Cities are pretty great places to live for a lot of reasons. You usually have easy access to live music, a vibrant cocktail bar scene to explore and the possibility of finding some kind of exciting activity to fill almost every waking moment. But do you know what cities are pretty bad for? Driving.
But some cars are worse than others when it comes to navigating a busy city, as we proved last week when racing a RAM TRX against a subway train . So, with this in mind, we asked you what is the worst car to own in a city? These are some of the best responses we received.
“The Jeep Wrangler (particularly the two-door). I owned one for a bit and while I really like it, it wasn’t the best for city ownership and use. Most people living in the city will probably live in a condo or town home and only have space for one car – maybe two, so the Jeep would end up being your primary vehicle, and that’s a problem. Everyone knows why: they have limited storage space, awkward uncomfortable seating for more than two people, and they get horrible gas mileage. Despite being (relatively) small vehicles, they’re also not very maneuverable in tight spaces and less than fun to park in small spaces or tight parking garages. Making it all worse, outward visibility isn’t the best (though not the worst either).
“They’re great vehicles for the suburbs, small towns or rural areas, where you can have one or more other cars for different purposes and the benefits of the Jeep are more easily realized. But living in the city, particularly if you’re not single, requires something that’s a bit more ‘jack of all trades’.”
Sure, the Jeep Wrangler 4XE might help quash your gas mileage worries, but the plug-in off-roader doesn’t fix many of the other issues this poster points out.
“The worst car for a city is the car you most love, independent of the price. Maybe you drive a pristine Geo Storm, or you care for a Yugo, or even in the age of cyberoque (Torch’s word) you love your own Pontiac LeMans.
“A city is the worst place to drive the car you care about, because most other drivers don’t give a sh*t about anyone else, and have the attention span of a firefly on a rave party. Driving the car you love in a crowded city is having crippling anxiety 24/7, because you never know when you’ll get back to your dear and see a dented bumper or a scratched door.”
Good advice from this poster, but it does suggest that the only problem you’ll run into in a city center is other drivers. Rather than the garbage road surfaces , questionable parking and narrow streets.
“My Buick Reatta isn’t as enjoyable in the city as one might think. It’s small enough, but the turning radius is deceptively wide and the doors are about a mile long. It also gets WAY worse city mileage than highway mileage (but that’s a problem all 3800 cars have.)
Small doesn’t always mean nimble, as this commenter discovered with their 183-inch Buick Reatta .
Suggested by: @El_Grump0 (Twitter)
“A Ford Superduty, or really any 3/4 ton and above truck. I daily drive an F-350 and the thing is great for the work I do when i have to go to job sites, and with it being a King Ranch it’s nice for long road trips plus it makes hauling my 5th wheel RV a lot easier.
“The main issue I have with the truck is, as you pointed to in the article, it’s just absolutely massive and the suspension is a little rough for the broken up city streets of Dallas, also the lack of any awareness from drivers here means I have to be exceptionally more attentive since I can’t stop on a dime. I say this and complain a bit, but I will never get rid of this truck.
“I just need to buy a car specifically for city driving, and the new RS3 might just be that car, if my Audi dealer would get back to me when they are ready to start the order process.”
One of the many suggestions we had for “big truck.” There are more to follow!
“Almost everyone is going to say ‘trucks’ in some form, but that is the wrong answer, because trucks are not cars.
“Soft top, manual transmission, low slung/no clearance, super low seating position/zero visibility, low profile tires, general fragility - any ‘vert sports car.
“That means any manual/convertible MX-5, Mustang, Camaro, Corvette, Boxster, M4, C43 AMG, 911, Aston Martin.
“With the top down, people will spit/throw shit. With the top up, they’ll cut the top open when it’s parked.
“People will play bumper cars while parking, because nobody knows how to park.
“Manual transmissions suck in traffic. Idling in traffic when it’s not moving also sucks. Automatic start/stop and hybrid systems are far more efficient and just less of a PITA.
“Have you ever had a passenger open a door, just to find the curb is higher than the door?
“Have you ever had a passenger sit down and try to pull the door closed, but it’s stuck on the high curb/sidewalk and now the door corners are just bare metal?
“Nobody can see you because your car is too low, so they just run into your shit.
