Seemed like mostly Tacomas, but 4runners were there in fair numbers.

I was just at Overland Expo where Land Rover had an “Off road demonstration area” where you could test drive one of their cars. I chose a diesel Range Rover and it did pretty well over the hilly dirt track, but even if I had the money, there’s no way I’d choose it for overlanding, if for no other reason than you can’t…

I see a huge difference between your situation and that of the school bus driver.
If you’re an adult in your own car, go for it. Please don’t take stupid risks with children in the car.
It’s not like I’ve never driven through standing hazardous standing water before.

I’m with you. I like to see cars that have a single minded purpose, I feel it gives them character and differentiates them from the rest of the boxes out there.
For years I had a 50 mile daily round trip to work, while my wife had just 2 miles. I used an old beater Honda Civic 5 speed and she drove the SUV that towed…

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the bus clearly wasn’t in very deep, at least not for a diesel vehicle it’s height and weight. The water appears to be still, not flowing. I’m sure the brakes were soaked, but she stopped immediately after, so they’re working fine. If the bus were mine ( not loaded it…

I didn’t understand the need for this until I listened to Fresh Air from NPR on the 14th. Terri Gross talked to Rimini Callimachi, a reporter covering ISIS. She mentioned that drones are a big thing over there now, with ISIS using commercially available drones - it sounded something like the size of a Phantom, which…

It IS an FDII. The guy taking the video says “it’s got a CVT”, that’s the “low” gear range on the FDII. It’s also got the BLD, which appears to only good in low traction situations since the car doesn’t have the torque to drive the tires up steps of any significant size. Listen to the Patriot trying to climb the front…

When you said “outperformed a base wrangler” I don’t think anyone assumed you meant on a road course, I think the assumption was off road where a few technical numbers, like .4 inches of ground clearance ( which works differently for solid axle vehicles), don’t really tell much of the story. Watch the Patriot video…

I’m really curious about this statement. Do you have a link to more information to support it?
I’ve been off road with a friend in a Cherokee trailhawk, arguably as good or better than the Patriot. I was in my lifted, skid plate and slider equipped  Liberty diesel, which after all the mods I still consider to be…

The cheapest top is about $1k, that makes it like $2k per back door.

Probably because it would be hard to get it through rollover tests, the bumper would be too high, gas mileage would drag down the rest of the lineup.

I think most of those bits can be ordered from Mopar. Maybe your local dealer can do the upgrade for you and give you $$$ back for the brand new bits he removes?

Go to the “Build and Price” on the Jeep . com site and you’ll find that the 2-door Jeep Rubicon ( Manual, soft top ) is $33,645.

Angry eyes on Jeeps. Not cool.

I ran across this earlier today - Clean ‘90 CRX - 89k miles, $6k.

But you’re point is generally a correct one.

I didn’t get it from Wikipedia, I got that from my wife who has been charged by them. Her biologist job took her into the field a lot more than my IT work...
They don’t apparently chase very far, it’s more of a feint.

As an ex-Florida resident of 23 years, married to a biologist who specialized in Florida plants/animals, we’re both pretty sure that’s a black racer.
It’s a non-venomous constrictor common to Florida. We used to see them in our yard regularly.
A 6' example would be a big one.

While not venomous, they can have a bad…

I think this is a direction for the program. It’s an answer to “where do you want to go from here?”.
Lewis and Clark didn’t know everything that lie in their path, but they knew what direction they wanted to go and where they wanted to end up.

This is our Jeep Liberty diesel climbing a steeper hill in low - You can see the front nearly scrape and the hitch receiver in the back touch down, even though there’s a 2" lift and 31" tires. It did this even with open front and rear diffs, center locked.
Yet, with a low range, it’s slow, easy and controllable with…

Low range, plus diesel torque. Nice and slow.

I love Subarus and manual transmissions, but if you’re going off road and could end up in rough terrain, you’re going to need more torque to the wheels than you can get without a low range transfer case, particularly if you’ve got up a size or two on the tires. The Subaru drivetrain will make up for a lot, but there…