armed to take me to task over that. I might invoke the 3S’s. FEFEFH’s.
This reminds of me back in 2015 when I got a nasty speeding ticket and went to court to try to whine my way out of it. Two cases ahead of me was a guy who got caught by a state trooper washing his ATV in a creek. Apparently, this creek was a salmon spawning stream, which means that a first offense is a misdemeanor carrying a $10,000 fine! For washing your ATV in a creek! Kind of made my ticket look petty by comparison. I don’t remember but I suspect jail time may have been involved for repeat offenses.
Alaska used to be a wild, untamed land where you could get away with just about anything because there was no one around to stop you. Unfortunately, that was before my time.
Cost prohibitive? Bull. One can easily get into a Ford Expedition first generation for under $2000. And invariably the 4 wheel dirive is never abused, because people rarely off-road them. Add a lift kit & tires, and you’re ready to go. the 4×4 already has a factory steel skidplate under the radiator & front of the engine, and most of the other delicate components are tucked way up high & out of the way. The wheelbase is only three inches longer than a Jeep JL (the 4 door Wrangler) and the 6 inch wider stance makes the Expy a little more stable than the Jeep.
Few people know this outside the Expedition enthusiasts (yes there is such a thing). And I tend to get mocked when off roading until they see what my beast can do.
Yeah, there’s still lots of old 4x4s for not too much money though there is a finite supply so I suppose they are getting more expensive.
I paid $800 for my pickup, and then had fix the brakes and the 4wd. Lots of other things along the way but now it is pretty solid but ugly and I maybe have up to $2500 in it now. My saggy Suburban needs a new steering box but I doubt that I could get much more than $2K for it right now which is why I keep it for when the snow gets really really deep.
You just need to be willing to buy something that isn’t all fancied up and then do most of the work yourself. Get back to pre-1995 model and they are pretty easy to work on. Every make/model 4×4 has its assets/liabilities but none of them are magically better than another. Going “off road” the driver is the most important factor. My long low pickup looks like it couldn’t do much of anything but it has never failed to go where I point it, sometimes to my amazement.
dread, I specify 94 and earlier. Got a local Ford used car dealership bugging me but I have replied time after time I want a GM pickup, 94 or earlier. They continue to court me as if they can’t read. No, I don’t want a goddamn 16 Taurus. I don’t want a car of any sort.
They’re about to piss me off.
Paul, Ya’d think I would have remembered the Expedition….considering that I drive an Excursion! Completely forgot about them! I’d take one’a them over the Jeep any day!
What you need when traisping about in “West Bum-Fuck, Egypt” is what we once termed a “Fish Car”…that is, an old beater, not really even suitable for daily commuting or running errands anymore, but still (sorta) runs…you go fishing with it and beat the living shit out of the old heap, and if it dies, you “lose” it in the slough!
Dooglas,
Sounds like what people in New Jork City used to get for a ‘free parking’ car- when there were still lots of pre-VIN# cars around, and before computers. Buy an old car for $200, and park it wherever it would physically fit……after it accumulated enough tickets to get towed, just get another one and do the same thing. (Wish that woulda still been possible in the 90’s when I used to schlepp junk…I coulda made a fortune selling cars for a few hunnert bucks, insteada scrappin’ them for $50!)
“CJ-5 and 4 wheel drive with Smokey on my tail”
Eric,
You’re right…..at least so far. But you can be sure that the overlords are aware of these vast areas of unregulated off-road driving. They really want to keep us confined to urban or suburban grids; or interstate arteries that are easily observed and controlled. They are closing more national forrest roads all the time. And they’re only getting started.
As of now, plenty of “wild, wild west” remains once you leave the blacktop. And it will be quite a while before they can control it all. It is not too early though, to be developing stealth strategies to improve your chances for unmolested recreating and functional travel in off-road environments.
Finally, don’t plan on traveling too far into the rocks and dirt with a Grand Cherokee Trackhawk or SRT. 😉 For that, you’re gonna need the Overland Package. Or any of the three off-roaders you pictured at the top: each of those would be a good choice.
“Track days are a rich man’s hobby – and a hassle. Drive there, pay there – then drive back. Often, the drive there is hours long.”
People always wonder why I’m always sniping at bicyclists and pedestrians on here. Well, now you have your answer, put more succinctly than I could ever hope to.
So you act like cyclists should be relegated to a velodrome, so you can use the public way like a track?
It’s not just about me or “using the public way as a track”. It’s about the constant need to drive as if on eggshells anywhere a bicyclist or pedestrian might be (which is pretty much everywhere), especially at night. The ability or inability to “use the public way as a track” is a part of that, but it’s hardly the whole story.
