These Are The BEST Off-Roaders You Can Buy For Under $20,000!

nathan this is a terrible time to buy any used vehicle let alone the hot market that is used four-wheel drives but we have a solution we do indeed we came up with a list to help you guys out with some unique choices for off-roaders now bear in mind we know that right now fuel prices are through the roof and used car prices are through the roof but we came up with a list that we hope will cater to everybody's taste and that is exactly what we have here and if you don't like the list it's roman's fault if you do like the list i'm the one who came up with it now we've done these lists in the past yes and typically they're like the best used off-roaders for under 5 000 or under 10 000 so what what are we doing with under 20k well because prices are so out of control in fact i have some examples of prices here that are absolutely ridiculous even though the vehicles are quite good as a matter of fact i looked for some vehicles that aren't on this list that really really should be but they were priced in the stratosphere so i had to avoid those now i used um craigslist both for boulder and denver colorado and i also used uh facebook marketplace and looked around there and i used one other thing too with this particular thing and i forgot the name of it but okay so these are real world examples real world examples located at least in the state of colorado with one example which will be second on our list and that one's in baltimore but baltimore is like right next door that's interesting okay but i had to get it so this is an interesting list right because if you look at like the world of new off-roaders um i mean in theory there are some affordable options out there like the wrangler still under 30 grand yeah broncos under 30 grand but when you look at lots when you look at dealerships never going to happen never going to happen ever and when you want to go off-road you kind of want to bash right so one thing that we've always said and a lot of you guys have said as well is that if you are serious about going off-road really you should think about having something that you don't mind getting well partially destroyed you don't mind trail damage so we thought that if you're aiming for under twenty thousand dollars a majority of the vehicles on this list are somewhat unmolested there are a couple that are projects which i normally say stay away from but they're actually really look really good uh but the point here is that you can get something for under twenty thousand dollars that seems to run well at least according to the seller and is ready for off-roading or ready for you to prep it for off-roading hey guys before we get into today's podcast let me introduce you to dirk legal dirt legal helps owners of dirt bikes atvs and utvs acquire a state issued street legal license plate that allows these off-roaders to be driven on the street so no more need to waste time loading up your truck or trailer driving it to the trailhead and then unloading it now you can simply ride or drive straight to the trail here's how it works send dirt legal your bikes or utv's information dirt legal then handles the paperwork with the dmv all for a few hundred bucks and at the end of the process you'll receive a new title and a street legal license plate an updated title in the mail simple right to learn more about how dirt legal can make your off-roading rig street legal go to dirtlegal.com that's dirtlegal.com this year spend less time loading and unloading all of your off-road toys and more time on the trail yeah and i think that this is going to be a fun one too because um i mean these are vehicles that in theory you could daily drive every now and then right if you needed to take a road trip or tow your boat or whatever now i haven't seen the list so nathan's kind of surprising me here yeah with some of the options so what is the number what is it 10 vehicle yep starting from the top um and most of these are not exactly in order in any particular order but i do have a bonus at the end but the first one is the two-door 1999 chevrolet tahoe sport z71 guys this thing was awesome it didn't exist for very long and essentially think of it as a shrunken down suburban in terms of its overall design it looked just like one when you're looking at the front of it or the back of it but it had a much shorter wheelbase i think by three feet and change i don't think i've ever seen this vehicle so it's a gmt-400 yeah general motors truck they're like the really square ones but it's just got two doors yeah and this one you found 15 grand yeah yeah and it has the z71 package which means the g80 in the back and it means a beefier suspension and it has extremely low miles for 99. 118 000 miles that is well under now that's if this guy is telling the truth but says it runs really good it's got everything ac heat powered blah blah blah blah blah the thing about these trucks and tommy can attest to this because he bought one oh i love him i love them they're great with the exception of a door it is a solid vehicle but and and there's gonna be a series called uh go big which is part of our uh no payment needed series this one we get big ass suvs and we take them off-road and we build uh basically make them into overlanders yeah so budget let's talk about these for a sec um 1990s general motors you know switched away from the old school square body trucks right and started building um the suburban the tahoe uh the newer generation still very squared off yeah um but this is like genuinely one of my all-time favorite vehicles because you get the old world charm of the small block 350 chevy right you get kind of the old-school styling and the basic construction but then in some cases you get air bags and real ac and power windows and cruise control and all the stuff that you'd like yeah it it get and a great ride great ride yeah issues with them like you said the doors suck the doors they say sag and then you gotta replace the little hinges um but if you just want a comfortable large capable vehicle with horrendous fuel economy and fairly decent capability for a small amount of money suburban tahoe uh escalade even for gymnastics yeah yeah we have an example of that too um there is something very special about this though okay you can get these at least i think up until 99 with a manual transmission can you really yeah tahoe yes yes yes yes they're super rare but they exist so my my beautiful suburban it's four grand um it's got it's got a hundred bajillion miles but it's uh it's got the four le-60 and the