“Low A/R tires are the worst for handling potholes, bumps, expansion joints gone bad, 1" steel plates dropped over holes, etc.”
Who’s driving around in a convertible having people “spit/throw shit” at them? I want to hear from you.
“Any full-size truck or a manual. I used to drive through downtown LA and my Civic Si was not great in that environment.”
Driving a car with a manual gearbox through city center traffic is actually how Olympic cyclist Chris Hoy built up his leg muscles. Well, can you prove that it didn’t help him win six gold medals?
Suggested by: @Beacio_mo (Twitter)
“The only real correct answer here has gotta be a full size truck.
“I am sure it’s no fun inching thru stop n go traffic in a 2022 Supra, with its cabin space just a bit larger than a sleeping bag. But that is something that sucks ONLY for the driver/passenger. Modern full size trucks are shit for everyone in an urban environment to be around. They are some of the least efficient, most environmentally harmful personal vehicles out there even with modern emissions tech. They take up WAAAAY too much space on roads that were built decades ago when cars simply were not this big. They have gotten so large that some of them have front end blind spots larger than 10', which is just insane. I would understand their continued existence a bit more if they were used for their intended workhorse purposes but we all know they largely are not. They’re status symbols, as evidenced by how common it is to see one with a slapped-on lift kit and gaudy deep-dish wheels on low-profile tires, all of which are explicitly not made to stand up to any sort of real workload.
“Big trucks are now just patently unsafe for pedestrians and other motorists by design but that’s only half the issue, the other half being the absolute cesspit of selfish excess and wanton disregard for others that is Truck Culture in the US. I almost had a serious accident many years ago while driving up the highway to work. I was simply trying to pass a jacked up Silverado HD who was going unnecessarily slow in the right lane, which led to the offramp I took to my job. There were maybe two other cars around us. He sped up, blocked me from the lane for a whole mile, blocked me from the onramp and forced me into the runoff lane back onto the highway, which was covered in snow cause it was in the middle of winter, so I nearly lost control of my car at what likely woulda been a fatal speed. I saw the dude hanging his middle finger out the window and laughing at me the whole time. He nearly killed me, just cause I tried to pass him. And then I was late for work and got verbally abused by the plant manager who didn’t give two shits about what had just happened to me, but that was merely icing on the shitcake.
“To me that story is a perfect summary of what big trucks mean here, the kind of people that generally buy them and the ways they think they are allowed to interact with the world around them. They’re perfect vehicles for someone with an ego problem who really wants to feel superior and look down on everyone around them, and the US is a breeding ground for that kind of person. Putting thousands of those people in a big tightly-packed city alongside hundreds of thousands of other people, giving them straight up mobile command centers for personal transport and saying ‘now get out there and be somebody!’ is a recipe for disaster.
“I am about as big a redneck as a girl living in a metropolis can be. I love trucks. Conceptually speaking they are fantastic vehicles, and when I eventually leave the city and move forward with my life I can see a truck being the vehicle that best serves my wants and needs. But as a category at large, trucks nowadays have strayed about as far from their original goals as they possibly can. The shittiest kinds of people latched onto them and co-opted them as a whole cultural thing and suddenly our automakers, looking only at consumer demand and dollar amounts, were convinced that the format needed to change from ‘simple earnest utility vehicle’ to ‘big loud honkin’-stonkin’ fuckoff machine,’ and now the trucks are too damn big.
“There is only one true realistic answer here and it’s the full size truck.”
“I had a 15-passenger van as a work vehicle in Phila, and it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. A dually crew cab would be worse.
“Honestly, a big Lamborghini or some other wide, low, stiff, high strung super car with poor visibility would be my #1 pick.”
Wide doesn’t work on narrow city streets. Stiff doesn’t work on bumpy city streets. Poor visibility doesn’t work on crowded city streets.
Suggested by: Joe Boyle (Facebook)
“Crew cab pickup was already mentioned up above, but I’m going to say a heavy duty crew cab dually pickup. I saw one parked on an urban street in Pittsburgh the other day that had one set of rear wheels on the curb and the other set protruding almost a foot into the traffic lane. To make matters worse, most dually trucks have an 8' bed, and in the case of a new Ram 3500 that makes the truck almost 22' long. It’s too big to fit in the parking spaces at Home Depot, let alone a city street.”
More big trucks that you think are the worst .
