Typical. My wife drives an SUV. 07 infiniti FX. Like most SUVs it's too nice to haul anything. Here's what happens when I need to work in the yard.



That's 11 bags of bark dust. 2 cubic feet per bag, I'm getting close to one yard of the stuff in my little car. I was hauling it into the yard and my wife watched me make trip after trip. She made a clown car comment.

Now if I could just haul home a new sofa in it!

 

Dude, throw a tarp in the back of that FX! Put your foot down bro!

 

Pull up your skirt and change your tampon! lol!

 

+1!!!

 

This is not typical. Tell your wife you want your pants back

 

It wasn't her call it was mine! Load a bunch of dusty dirty crap in the 35k new car or my 3K 15 year old car?

Personally I take a little sick pride in using my car for everything. Most people say the Miata isn't practical. HA! Rain, snow, ice, around town, 3000 miles in 3 days, to work, to the track and home again.

 

Since you have a retractable antenna, it's actually pretty easy.

Turn the sofa upside-down and place it transversely across the back of the car, such that the legs are pointing straight up and the back of the sofa covers the back of the car. (Yes, it will obscure the taillights. Use tow lights if you're feeling particularly law-abiding.)

Now, use a pair of nylon ratchet straps wrapped completely around the sofa and also around the main hoop of the rollbar, trapping it in the niche where the side braces meet the upper hoop. Like this one, but with longer straps (mine are ~15 feet):

Tension the sofa securely, and you can haul it without any problem.

I've also moved 6' wide pre-laminated countertops by this method. Don't have a rollbar, but have installed the behind-the-seats strengthening beam from a 1.8, so I use that as my tie-down point. Works like a charm.

 

My wife tried that **** with me. Didn't work.

 

get a small trailer for the fx or a cheap truck

 

Two kids will make the nicest SUV capable of hauling anything. If that's not possible, then trailer ftw. Here's my 15 year old autocross trailer.

 

You go Joe!

I knew there were others here that actually use their cars. Fack. You'd think from the other responses that I'm the only one around here that treats the car like the cheap 15 year old car it is! Heck, with the 9/6 springs on it, it handled the weight great.

It's OK to strip the interior, mod everything, paint it, stripe it, lower it, widen it, etc. OOOOOh but don't have a little fun using it in a way it wasn't intended!

Like I said. I'm proud of using it for everything. 2 weeks of snow this winter. 7-8" deep packed on the freeway and badly rutted. Since we don't usually get much here the govt has no idea how to manage it. SUV's in the ditch. Chains required. Screw it. I was out there with studless snows on every day of it. Curly can attest to how bad it was here. Lot's of people just stayed home. Just look at my AV.

I thought a dozen bags of barkdust was funny. Didn't know it made me a ***. You guys do know we drive Miata's right? Just how strong can your pimp hand be?

 

It's not about treating a fifteen year old car like trash, it's about keeping the Utility in SUV and keeping the estrogen out.

 

Yes it was a crazy winter. But why go for a beer run in the miata in 12" of snow, when you have this alternative:


Back when my dad owned the car, he used to pick up loads of wood in it for all the carpentry stuff he did. He would just stick it in the passenger foot well and lash it to the roll bar. Craziest thing I've done is have two people in the passenger seat.

 

 

I really kind of enjoy hauling things with my car that seem to defy logic and reason. I consider it a sort of social commentary on the absurdity of owning a pickup truck or SUV as your daily driver.

To date, I've transported a sofa, the aforementioned countertops, a seemingly infinite quantity of 10' pipe and conduit sections, a fair number of 8' and 10' sections of lumber, a water heater, and a lawnmower. The passenger seat had to come out for those last two. Never needed to haul any mulch or similar, but if I ever do, the car will handle it. I still haven't figured out how to transport a 4x8' sheet of plywood- that's my holy grail.

My car isn't stripped down or beat up, either. It's 17 years old and wearing original paint, but it's rust free and only lightly dented, still has the full interior and a completely stock body. Apart from the color-matched TSIs it looks quite inconspicuous, like a perfectly normal old car. Just how I like it.

 

I did this, too. Two good lookin' babes. And then I backed into a ditch and got stuck.

+1 on winter driving. Went through my third winter with the car this year. Only regret is that I wish I had gotten my LSD sooner.

 

Joe did you say you had a roll bar? If so, place a towel over the windshield and roll bar to protect the paint and powder coat respectively, and lash a strap up and over the plywood to the mirrors or frame rails or something, you're going to have to figure that out.

 

+1 on using it for everything. Moved a flat screen in mine with the hardtop on. Had to take everything out of the box and leave the box at the curb. Plus being a 2-seater I rarely have to carpool people. NYC streets are getting really old though I must say.

 

No, I don't have a roll bar. I have the factory side-to-side bar that Mazda added in '95 or so, that runs behind the seats from one seatbelt tower to the other. It's good for securing nylon straps to, but does not extend horizontally beyond the seatbelt mounts.

I actually checked once to see if I had enough space to strap a 4'x8' to the underside of the car, but it's a no-go. Would have looked pretty interesting if it'd worked though.

 

best thing I ever decided to do was keep my pickup when I bought my miata. I still think a cheap small truck is perfect to drive in bad weather or doing dirty work.