v8 and i don't understand why why can't we as a society make a seat or a ride quality as good as 1990s general motors yeah well it's not just general motors look at that old jeep that i have that you had that had a great ride fantastic ride it it's as if people are saying well i want to make sure it can go around an urban ring at least in nine minutes or something like that and because of that rides have been absolutely destroyed on vehicles i truly believe that a squishy ride for some people is optimum especially for your father i want to go on to the next one which is also another gm product but it's very special and i was looking for one and i couldn't find one in the state of colorado for under 20 grand but i did find this one okay this are you ready tommy yeah what is it this is a 2008 chevy express 2500 but it is optimized by a company called quigley okay now quickly for those of you who don't know is an off-road shop it's also a really good movie if you talk about the down under thing i love that movie um but quickly they set up four by four systems that are i think some of the best out there for vans and they do it on almost every type of van out there including chevy expresses now 2008 chevy express has a 6 liter v8 one of the strong one of the more reliable v8s out there i should say and it is a proper 4x4 it has lockers and this one is for sale in baltimore and for uh nineteen thousand five hundred dollars nathan you've put a van on our list yes because people wanna overland and van life is the way to go bro do they wanna overland yeah all right so so fans are really capable off-road if you do it right so this is not like a sprinter right sprinters are tall and very narrow-ish no no no no and they're they're like i mean they're huge this is an express fan yep which is well it's a plumber's van let's be honest but um it's got the six liter v8 yeah and a four-wheel drive conversion yes that's interesting and it's a really beefy 4x4 system that is a solid axle up front and it is something that is very capable in most terrain plus it doesn't have a really high roof so somewhat lower center of gravity and people don't realize this about vans but unlike a pickup truck where the engine or an suv where the engine is way ahead of you you're sitting almost on top of the engine in many cases and that makes a very different type of quality off-road some people find it a little unnerving but you'd be surprised how much lower the center of gravity is even though the van sits high so it is an interesting off-road potential vehicle and i have taken quickly products off-road with some of the earlier stuff i did as a journalist so they did the econo line yes right similar similar kind of deal right so it's like a white van and then they do a solid axle front conversion now i could be wrong about this right please express fan i think introduced in 2003 or something um don't they still build it yeah can you still buy a brand new i think you have to only get them for fleet sales okay you know what i mean um you can you're right 2022 chevy express it's the last of all the old-school vans and a lot of those fans people don't like them for various safety issues some of them some of them are terribly unsafe but chevy still sells these things they are proper airport shuttles um they there's chassis cab versions of them that are perfectly good for school buses and whatnot so they do still sell them and they seem compelled to build them still and i think they still use the six liter too so brand new uh i'm looking at the pricing 37 something 30 yeah okay we're going to go with it i i i but that's a two-wheel drive in 33 000 starting yeah two-wheel drive i'm looking at the chevy website for the brand new vans yeah you can get it with a 4.3 v6 the 6.6 v8 oh the 6.6 or the little baby cummins or the duramax that's right andre really wants to test one of these asking and asking and asking and they keep saying no saying no and you know why they're saying no because this is not a significant van for the type of audience we would normally reach i think that's that's just part of it honor doesn't care he still wants to drive it's been the same since 2003. andre likes van life all right i'll give you the van i think the van is and it's a proper it's partially converted too so it's somewhat of a camper it is in baltimore so for those of you folks who are in baltimore go look for it um the next vehicle this is a pretty obvious one but the reason i chose it is because it predates the wrangler and that is a 1984 jeep cj7 okay and i know you like those yep the cj7s are kind of an overlooked gem in my book because it was a narrower somewhat smaller jeep but still had the capability of anything predating it and of course you know coming after um this one only mild um updates really so you know they put it on 35s obviously that's a lot bigger than stock but this one has new seats new custom dash two new tops from bestop two sets of doors and a new uh durabac paint dirt bake or is it durable i think it's that baked on stuff it's kind of red liner yeah it's basically bed liner no rust uh new weather stripping uh fourteen thousand seven hundred fifty dollars drives great um knew almost everything throughout one of the reasons why i really dig this vehicle is because right out of the box you have just a decent driver that you can take off-road whenever you want and it just looks like a solid little truck so i this is an interesting one now a few years ago this would have been like a six thousand dollar jeep yep exactly and welcome to 2022 where it's now 14 000 yeah i i think it's about 2 000 too much at least well i'm curious so like ford broncos exploded in value right for a while they were 10 grand and then overnight they became 60 grand the old ones yeah um scouts kind of did the same thing maybe not to the same extent fj40 toyotas yes oh my god those are through the roof cj7zo are still kind of like the last affordable if you go to the cj5 if you go to willy's or less stuff their prices are increasing but the cj-7 seems to be kind of under the radar and i i think they're really good vehicles overlooked yeah okay they roll kind of easily if you don't know what you're doing but nonetheless i think they're a really solid off-road remember this is about four by fours why not a yj wrangler well the reason why is because we've done been there done that type thing and they are there's plenty on the list that that you could be especially the four cylinder we could we you could find those all day long yeah um but i figured that this was a slightly better