Honestly, I think that having a little bit of the “Critical Mass mentality” is a prerequisite for walking or riding on the road, at least recreationally. You’d have to convince yourself that either A. having to randomly avoid you is not annoying in any way or B. that your rights are all that matters and everyone else can just take it. On some roads a single non-driver on the shoulder can make it difficult for two drivers to pass each other going opposite directions, but so far the only response I’ve seen to that is “blame the government for making the road too narrow and keep on riding there anyway”. I mean, come on, Brent actually thought the Nurburgring Nordschleife would be a fine place to ride a pedal bike! You really would have to be willfully blind not to see how jaw-droppingly selfish and inconsiderate that would be, whether it’s technically allowed or not! Frankly, I don’t think it’s right to operate that way. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t ride – I don’t believe in being an eternal pain just because I have a right to.
It reminds me of your old strawman about 400 MPH rocket cars. Those don’t exist at the consumer level yet, but if they ever do, you can be sure of one thing… joggers and rec riders will still be dawdling down the side of the road at 20 MPH while insisting that everyone else is the problem!
The thing of it is, no one is forcing you to like or take advantage of this situation. It’s still your choice whether to ride a bike on the road or not. You ask me why I think I should be able to race on the street, I ask you why you would want to put an extra worry and an extra restriction on other road users when you don’t have to. So far, the only answer I can think of that makes any sense is quite simply: bicycles are personally more important to you than cars.
Even that post is a perfect example. “So you act like cyclists should be relegated to a velodrome, so you can use the public way like a track?” You’re not thinking as a driver, you’re thinking as a bicyclist. You’re pro-car in the abstract because libertarian theory is pro-car in the abstract, but you aren’t looking for car culture to return to the high point of 1960s America or 1990s Japan. Thinking from a bicyclist’s perspective and trying to maintain a permanent niche for non-drivers is your default setting, your first priority, and cars come after that.
I still think differentiated infrastructure would be the ideal solution (though around here, people never bother to use it where it already exists, for reasons I don’t pretend to understand). Get everyone out of each others’ way so bicyclists and drivers can both operate in peace without having to worry about each other. But bicyclists don’t want differentiated infrastructure, they just want to make everyone work around them forever. And if pedestrians find the differentiated infrastructure, then it’s “ruined”. (I shouldn’t have to explain why, as long as bicyclists continue to demand a slice of every non-freeway ever built, I will continue to have zero sympathy when they complain about pedestrians on the also-publicly-funded paths.)
You see road riding as a perfectly acceptable and equal use of the public way. I see it as taking advantage of a quirk of road funding to get in everyone’s way.
I’m right there with you Chuck!
Thank you! You have no idea how much this comment lifted my spirits when I found it.
I take it you take exception to see me coming with a 20′ wide load weighing 50 tons. But there’s a bright side for you, neither cyclists or pedestrians stay on that shoulder as I pass by. Of course you have to move over to the other shoulder, but what the hey, it’s as good as the rest of the road in Tx.
They’ll do anything to route me out of NM or any of those other shitty road states. To be honest, I detest trucking out of Texas. No potholes, shoulders as wide as the lanes and people who know how to drive. Just wish I had a DD16 so I could do 75 with that load and stay with the traffic.
Not usually a problem where I live. Of all the “good driving roads” in this part of Alaska, the “best” (also most ruined by non-motorists) doesn’t really lead to anything that a wide load would be headed for; there used to be a mine up there, but it’s been a tourist trap for as long as I can remember. The other one (which is miles away) is a main thoroughfare but wide loads aren’t really a problem; the real problem is truckers who understeer out of their lane on every single right turn. The rest are all too full of houses anyway and not likely to be subject to heavy commercial traffic.
But hey, at least you’ve got an excuse, unlike the people who have multiple functioning automobiles and still ride a bike just because they can, or worse, the ones who load a bicycle into their car, drive to a formerly great driving road, unload the bicycle, and proceed to become the reason it’s a FORMERLY great driving road.
Chuck,
It is an oxymoron to suggest that there are tourists, and yet that wide loads are not an issue! (Unless of course, those tourists are not American)
If you mean in a literal sense, most of the tourists go home by the time it’s dark and you can avoid most of them by avoiding “peak hours” (weekend afternoons etc.).
If that was a joke, well, the European Union apparently has a higher rate of obesity than the United States. Just throwing that out there.
It’s hard to believe an “Alaskan” gets so aggravated about pedalphiles when moose are a much greater road hazard.
I wouldn’t bike in west Texas….or anywhere else in Texas at night. Too many deer, hogs, even large varmints and of course, cattle, which you mostly won’t see until very close since the Angus meat craze has hit. I wouldn’t bike without car style lights front and rear, a strobe light and a vehicle following. The speed limit is 75 and cycling at night would be like playing bicycle Russian roulette. A plain old whitetail will try to outrun a vehicle they see and wipe out the whole side. They’d wipe out a cyclist to the morgue. Even if a cow didn’t move, you never know which way to dodge and hitting a thousand pounds is like hitting a wall.
You raise an excellent point here. Cyclists and pedestrians don’t just add an extra worry to driving and restrict the high-performance type of such, they also take up the “safe side” that drivers will need if they encounter an unexpected obstacle occupying their lane. You’ve got a deer/moose/cow/stalled car/oncoming drunkard/whatever in your lane, an oncoming car to the left, where do you go? To the right, obviously… hopefully not over a bicyclist.
