Empty Road Chronicles

Kill Devil Hills is the most populous settlement on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It’s home to the Wright Brothers National Memorial – a strange place where North Carolinians celebrate a half-assed achievement by some dudes from Ohio…

It’s also home to a stretch of public-access beach driving that every road trip adventurer should give a try that runs the length of the town (less than 5 miles). This portion is only open during what some would call the “off season” for a beach town, i.e. fall and winter.

They say knowledge is power. But, it can also be a curse – especially when it comes to used vehicles. The more you know about cars and the more in-tune you are with your own, the more you start to pick a part all the little “issues” that normal people just ignore and/or chalk up to having an older vehicle. I’ll give you an example.

The current workhorse of my fleet is “our” 1997 Jeep Cherokee XJ – aka “RJ” (introduced a couple of posts back). This vehicle is the main shared mode of transportation for myself and my better half, who in fact refers to it as “her Jeep” which is totally fine – she was the one who stopped me from selling it after all. RJ has had a bit of a resurgence in 2023 after sitting mostly idle for nearly two years while I prioritized other things, keeping RJ “off to the side” with a lengthy plan of making it “perfect.”

After realizing the errors of my ways – and in a desire to have a “winter beater” with an actual working heater – I decided to not get it right but instead, just get it running… and boy has it been doing a lot of running. So much so that this past weekend, I almost slipped back into some bad habits of tearing apart a perfectly good running and driving vehicle just to chase after some idea of “perfection.”

I’ve been driving since 2005 and in October, 2017, I purchased my tenth vehicle. In those 13 years of motoring, I very nearly averaged a different car a year, but here’s the truth: some cars only lasted three months while others lasted seven years. Some were crashed and totaled – a consequence of my naive and exuberant youth. Others were sold, either due to boredom or necessity.

Looking at the list, there’s a clear pattern in my affinity: cumbersome, utilitarian four-wheel-drive “tractors” masquerading as passenger cars. I’ve owned five Subaru station wagons and three Jeep Cherokee XJs. The other two – the literal black sheep of the fleet – easily rank highest on the quintessential gearhead score card, but I never really mixed well with those types.

In ranking my past, I’m going to do so on two levels: subjectively, i.e. my personal favoritism, and  objectively, i.e. which cars were/are actually good. One was pretty easy to determine – the other not so much. What makes a good car anyways? Is it reliability? Value? Utility? Flexibility? Efficiency? Performance? Prestige? Aesthetics? The way I see it, looking at these cars objectively requires placing yourself in the minds and number crunching hearts of a Consumer Reports vehicle tester. Who’s your audience? The average consumer of course.

Obviously, subjectivity is more entertaining than an objective analysis, so without further adieu, here is the definitive, subjective ranking of the 10 cars I’ve owned – with a little objectivity thrown in for good measure.

Six years ago in October, I bought a new Jeep. I still have it but never introduced it to this site, so here we go – a “stuck in draft mode” style introduction to also talk about what it means to be a “real Jeep.” And by “real Jeep” I don’t mean a Wrangler with a CJ front clip – or a JK with a light bar – I mean a mechanically needy thing with spite and a motive. Something that wants to be broken, fixed, abused, broken and fixed again. Reader, meet RJ. RJ. Meet Reader.

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Thirteen hundred miles in two and a half days, driving from Rochester New York to southern Ohio. My goal – spend one night outside of modern amenities to rekindle something that my digital existence doesn’t foster – an analogue connection to nature… while driving a 2005 Subaru Outback 3.0. I know – a bit hypocritical, but what can I say – this car is special and I’m okay with the delusion that I can justify camping alongside fuel injection, an all-aluminum three liter 250 horsepower flat six and symmetrical all wheel drive.

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