choice especially because it looked so clean so what you're saying is you don't like square headlights yeah i'm okay with it you know when i was in high school i dreamed about this when i saw the sahara the first time this the very first sahara version came out i desperately wanted it i thought it was the coolest thing but that was also you know i was watching magnum pi during those days what about were you at jurassic park yeah growing up yeah yeah i mean yeah there was growing up it was yeah yeah it was uh it's a good it was a great movie i thought it was the jeeps are kind of fun also also i thought the ford um what should we call it um what are these these the ford this explorer explorer yeah the the second movie yeah i think uh yeah it was perfectly good um next on the list though is something that we have pictured right here and that is a 1996 toyota land cruiser i know that you are well versed in land cruisers now the one that's on this list is interesting and they say that it's never been taken off-road however they did replace the front bumper with a steel off-road bumper and it does have some other new components according to the owner there's a new tires in 2020 new paint six thousand dollars in work to the engine and drive shafts new front brakes rear brakes were replaced last year and the interior is in great condition with the exception of the driver's seat which of course is typical um and according to the owner they bought it back in 98 for their wife to drive the kids back and forth to school so in other words they're like little old lady type mentality you know never taken off-road never abused uh and they want twenty thousand dollars 20 grand how many miles 252 000 miles a quarter of a million miles on a vehicle now we know that toyotas really do mean especially their trucks hold their value and this is an example of something that could be a decent buy but at the same time crazy amount of miles and i know you toyota land cruiser fans are like dude you don't understand if it's like a 200 or a 100 series they can go million miles with three wheels or something i get it i totally get it i like these because uh they're super super solid and fairly simple it's before the land cruiser got really complicated you know what i mean it was just just predating some crazy stuff so i that that's why why i like it i like the prices a little much the yeah 20 grand i mean it's not unheard of now this was the very last of these solid axle land cruisers exactly um and people like these because they could get with uh triple lockers so they had a three locker version and i think they're cool they're slow as balls yeah because we have the six cylinders before the eight cylinder the advent of it and it was it was really slow but cool vehicles um they also rust they can i mean which is unfortunately she only took her kids back and forth to school so she never encountered rest so there's never any water in the in the school park no no in colorado we have no water it's our snow doesn't really do anything to cars so anyway i you know the one that's in that's on this list that's pictured um looks a lot different than the one that um i that i sent the time so this one on the screen actually i drove this exact vehicle this was a toyota trip they did in utah yeah that was an incredible trip yeah they pulled this out of the heritage museum the land cruiser museum and i was so disappointed because well because i really loved 80 series growing up i thought they were cool looking they like you said look a million freaking miles but this was an early one and the early ones had a different engine than some of the later ones oh that's right they they they did switch it it was a bigger they switched to it oh it was so if they went from straight six to different straight six but um and then they went from fj80 to fdj80 but these fha 80s they're so slow they're just so slow i talked to some folks in colorado that own them they love them they they last forever but we've got this like infamous stretch from denver up to the high country of i-70 interstate 70 and they just won't do 65-70 you're in the slow lane almost the entire time yeah yeah but they are freaking cool vehicles i know i heard of a guy who took one of those and got a little four-cylinder uh diesel and put it in there and absolutely adores it they have imports too and then there's a company too which um i don't know if sleeve's still doing it but people will swap in the 4.7 v8 yes out of the next which is supposed to fit like a glove which is a good idea it's really good living up here it's a really good idea um now i wanted to go into one of my something that i really do hope one day we do buy at the studio okay all right 2012 nissan xterra pro 4x oh okay the xterra is such an unloved but wonderful off-road vehicle and unfortunately the guys who um are selling this one have been smoking something crazy because they want nineteen thousand nine hundred dollars for a vehicle that has 120 almost 121 000 miles on it now granted that is relatively low miles for a vehicle built in 2012. okay okay fair enough but um that is almost double the value of what this vehicle is i would say that i think so yeah i'd say 12 000 tops because it's the pro 4x version um the cool part about the pro 4x is that it had a electrically locking rear diff you just hit a button yep and they worked a treat they always worked really well the this version is extremely clean it has the 4-liter which is a bulletproof v6 it is a strong great off-roader there is some pretty good um aftermarket um you know how do i put it it's it's a decent size uh aftermarket um world for the pro 4x version of the nissan xterra but even if you buy a base model xterra right without any of the goodies in it you can still beef one of those up make him really capable off-road actually have some friends and a dude i love my ride with the guy who brought in a nissan xterra that was remarkable yeah it's so funny that like if you look at like fj cruiser prices 40. oh god crazy crazy 45 and these are 15 18 right right about half and they're just as good they're really they really are just as good and not as complicated either as far as i'm concerned just a basic standard cross or not suv whereas in the fj as cool as it is is really hard to see out of like impossible to see out of and frankly speaking is overpriced in every conceivable way the exterior is not as cool or as unique but the exterior is as if not more capable in fact i think that other than perhaps its breakover angle most of the other numbers on the exterior pro 4x are better