Which, extrapolated, has been a large part of my point since the beginning. Playing Russian roulette is one thing but having the trigger pulled by someone else is quite another.
Moose are indeed obnoxious but bicyclists and big stupid swamp cows are separate issues. Moose have no idea what a road is and are just going wherever their brain compass tells them to. Non-drivers are frequently making a deliberate choice to become an obstacle, or at least ignoring obvious ways to not be one. Also, the two restrict driving in somewhat different ways.
Well back 40 years ago I drove a bus into Anchorage every day and there was a fresh moose hit almost every morning on the Glenn Highway.
Not sure what “understeer” means as to a truck. A truck doesn’t oversteer and understeer is saying they’re driving too fast. I don’t know truckers who drive too fast for the curve since there’s little leeway and turning over, the worst nightmare of a trucker, is something we all avoid to the point of going too slow.
I might use the entire road on some S curves when I can see well past them but it’s rare and only do so to avoid slowing to a speed that will affect the speed of the truck for miles….and even then, very rarely. A truck driver is up high and often gets the feel of going too fast when he isn’t. It’s the reason you see brake lights for a curve when slowing really isn’t needed but it’s safety first since rolling a rig is the ultimate price to pay almost always.
Very few truckers who have rolled, be it there fault or otherwise, return to trucking. If you live, it creates a nagging fear in the back of your mind constantly. Companies encourage those who have been ugly side up to not return, not because they would have it happen again but it has an effect on their trucking as in too much stress and that stress leads to lost time and lack of confidence.
What you’re saying sounds inherently sensical but yet somehow trucks around here do frequently ramble into the oncoming on tight rights. The “best” local road is immune to this due to having no reason for an 18-wheeler to go there. The ones where they do show up, well, neither going slowly nor taking goofy lines is going to save you from them.
Have you ever heard of “off tracking” or have you ever driven anything large or pulled a trailer ????
Sometimes you have to turn wide especially on right turns to keep the trailer wheels from falling off the road, which can then cause a roll over.
Logging trucks are the exception because with a properly adjusted reach pole and stinger the trailer wheels will follow exactly in the driver tracks. But the center of the load will off track. One time I had some idiot in a little sports car run his fender underneath the center of my log load on a left hand turn (for me). How he missed both my drivers and the trailer wheel is beyond me. He might have been a relative of yours – LOL
Back when the anti high-performance cars started there was a movement to high-performance boats – don’t know how far that’s gone.
Pickup’s and big SUV’s are today’s large cars. People always look for the loophole when the government does something stupid.
Leaving the paved road where I live won’t get you away from anyone other than a “state trooper”–an unintentionally honest description of them–because most of the sheriff’s deputies drive pickups. The sheriff’s departments in my area are well equipped for the mountains. They will find you and possibly kill you if you run.
On the other hand, if you are just driving around in the mountains, you can pretty much do what you want without much incident. It’s the attempted ditching at the pavement end that will turn bad, especially the way they are equipped.
A clever insult I witnessed was a fellow with the mindset most of us here possess, commented to an AGW decked out with all the trimmings….”Boy, you sure are wearing a lot of gadgets there buddy.”
Gadgets: These asshats will certainly bristle if you refer to their stuff as “gadgets”.
The cop mindset with all the gadgets is indicative of what they value most. If they were interested in public safety they’d have a fire extinguisher somewhere, up their ass preferably…..and probably some do….just for grins.
When I read the term “skid plates” I had to laugh a little. I was trying to find a leak on the Z 71 and removed that piece of plastic under the engine. I never put it back on. I guess it would turn back weeds and such but a rock would laugh at it as would a big piece of wood. I have considered building a real skid plate for it and the one under the transfer case is actual metal. I smashed the skid plate under the transfer case up into it on the little Nissan. I took it off since it was on the u-joint. But off-road packages best I can tell now are just too damned stiff springs and shocks. Not sure how that helps except you feel macho.
A friend had an old square body Dodge Cummins one ton single tire regular cab. It was brutal. We were looking for some pipe one day and driving around on his place. The guy farming it had plowed through the road to a pump-jack, not endearing himself to the pumper I’m sure. We rode across those furrows for about 100 yds. Once there, we looked around and started back. I told him to stop. He did, I got out and said I’ll meet you on the other side. He laughed and drove on and I walked back across. My back was killing me from the severity of the jarring. That one ton rode like a bulldozer. As I walked up to it, he hollered, “Get us a beer”. Damned if I wasn’t ready for one and the cooler was near the endgate. The beer was down in ice, couldn’t have been colder unless it was frozen. They spewed when we opened them. I told him If your fuckin pickup is so stiff it keeps cold beer stirred up, that’s too damned stiff. He admitted it was pretty brutal. A couple years later he had back surgery and he was young, not even 30. He never got worth a damn with that back either.
Never noticed until now…what I’d like to see, as a Subaru fan, are some “outdoor-minded” sleeper Outbacks, Crosstreks, and Foresters with WRX power!
And I think my next old car might be a truck too!