Don't worry and pick a car; if offroading for you means driving on relatively even gravel roads like those seen in your photograph, any FWD boredombox with average ground clearance and soft suspension will do the trick.
I recently saw a report for daily cars and saw the suzuki alto works in it im really starting to like that car would be the perfect daily even if it only has 64 hp
I know, unfortunately that's still not very good when gas is $1.30/l (~$4US/gal) and your max car budget is $4-500 per month. I could do it, but it's something I have to think about. Luckily I'm in a position where I don't need a car, so I have to option of parking it for a few weeks if the coffers runs low or if it needs some work done, otherwise I wouldn't be considering a vehicle at all. That or a Legacy is definitely on my list, but they don't come up for sale very often in my area since people just don't want to sell them once they get one, and the ones that do come up are usually over 300,000km and in pretty rough shape. I could get a good right-hand drive one for a decent price (and I don't care where the steering wheel is), but the added maintenance costs of shipping in parts could negate any price savings over an SUV. Ones with manual transmissions are hard to find too, which is something I want. Suzukis are pretty uncommon in general and always beat completely to hell, but if I found a good one I'd consider it too. The roads near me are nowhere near that good. I have taken FWD cars on them before and they can do it, but it's not something I would want to do often. All of that said, there are plenty of good paved roads near me too, and if a really good car comes along that isn't something I'd want to take on the trails, I'd still get it. If a W123 Mercedes 300TD showed up in my price range, for example, I'd buy it in a second.
300TD? Aren't those kind of slow? When the Sunbird ran, I had it on tougher trails than some 4x4 truck owners apparently wanted to brave. As long as you have some ride height, careful route selection and clutch work will get you far, even in an open-differential FWD. I found it funny when the police would have the road blocked off to deal with an accident, traffic backed up, nice wide-open not-blocked area off to the side where ATVs and dirt bikes are always riding. All the 4x4 drivers sitting on the pavement waiting for their chance to go through and here's me, in my little economy car, using the dirt/mud/grass as a bypass embarrassing them all. And then some of the 4x4s drop off the road and start following me. One of them did eventually pass be because his ride height mean he could go faster and take a more direct route, but still.
Speed has never been a priority for me. I'm fine as long as it can keep up with traffic and hold 80-100km/h through the mountains, and consider anything beyond that a bonus. I buy cars based mainly on a completely subjective "cool" factor that doesn't seem to line up with most other people's, combined with how practical it would be to haul lots of stuff and take on long trips. An hour in the classifieds will usually find me looking at old European and Japanese station wagons, and even stuff like this '77 Corolla.
Man, classic japanese cars are really expensive in the US. That corolla would be worth 3000 euro here, or even less.
Honda Pilot. A friend of mine used to drive one. Surprisingly capable and tough as nails. That thing has like 250,000 miles and we put it through hell. Just took it without complaining. What's the deal with the forest service roads up there? I'd assume they're privately owned? The only place you'll see "service roads" around here are in small logged areas, pretty much always gated off. They don't make any sort of large interconnected system or anything either, just some roads cut by a logging company to log one particular swath of land once every 30 years or so.
Some are owned by logging companies and will be open or closed at their discretion, but a lot are public, usually built to access parks, trails, campgrounds, etc. Most are dead ends where I live, but the ones I was on the other day weren't. One even had highway designation and an 80km/h speed limit despite being loose gravel.
Subaru parts are heavily interchangeable across different markets and even car sidedness. Steering rack and dash is all that's different really in a RHD model. Even interchangeable across models, forester suspension components fit the impreza for example (you can lift an impreza with them though I'm not sure if the forester mounts the strut at a different angle or it uses a different knuckle in order to retain normal camber, the impreza would gain mad inverse camber). Not so sure on the forester but pre 2008 impreza you had a rear limited slip differential in the wrx, think it was open in the base car though and it is open in all but sti post 08 instead reliant on electronic braking on the slipping wheel which still kinda works. Centre diffs in all transmissions vary in implementation but are all limited slip or torque vectoring in some way. Front is usually open though. My bugeye has the viscous style center diff (all the 5MTs do) and viscous rear LSD. Could defeat that with hard off road sure, but so far fucking around in muddy fields it's been quite happy to bite and go. Sure it's not a hard off road system, it's also just a sedan, but I can't think of anywhere a pre 08 car can reach in terms of ground clearance where it's awd system will let it down. Bonus, it can out drag an A250AMG even with the AMG car having larger usable power band, launch control and part time awd which is where it slips up.
Just put 70 bucks of gas in the Yukon. These Harvey gas prices are killing me. I need another car. Something small, practical, good on gas. Like a Crown vic. Yeah. I figured it'd update my previous post but it just double posted. I'm sorry.
Today there was an accident on the A12 so in my town (close to A12) colchester it was full of traffic in the centre, so the bus drivers were certainly pushed! i saw an Arriva Dennis Dart thundering down a road and that was bloody quick, he was first in the que at the traffic lights and when they went green the bus was off! the roar of the engine was crazy (definetly under "kickdown"). But bus acceleration isnt really breakneck acceleration more like gathering of speed, like the buses are pretty damn quick tbh, including double deckers! The double deckers are bloody quick for the size of it, i think here they have a beefy cummins engine. On the double decker i was on there was a nice kickdown going up a hill, like the busdriver is accelerating up a hill! like that is insane really when he is catching up to other cars and then has to stop accelerating as it goes over the speed limit!
when you put your foot down the Rodius does move though, its quite scary as especially when loaded things can start to fall over inside, its very reminiscient of Jeremy's AMG house or whatever that they converted an S class into a house, that is basically the rodius you almost fall off your chair sometimes under heavy acceleration, but the gearbox ensures that hard acceleration is few and far between (rather than just unlocking and droning around 3000-3500RPM)
There is nothing fast about a best case of 13.1 seconds to 60mph and worst case 14.6 seconds depending on model and trim level. EDIT: Actually turns out there is also a 2.0l model (152hp vs 162hp[2.7l]) of the rodius that made less power. I can only find 0-60 times being stated as 0, so I can only presume they couldn't find a road long enough On the plus side it got far better fuel economy than the 2.7l model going from maybe 30mpg (25USmpg) combined up to 38mpg (31USmpg). 8mpg sacrifice for 10 extra hp seems like quite a large gap. Especially considering the emmisions on the 162hp model put it in the £305-£535 tax bracket as opposed to the 152hp models £280 road tax bracket.