it's just a good solid suv 19 is too much uh i would talk them down a lot but i would say for 15 i would line up and buy this thing all day long right now in today's economy these have the profile x's have these off-road lights on the roof i love it remember the factory installed yeah and i came right from the factory that way totally yeah yeah i actually thought about getting something like that and slamming it onto my um pathfinder when i had it because it would fit but it would look weird what about the manual would you get the manual yes they had a six-speed manual um and it was if you have an option with older nissan trucks to get the manual over the automatic automatics had a couple little glitches with them manuals are solid and if you wanted a manual truck perfectly good excuse to get one right here pro for xxxterra that yeah that is a winner on the list hell yeah all right what's next all right now this one i think you'll agree with me uh except for maybe the pr i know the price isn't too bad 2010 lexus gx460 you know nathan i'm going to take a controversial stand here i never got the gx thing oh god i never got it okay i hate a minute tommy just a little bit dull i mean they're big and they're squishy and they're they're they're very capable but don't you think they're a little old manny well yeah i'm an old man you're not an old man the thing is is that okay let's say you want the whole package let's say you want comfort convenience luxury and off-road capability all in one you have it right there the only thing this thing doesn't have which most of these don't have on this list is a good economy so they had terrible mileage and they use market there's two right there's so there's a gx470 which is the older one and there's a gx460 but they both look like someone melted the front end and they're just like well uh they're just droopy i get that they last forever and that there's a their toyota what land cruiser prado underneath yeah um don't you just think they look so boring do you like them okay with them i always felt that they look too skinny too skinny yeah from like the back they they look like they're a little tippy but when you put on you don't even have to go crazy with the lift but if you put on the right tires and you have just the right amount of suspension i think they look super but i hate the running boards that are on them they're huge i would tear those off in a moment i know they're better for mpg it's a whole different story but this one uh has 152 000 miles on it which really isn't that much for 2010 that's pretty impressive and it has the 4.6 liter v8 of course 19.5 now i think that looking at these other vehicles we've already talked about that's still a little too expensive considering what we're going through right now that's not a horrible price and these things have been known to go a quarter of a million miles on the same engine transmission they do last for freaking ever and they tow a lot and they're comfortable they're really good off-road i mean they really are but nathan just buy a lr4 yeah you wouldn't mean well it's funny you mentioned that um so that's next on our list but before we get to that uh one other thing i wanted to mention i do not have a toyota 4runner on the list and that's because i have this gx on the list and in my mind the 4runner and gx ironically for 2010 forerunner would only be a couple grand less i'd rather have something that could hold another row of people and be comfortable and squishy but what about the droop factor it is you know it's just droopy the forerunner the 5th gen 4runners are tough looking i i like the v8 4runners which is 4th gen that's the 4th gen yeah and they were kind of rare you didn't see a lot you don't see a lot of fortunes running around i had a buddy that just bought one i think he paid that's my point so this is nineteen five right and it gives you everything that has and on top of that it gives you more space and more luxury so something to consider so the next on our list you just mentioned it 2011 land rover lr4 now this one is considered the base version of it but it has looks like a mild lift tires and wheels looked very very tasteful the way that this guy did it um yeah 18 grand at this dealer 130 000 miles i look i people are going to give me so much help for choosing atlanta over lexus but the land rover has so much personality it looks better it's more comfortable i think the interior just looks cooler overall um i love the air suspension i know they all fail but i love the air suspension um i like the v8 engines too they're just lovely vehicles this one might be yep this is a v8 but they also the five liters they also the supercharged six honestly to be brutally honest like the lr3 is probably a little better from longevity people ask like what is the best land rover 2006 to 2009 lr3 bar none it's gonna be the most reliable it's gonna give you 80 of the lr4 experience but the lr4 is more refined now how was your land rover ownership experience what was that like okay so i had the first generation uh discovery uh and that was it i loved it but i hated it my wife absolutely wanted it murdered um it would leak oil like the exxon valdez i had a manual transmission which was really rare for the united states and tommy you wrote it i believe i did yeah it was one of my first memories with nathan it was like a 96 right was it beige or white or something it was white on the outside beige on the inside and i remember we were driving to this really cool off-road course with the windows down like 115 degrees kept overheating yeah yeah i had i had thermostats what an adventure yeah i it the heat always had yeah so i'd had to turn the heat on in it and drive it was it was difficult but it was also extremely good off-road i had street tires on the thing and i did off-roading better than most off-roaders at the time it was just extraordinary but i wouldn't recommend that unless you are serious about doing some of your own work now this one is for 18 99. yep that's expensive 19 grand basically but not unheard of a lot of these are going to be like 25 grand and if you get a last year which i think was 2016 like you'll find them in the 35 40 000 which is what was really surprising which is why when this one came out i just immediately jumped on it in terms of pricing and i think it's a really good looking one too i mean i do agree with you that it looks astonishing one thing about land rover is that a majority of their vehicles range rovers and land rovers i think are really good looking aesthetically at least so totally um and you