“Echo, echo.... I’m still chuckling over the ‘69 Charger shoutout.
“And you’re right: 2nd gen Chargers are big cars where ‘svelte’ and ‘dart thru traffic’ are not characteristics you associate with star car Chargers. At least you can see out of 2nd gens, unlike a lot of today’s big lumps occupying the roads, so running over pedestrians ain’t an issue. But between being paranoid over theft, vandalism, and the sheer dumbassery of other drivers running red lights, etc., then you have to deal with everyone seeing you in a 2nd gen and going nuts at seeing one on the streets instead of static at a car show. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been on streets where the driver in the next lane kept getting closer and closer for a better look—get to the point we’re about to trade paint. So I have to blip the throttle and charge off.
“So yes, you hit the nail on the head—2nd gen Chargers in the big city—not cool.”
Regular commenter the1969dodgechargerguy always suggests a Dodge Charger in their answers to our questions, and we love them for that. But this time, they might really be onto something!
“18' long. A few were sold in Tokyo. Had to call ahead to make sure there was a place to park it anywhere you went. Dealerships sold the same on several times because owners kept trading it back in due to its size.”
Weirdly, I can’t imagine an 18-foot lump of American engineering being super popular in Tokyo .
“Any full-sized German sedan like the Mercedes S Class or BMW 7 Series. They’re just too long to maneuver and parallel park.”
Obviously, the workaround here is to be so rich that you can buy a 7 Series with a driver. That way, you don’t have to worry about maneuvering or parking.
Suggested by: Daniel Chojnowski (Facebook)
“Land Cruiser 80 series in a hilly city. I live in Adelaide, which is nice and flat. I’ve been to visit family in Melbourne a few times. It’s a lot more hilly in Melbourne. Thought to myself I’d have to get a runabout hatchback or something if I ever moved here. The eight-hour drive there was amazing though.”
The Land Cruiser: Amazing for driving between Australian cities but not so great at navigating them once you arrive.
“While I personally love hot hatches like the Veloster N, FiST, FoRS, etc, those can be awful in cities. The really stuff suspensions on those cars make them rough on beat up city streets or any daily driving. The heavy traffic and constant stop lights/stop signs limit any chances to really enjoy their performance. Especially in Houston, with our super tall driveway entrances for the flooding, they probably bottom out pretty often in places like this.”
Traffic stopping you from enjoying the performance of your car isn’t limited to hot hatchbacks , but we can see where this poster is coming from.
“Ford Transit Connect Cargo “first gen” US.
“Why? No rear camera. No rear windows. Small enough that folks aren’t intimidated enough from walking into your blindspots which is basically 180 degrees behind your head.
“Nothing said ‘let God take the wheel’ more than reversing in this.
“I would take a city bus or any larger vehicle in the city than this. Also gutless.
“And this was sold as a ‘city’ option!”
I’m pretty sure this van was built with city center driving in mind, so where did it all go wrong?
“Oh, and York and Newcastle upon Tyne.
“What the **** was I thinking!”
Another car where if you own one, you probably have a driver to ferry you around town. But still, I can’t help but agree that it looks like it would be a nightmare to navigate the cobbled streets of York in one of these.
“GT350 is fairly crap in the city. It’s WIIIIIIDE. Doors need to open wide so you can crawl out of the access tunnel between the outside and the driver seat. It’s too low to open the door over most curbs.
“Clutch isn’t that heavy, but the system to prevent dropping the clutch makes it non-liner and odd feeling. Which really makes any existing knee injury love you long time with a deep warm feeling of pain.
“Cross streets with limited visibility are fun with that 10ft long hood.”
Too low, too wide and limited visibility . Sounds like the perfect car for a fun drive in the country, but not the city streets.
“Based on my experiences at the end of the seventies and start of the eighties, an El Camino. I lived in Manhattan, I’d driven there in my El Camino, and the amount of trash I had to clear out the bed every day was unreal. Not just regular trash, but drug stuff, and the occasional bullet, and people. All of them alive, thank god, just hung over or still wasted, who’d climbed in there to use the bed as a bed. New York back in the day was not a healthy city, but it was sure fun at times.”
Does this count as a big truck you shouldn’t drive into town, or as a wide muscle car that’s equally ill-fitting? We may never know.