It looks happy, like a cartoon character that’s ready for a tippy adventure of off-road uncertainty.
In the winter, it’s salt eating away at the sheet metal, and in the summer, it’s potholes beating the moving parts to death. Have you ever hit a bad spot so hard you’ve turned the radio down to listen for new noises? How about literally stopping to survey the situation before picking a spot to cross the rough road ahead? Nothing I’ve ever driven is that nice, but I like to take the proper precautions and have a certain amount of pride in not wrecking everything. That being said; lately, I’ve been mildly focussed on bizarre, low budget off-road vehicles, something that can take a beating. I’d like to think I’ve seen it all, but then someone else out there buys a car for five hundred bucks and goes at it with the reciprocating saw and some zip ties. I’ve seen a Chevy Aveo with quad tires on it and the roof cut off, a lifted Ford Crown Victoria with mud tires and a pickup bed, and a 1955 Pontiac jacked way up with a roof rack and light bar. Recently, I saw an older BMW cut up with a turbo jobbed onto it. Now, when I say “off-road”, I mean just that, and not 4x4. These things are being built on the cheap to cross rough terrain, but you’d better be ready to take a run at the really bad spots. Every once in a while, I see a comment like “now that this is lifted, it kind of looks like X”. I can’t remember what context the Ferves Ranger was mentioned in, but it sure is cool.
The Fiat 500 has always been on my radar as one of the few sub-compact cars that I actually really like. I think it’s the fact that some have the roll-back top, a nice, happy medium between a sunroof and a convertible. The Ferves Ranger is actually mostly made from Fiat parts. The suspension is borrowed from the Fiat 600, while the engine and steering assembly are borrowed from the Fiat 500. They made a passenger version and a cargo (pickup) version, but the differences are incredibly minimal. Available in either rear-wheel drive or four-wheel drive, seeing one off-road is quite the spectacle. They sit quite high, the tires are fairly small in diameter, and the wheelbase is scary amounts of short. Have you ever gone over a dip in the yard on a small lawn tractor and thought you might lose it? It looks like that. Although a top speed of around forty-five miles-per-hour seems slow, I bet it feels pretty fast in this little machine. They made them from 1966 to 1970 and only made a few hundred total. They look pretty cool and pretty fun, but finding an old Cobalt and cutting most of the roof off could be just as much fun, with no risk of destroying something so rare.
Have a question or comment for Kelly? Post it at lmtimes.ca/kirk