know at least when they knew out of the box they're really good off-road um now this next one is dear to my heart um and it's crazy how low the mileage is so i decided to throw this in here guys for those of you who don't mind losing your kidneys as you're driving or having your spleen launch out of the top of your head i highly do you know in terms of off-road capability this is one of the most off-road capable vehicles on this list you're not going to debate this because you can't it can't debate it um it's also the slowest vehicle on the list by a massive margin uh this one says it's a 95. interesting well so it's an import so what we're looking at is a suzuki samurai and this i believe is a narrow body samurai so it's it's an imported model yeah a left-hand drive and 12 grand now you owned one nathan is it worth is it worth the money you think if you look at this one that's actually on here it is remarkably clean everything on it is just looks brand new and cherry but on top of that it has air conditioning wow what a wonderful choice for a vehicle that puts out around 70 horsepower when new um i believe this has the larger displacement four-cylinder engine and if it does that's a really good thing um because you can't drive these speed limit here in colorado uh the one that i had was a what was that an 87 yep and that one did not have enough power even though i had the carburetor worked on even though i tried my best to find a way to make it perform a little better i could not get it to colorado speed limits other than 55 what's going down the fastest you got it i got it to 60. and it was and when i did that for those of you who have ever watched the right stuff one of my favorite movies by the way when they're you know the guys uh breaking the sound barrier and everything's like you know this shaking and you know things are breaking that was what it was like to go 60 in the suzuki i thought that i had broken the sound barrier everything was just freaking out in the car um not not the best for high speed however here's one of the important points i always make about suzuki samurais and other vehicles like that but specifically the samurai let's say you really wanted a side-by-side right yeah and you wanted to take it off-road and just have a good time you had it you're gonna get a trailer and everything else you're gonna be set back for a new one 30 even 40 grand for some of these new ones that were stupidly expensive or you could get yourself a very nice used suzuki samurai and a chiropractor yeah there are ways to soften the ride by the way i just never got around to doing them and you can take this anywhere in the country legally you could drive it on the streets but more importantly you could take it an off-road and follow anybody anywhere with any type of off-roader with the exception of maybe a motorcycle so you could follow anybody because they are that capable um it is a beaut you did find a very it's a very pretty one isn't it i love the samurai i am totally on board with this but you do have to manage your expectations like you said i do like the street legal side-by-side kind of idea because if you go in and expecting even like an old wrangler like it's it's too slow it's too small it's i mean it's not yeah it's not something you really want to drive on the street you know there's one thing before we move on uh one interesting point for those of you are curious the dimensions on the old samurai that was here in the united states is almost identical to the original willy's jeep yeah very cool yeah almost everything is like within a fraction of an inch of each other so it's a very interesting little thing for those of you who are curious about that so i think yours was 2 500 bucks it wasn't 12 grand and it was a little rusty yeah it had some serious rest it's a little rusty here and there uh was that reliable though uh yeah i had to uh did you put those big tires on it and it slowed it down oh yeah i slowed it down yeah but but it helped it off road and actually made the ride a little bit better um you know it's it's it's a give and take i learned a lot uh owning that i also learned that my wife she when she said one year she meant one year you could have this for and please she wanted that thing gone oh she couldn't stand it in our driveway and i was trying to teach my daughter how to drive stick with it which would have been awesome and i was like oh you cannot drive it's the most unsafe she found those old consumer reports stories about it flipping over when people sneeze on it and she never saw the other stories where consumer reports was taken to court and there's a lot of bso on those stories but that's a whole different that's a different podcast the next one is the only pickup truck on this list but i had to add it for a specific reason okay what is it it is a 2007 dodge ram 2500 slt quad cab four wheel drive with a cummins and this one which has a quarter of a million miles on it is for 16 995 now the reason i chose it this one was lifted and i believe it has a rear locker and it is really really beefy and i thought to myself i love power wagons okay and i can't find a power wagon for under 20k i can't find one for under 30k but if you really were desperate for an off-road heavy-duty mean pickup truck this is a really good start this thing if it's in decent shape which they say it is it's got a lot of miles but it is a diesel it's entirely possible that you could take something like this and turn it into an absolute beast off-road so i i was kind of dreaming when i looked at this one but i gotta say guys you know if you're serious about going off-road one problem with diesel's they're very heavy and that can be a real issue going off-road but if you wanted to tow something and take it off-road and then if you had to go and actually retrieve it which we do often having something like this could be a hell of a good choice so let's talk about it for a sec so this is an older ram i mean these had terrible interiors if you wanted like a quality interior these what is it a third gen ram is not going to be the truck for you but it does have an amazing engine yes and you can get these with don't forget the manual transmission which is the way to do it yes yes you can and the older ones you could get a v10 those are also all available i'm not saying that that would be my choice necessarily i really do like the um this setup and the potential for it because i've been towing recently yeah that's an interesting equation right this is one of the only vehicles on our list which will be happy towing a large