While it might be fun to nab a sportscar in a post apocalyptic world and zoom around I doubt it is a good choice.
I am thinking an ideal car/truck would need to be fuel efficient, durable, reliable, easy to repair and adept at off-road/bad road conditions. Also, all-weather capable (snow/cold or hot summers, heavy rain/mud, able to ford a river). Also, likely carries a spare tire and can be fixed in the field (no AAA to come get you).
Some decent cargo capacity might be nice and/or towing ability.
As such, I am guessing most modern cars with all their frills are not a good choice. Not sure what a good choice would be though.
While not as capable in some respects as a more modern vehicle it is also considerably less complicated. Tri-fuel vehicle - could run on gasoline, kerosene, or ethanol (which, it should be noted, can be manufactured fairly easily by the average human being). It was designed and used in an era before most roads were paved, and had a fairly high wheelbase. You could also remove a wheel and use the axle as a power-take off. Lots were modified into tractors for farmwork. Not very fast, but it got the job done.
It’s estimated 50,000-60,000 are still in usable condition today.
Mechanical vehicles require not just fuel but also spare parts that will be hard to come by. Assuming available petrol, I wouldn’t anticipate any vehicle being usable in such circumstances after a couple of years. If I had to choose, I might want a very simple dune buggy or similar terrain-capable rig, but I’d also plan for it to be unusable before too long.
At which point I’d want to get a horse or similar pack animal.
(That’s one thing “Firefly” got sort of right. I’ve seen people thrown by the fact that characters are riding horses around; they say, don’t these people have like spaceships and stuff? But if you’re on a frontier world, you want something that will help take care of itself, that will fuel itself, and that will make more of itself given the opportunity.)
All combustible fuel has a shelf life, so the best vehicle is one not reliant on industrial processes. Maybe an electric scooter with a huge bank of solar panels somewhere that you can use to recharge it, but even then you’re reliant on the life of the battery
In a zombie apocalypse, the best vehicle is a bicycle. Silent so as to not attract zombies, light enough to carry over obstacles, easy to repair or replace, and won’t spook like a horse.
Donkey. More sensible than a horse and thrives on poor fodder, can carry more weight than a horse. Hitch it to a cart for moving things around. Mules (cross between horse and donkey) are also very practical, and come in any size.
For any machine to stay running, even a bicycle, you will need an industrial society, which will be notably absent. So it’s pretty silly to contemplate which one would be best.
Agreed! Post apocalyptic means eroded roads, debris, wreckage, etc, and that means reduced speed and careful driving. I have a friend who has a Jeep Wrangler, and he can tackle any terrain that is driveable and emerge intact. I’m not saying it has to be that brand per se, but I think a vehicle like it is what I would be looking for.
Probably because they’re boring to film and you can’t use long bike rides as exposition dumps between a bunch of characters.
One of the primary characteristics of an apocalypse is a drastic population reduction, so until stored parts becomes unviable bicycles will be able to run. I guess the first thing to go will be tires, since I know rubber eventually degrades.
Yeah, 4x4 pickup. Ideally one with an extra gas/diesel tank in the bed. You would want one that has a few axillary 110v outlets for a couple of electric bikes.
Winch could be handy too.
If no spare gas tank, I’d want a topper on in. Not a camper, just a shell.
Bicycles are highly durable. My bike sits outdoors the year round in extreme temperature swings and mostly very high humidity. It’s 27 years old (I got it used), and the only thing I have done to the bike in seven long years is put air in the tires and spray a little oil onto the moving parts once per year.
Bicycles also allow substantial distances to be covered (my wife bikes 100 km’s on a semi-regular basis), and they are useful even when the operator is too tired / hungry / banged up to not be able to walk with any real oomph. Been there.
Small wonder even Khoisan bushmen use bicycles on their hunting and gathering treks over arid wasteland.
edit: that indestructible Hilux doesn’t move an inch once it runs out of gas. Oil, too, and other sorted liquids.
Add me to the bicycle advocates. Post-apocalypse, I’d want a mountain bike rather than my 27-speed road bike - gimme thick tires and durable rims that can deal with irregular terrain.
But with a minimal toolkit, including a patch kit, and a few spare inner tubes just in case, I’d have working wheels for probably the rest of my life, given that I’m pushing 70 now.
How about canals? You could use almost any boat, propelled by any kind of motor, sails, oars, or pulled by a mule. Much easier to maintain than a car, pretty good cargo capacity, and not many hills. Find an older canal that still has manually powered locks, and it will last for decades with very little maintenance.
From the OP’s question’s POV the best time to have had an apocalypse was probably about 1960-1965 when there were lots of 1950s & early 1960s basic vehicles about and a plentiful supply of their low-tech spare parts that didn’t differ from model year to model year. Or at least the functional ones didn’t, and who cares about the trim parts?
There’s a reason you’d still see 1958 or 1963 Ford F-150s on the road into the early 2000s.
Overall IMO post-apocalypse it’ll be draft animals. They’re self-maintaining and, more importantly, self replacing. The supply of usable bicycles and F-150s will be whatever it is on the Day After then from there it’s going nowhere but down to zero over time. And not that long a time either.
The survivors will be stuck in subsistence farming mode for a generation or more before they can move tech up from sharp sticks & animals for clothes and power to even e.g. 10th century Europe levels.
With bicycles, it will be multiple decades easy-peasy (see my cite above), but most likely a century or more, with millions of bicycle carcasses for parts plundering around. That’s not nothing.
Admittedly, the non-metal critical parts (tires) are the Achilles’ heel. But even they last a long, long time in the older, general-use bikes. And something like a 26" inner and outer tire is also ubiquitous, stored by the millions.