trailer that is correct um and i feel that for those of you out there who are serious about off-roading and you want to tow this would be a really good choice and the price is actually fairly reasonable sixteen thousand nine ninety five now but it's a quarter of a million miles you could get the power wagon in this era of truck is is that not true i think they did make the power wagon in the third gen yes um they did pretty rare though yes and also impossible to find for under 20kk yeah yeah if it says power wagon on it you're not gonna find it for cheap that's for sure and it's a shame because it's one of my favorite trucks i will say though um the whole off-roading hd truck thing it's a bold you have to really be i have a lot of space to off-road an hd truck and the ride is typically going to be oh it's going to be the shortcoming yeah well because they're beefed up in order to hold you know over two thousand pounds usually in the bed or something like that and if you ride a modern uh power wagon their load capacity is very very low for a heavy duty truck and the reason why off-road suspension and so it's a bit of a trade-off um the tremor the ford tremor which you can get 2500 and whatnot that one has a very stiff ride because they wanted a higher payload capacity and they were able to do it also it could tow more but i wanted to talk about the next vehicle because you mentioned bronco well yeah i'm looking at it so it's uh yeah it's that 302 equipped bronco 1990. so it's like a brick nose but someone has built this out to be like a desert race exactly and as i said before i usually shy away from people who have modified trucks but this looks really clean and it's my 15 grand though for uh for an old bronco yeah but look at some of the other prices i found broncos going for 25 for the same year and higher uh especially if they're white ones because the whole oj thing i guess who knows but this one um you know it's got bfg 35 km3s 35s it's got uh 13 thousand pound winch yeah it's got a lot yeah i'm reading about it right now 302 v8 have you ever driven one of these yes uh yeah i mean they're they're they're fairly mellow one of the ones my friend had we actually took the roof off of it which is really hard to do by the way and they're perfectly good trucks they came along at a really weird time because ford was in the process of going through a lot of changes and this vehicle just could not follow the changes i even drove a centurion you ever heard of those i what that was like the extended wheelbase one right yeah it was a it was the f4 door it was essentially uh the predecessor to the uh expedition and but it never really existed here in the states well it did but there was like a six-door excursion or something too ridiculous yeah they did stuff like that but this the the centurion was something that was built uh from a small company i think they were uh out east and um they it was never part of you know a production plan for ford uh but anyway i've driven them i've driven them off road they're really good actually pretty good balance right up there with the tahoe that i talked about earlier um i think it looks great i love these broncos full-size broncos right introduced in 78 and then they built them through the mid-90s they had a bunch of different generations um and i think it's a great vehicle now i would have won a daily drive a 1990 bronco they i found their handling to be really sloppy okay but but and that that was kind of part and parcel for anything that was around that time they just didn't handle particularly well the ride was pretty good um what about the bronco ii i had one of those yeah yeah and you survived oh my that was we used to call them wrecking yard cars and they that was something that i would drive around to different auctions when i worked at my family's wrecking yard and the one that i had unfortunately had the automatic transmission and it was lifted okay it had everything in it that was trying to i was convinced that my uncles were trying to kill me um were you hated it that much well it was very tippy but i did take it to um a few places off-road including up um well near glamis i mean i really off-roaded it it did really well it just had no power it had that small v6 um it was uh it burned a lot of oil and this i was driving it back in the um you know mid 90s when i was driving it even though obviously it was an 80s i think it was at 86. so for folks that don't know we're talking about ford back in the day had the big bronco and then they had a little bronco right based on like the ranger and it was super narrow and they were known for tipping over yeah and it was also had a very very short wheelbase which was really good for off-roading they were actually i mean the the numbers on it for off-roading were spectacular in terms of approach departure and breakover uh not enough power to weight um although a lot of people who modify them do change that and they widen things out widen the track which i suppose could help but adding weight to those things was a terrible idea it was an interesting vehicle it had really cool back seat because it had this really cool like safari bent glass in the back so you can kind of look up and see through it um yeah my friends did not like riding with it in it at all because it was a very bouncy ride would you recommend a bronco too no no i wouldn't i wouldn't unless you know what you're doing because it's just a lot of work in order to make it better or if you're going to keep it stuck that would take a lot of the work as well it was it was an unusual it predated the uh the ford um uh the explorer okay and the explorer really was a vast improvement first gen over this thing and that was the whole point um and it was it was just it was close and it had a lot of potential and there's some collectors out there who swear by them and you know hey more power to you i just felt that they were very difficult to begin with i remember trying to work on it service it and the engine bay was just really narrow for me and it's just nothing was easy did it fall over at all on you uh nearly it i almost had a real problem off-road uh one time and uh that was yeah that was that could have been bad i wanted to add so that that's the top those are the ten okay that i came up with a good it's a good ten yes i wanted to be a little unique with some of these choices obviously we could have got made it easy there's plenty of jeep cherokees and whatnot on the list that are perfectly good off-roaders that you can get really good ones for like 10 grand still um but i wanted as a bonus what is this postal ban you have put as a bonus here it's not a postal van it's okay i've added a 1995 isuzu trooper ls i love these zuzu troopers i owned one it was extremely good it drove great not a lot of power uh blurble yeah it was bad that color was terrible on mine um but this one is for forty four hundred dollars uh i believe this one had uh it was really low mileage um this is the automatic which i do not recommend just because you cannot get power out of the automatic at least there was a five speed that was available and that was a much better powertrain later on they had a much more powerful v6 as well this one was before the i believe before the really good v6 but still it was there's still even though no longer exists in the united states as a purveyor of cars for regular people they still sell trucks um you can still find lots of parts there are plenty of mechanics that can still work on them they are very good off-road vehicles they're very easy to modify well fairly easy to modify and there's plenty of others i was actually looking for a via cross okay but i couldn't find one for under 20 grand so you went with the what i couldn't hold up you couldn't find a vega cross for under good you got your computer open now you go ahead and termination and within you know the content of the united states i could not find that oh my god cross essentially is you know it's very similar to the zuzu amigo which was a shortened version of the rodeo and the v cross was very very capable off-road had a really unique look to it um there it was it was an unusual cat and there's actually clubs out there of these guys and we see them when we go to easter juice safari we'll probably see them when we go this year uh they're they're funny guys and they can really off-road these things are able to keep up with pretty much any wrangler out there but this the trooper was much larger um not quite as large as the toyota we talked about earlier but fairly large really good capacity decent tow vehicle too it has it's a proper truck it has a frame and everything else solid rear axle but it had an independent front end it was very very capable in every terrain it was on yes people say they were tippy the entire time i owned mine i never feared for my life going around a tight corner um and yeah as cheap as chips it's really cheap to buy great list nathan but i do have some questions yeah um mitsubishi montero not on the list missing in action yeah i know i'm still frustrated with what happened to mine i it would have been easy to put one on there the i would recommend the first and second generation over the third generation considering my experience but i'm sure there'll be people out there who'll argue the second generation montero is and they had a 2.5 like a mid-generation one which uh i actually know a guy jalopnik who uh owns one i would say the second generation is like the best for off-roading and still was a fairly uncomplicated vehicle the newer they get the more complicated they get the more problems cost money to fix and that's part of the issue or you can get a first chin like i had and the first gen it was just such a solid it's still one of my favorite vehicles but i cannot find the first gen because they're saying well no i mean they're just really rare okay there's like we see one whenever we go up to gold mine hill there's this one dude who owns one that was like rolled over or something and he's still thinking about selling it for three times its value so mitsubishi monterey not on the list but good potential now what about the grand cherokee how has yours been to own absolutely fantastic um i only have one issue with it and i'll get to that in a second i recently towed with it yeah uh two different u-haul trailers one that was loaded probably up to about four thousand pounds towed like a treat towed great and it doesn't even have a frame and this is a 2001. 2001 with the 4.7 uh recently thank god rebuild transmission or brand new transmission yep um and it tows really really well surprisingly well the suspension setup on it is absolutely great for regular street driving very smooth comfortable seats i got almost everything working i was about to work on the heater core but then it started turning into spring in colorado and i decided yeah i think i'll wait because it costs about a thousand bucks to fix it properly um my daughter's driven it back and forth to school several times as when we've had deep snow she loves it um except for one thing and this is the problem what's the problem yes it's bad at that is it oh my god it's terrible for a vehicle of this size which isn't much bigger than the rav4 of the same year it's um it's remarkably thirsty on the highway if i'm lucky i'm getting like 18 now i know it has beef for your tires that don't help um my best mpg was 19 and that was being really really smooth and careful right when prices were going through the roof they've gotten a little bit better here but i was drafting off trucks and stuff like that trying to get better mileage on the highway it really likes premium even though it doesn't have to run on premium it really likes it it knocks if it's not a premium um i would argue that the wj grand cherokee is probably one of the best vehicles you can get for cheap so those are one of the few which you can still get for under like six or seven for a decent one and um they run forever i know jeeps have uh old jeeps have like this reputation for being grenades right but i think i think a lot of that is due to like the daimler chrysler era jeeps yeah you know like if you look at vehicles like the patriot the compasses those are pretty pretty trash but the wj grand cherokees they go forever straight six v8 options i would rather get this over at liberty would you really yeah i totally would not the only reason the liberty had anything remarkably compelling was that they did have for a while the renegade version the renegade yeah that was kind of cool and they also had a manual transmission option but i would still get the grand cherokee all day long i think that it's just a superior vehicle better engineering better ride better handling better off-road and you can also modify it if you want to liberty was really hard to modify so when it comes to jeeps i do want to throw an honorable mention i did like your 84 cj but i do think um yj and tj's are very good yeah tjs have always been expensive and they're not getting any cheaper especially like an lj the extended wheelbase ones yeah those are really those things are priced you're gonna be looking at like 25 30 grand but i really had a great experience with my square headlight wrangler yeah 95 it was lovely four liter straight six it's old enough once again it's kind of like the 1990s gmc's now where it's old enough to be cool and kind of retro and funky but not old enough where like you're messing with points and carburetors and that kind of thing right so really liked it uh now as a daily driver right now airbags um it's it's not didn't have the best ac system in the world i'll be honest about that but loved them if you had to take one of these vehicles as a daily driver though as like a vehicle you were going to take on the trail bring your family maybe to just to to dinner every now and then which on this list was going to be your choice you're going to hate my answer what is that the gx wow because he said that you said family that was your fault you said family and because of that that was the first thing that came in um first of all this is a very important note my adorable loving wife who i love so much um does not like a lot of the vehicles i bring home she's mediocre with the jeep to be honest with you she's just like it's old and it's cheap i said yes honey but it doesn't leak it doesn't leak it's really clean um but ever since i towed with it she's very happy with it because i moved a lot of furniture now she has a friend and her friend has a gx a pristine newer gx and i have a feeling that if i brought home anything other than on this list than the gx especially if i brought home the suzuki she would bludgeon me to death she would not be happy she doesn't like cheap old vehicles you know when i brought i brought home that uh expedition yep uh excursion i mean the excursion just for one night i pulled into the driveway she stood at the door and she said you're not buying that from roman because of my tendency to buy vehicles from work that are cheap and leak um so in this case though seriously amongst all those vehicles in terms of a daily driver that i had to haul the kids and the dogs and the cats and blah blah blah this would i think the gx would be my choice but it's because of that caveat i know it's i love i i love i don't love the gx i like i appreciate why it's on the list and it is probably the best vehicle on the list you know the toyota would probably be my second one the oh the foreigner no yeah the land cruiser oh the land cruiser oh okay so the 80 series land cruiser that would be another one but my issue with that is it can't tow or go or be driven up here in colorado without wheezing horribly um and then i guess maybe that tahoe i really like that tahoe those are really cool so my choice my number one choice is actually i really like this on the xterra the extreme that's really cool highly underrated choice isn't it under i mean is so people and we really i think we need to buy one in the future right do some sort of maybe when prices start coming down we do a different type of super cheap thing and maybe the xterra is on that list i know a lot of you guys agree with us that the xterra just doesn't get the love it deserves and we should get an amigo oh my god yes the amigo would compete directly against it isn't the amigo was that the honda passport underneath uh no that was the rodeo that was the rodeo yeah and that was really good at the time they came out they were super powerful by comparison and they were really capable off-road oh the amigo it's like the little two-door thing yeah a little convertible oh god oh yeah oh my god um no i love the exterior that was a great choice and it totally slipped my radar i also i would even take like a what third gen pathfinder yeah yeah the uh third and fourth you had one you did you like it it was extraordinary it was it was a great vehicle pardon me actually pathfinders up until they turned into station wagons basically um were really good first second third gens were great um it it's interesting there are people out there who are coveting and overpricing their um pathfinders that have the v8 yes that's right about the v8 yes and those things are powerhouses i mean they're thirsty but they're basically you're taking an armada and you're shrinking it down and that's exactly what these were and there aren't that many out there and the guys that have them are asking ridiculous money for them i yeah i mean i like i really i miss i miss my path i like the exterior a little more because they just don't need the third row yeah exactly but uh pathfinder is a great choice so my number one is gonna be the path uh exterior excuse me yeah my number two is going to be the tahoe suburban yeah the nineteenth is pretty cool i love them i like the one you found i i you can get them for anywhere between like one grand to like 20 grand yeah and there's a bajillion of them but for just a comfortable uh um easy to drive cheap to fix off-road choice it's hard to be a gmt-400 same thing with like the silverado version yeah the sierras very very good um other vehicles on the list honorary mentions samurais if you want like a side-by-side love it rides terrible yeah right um and then yeah i do agree the 80 series land cruiser cool car love them a little slow uh and just the gx thing man i just i don't get it okay they're boring they're boring i said it they're great cars but they toyota engineered the excitement out of them you know i see i disagree once you get it off road especially if you just do some mild uh modifications you can make these things incredible off-roaders and they have a wonderful ride on the street yeah they're not sports cars and yeah i would agree the aesthetics are a little but i've seen some guys do some really cool upgrades we had one who did a dude i love my ride and he was based in nevada and it was a black one and he made it awesome all right all right i'll take your word for it yeah well let us know what you guys think in the comment section below which one is your favorite and as always we'll see you in the next video take care guys

Channel: TFLtalk

Views: 20,148

Keywords: tfl, tfltruck, tflcar, podcast, best off-roader, best offroader, cheap off road vehicle, off-roaders, cheap offroader, best toyota off-roader, off-roader, best softroader offroad, best off road suv, best cheap suv 2019, best off road vehicle, cheap trucks, best cheap used suv to buy, best second hand offroader car, cheap cars, cheap, best off-road cars, cheap offroading, best suv off-road, best off-road car, top 10 soft-roaders that can actually go off-road, best off-road suvs

Id: c91z-qxd7GU

Length: 52min 12sec (3132 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2022