Jalopnik Readers Have Driven Some Really Weird Things, These Are Our Favorites

At some point in your life someone is going to toss you the keys to something weird and ask if you want to drive. It's important that you say yes. Over the weekend I asked the Jalopnik commentariat to tell us all the story of the weirdest thing they've ever driven. There were some pretty great answers in that comments section, which included normal things you would drive in the course of your job, but some of those jobs are pretty weird when you think about it. The list also included some rarities, oddities, and real genuine weirdos. 

There's a certain level of joy that can be added to your life by doing weird things from time to time. We've all had plenty of time in a beige jellybean-shaped crossover, so why not slip behind the wheel of an HMV Free-Way (above) or a rear-steer combine harvester for a while? You never know what you might learn from the experience of driving a weird contraption. Every day I wake up and ask myself how I can increase the likelihood that I'll drive something weird today. 

These days it seems like there's nothing in the car world that is truly weird. When was the last time a weird car was built? I guess there's stuff like the Morgan Super 3 or whatever, but those are so thin on the ground they statistically don't even exist. Look back to history and you'd see weird things like El Caminos or Corvairs. Nobody is making a car/truck today, and there hasn't been an aircooled mass-produced car since 1998. Why aren't we being weird anymore? What's holding us back from letting our freaky car flags fly? 

Our readers have told their tales, and I've parsed the best responses here for your perusal, broken into four groups; heavy machinery, boats, planes, and cars. Do you have a better story than these? Sound off in the comments below and we'll make a healthy chat of it.

I lied about my age and got a job at 15 driving a 1950 Walter 6x6 dump truck with a 7 spd non synchro transmission. Fortunately, I had been driving my father's more modern lumber trucks since age 12, so I knew how to handle this monster. My best high school summer job. They even hired me back the next summer.

Suggested by Bernie Neufeld

I'm not sure I would say I was a competent driver of anything at 15 years old, let alone a giant dump truck. I might be confident enough to drive it today, but definitely not back then. 

A combine with rear wheel steering. Sensory confusion.

Suggested by Dispicable Moi

Have you ever ridden one of those bicycles with the reversed handlebars? It's so weird. 

A 1980's era Cat Loader. My dad worked for a construction company when I was growing up and he'd regularly bring me there on the weekends so he could finish up stuff from the week. He was a valuable employee so the owners pretty much let him do whatever he needed. Since it was only the two of us down there he would let me drive/operate the equipment. I spent many an afternoon wheeling that loader around the yard.

Suggested by Nick B

My dad took me to work a lot, but the only thing I ever got to drive was his laptop for a while. 

Maybe not that wild but 30 and 40 foot boomlifts. They are a little intimidating when your inside dodging overhead busbars, pipes and hanging conveyor systems. The first time moving one while you're 30' in the air will make butthole pucker

Suggested by Alejandro Garza

As I get older, I find myself more afraid of heights than I used to be. A friend put me up in a boom lift a few years back and drove me around a factory standing 30 feet off the ground. Being a good friend he wanted to put a scare in me, and got the whole thing rocking around quite a lot. Maybe that's why I'm scared of heights? Any therapists here who can tell me what it all means? 

In my early teens, I worked at a horse stable. It had a full size ring and 54 individual stables. My job was to take a horse out from the stable and put it in the ring, so I could clear out urine soaked wood shavings and put it in a cart, which was pulled by a 1930s Ford tractor. It wasn't hard to drive, and at 13, I thought it was the most fun thing I had ever done.

I went to work one day and was told that the tractor had broken down. Seems one of my youthful co-workers needed to put some gas in, but he put it in the radiator. Had a couple of weeks to pull the cart n by hand before it was fixed.

Suggested by Scourge of Richland

Never put gasoline in the radiator of the horse piss express. 

A road roller, spent a couple of years in construction out of high school.

Suggested by IB007

Laissez les bons temps rouler.

Diesel Locomotive train engine. My dad worked for EMD (Electro-Motive Diesel) Company and invited me along for a "test drive" of some new equipment they were testing on a diesel locomotive engine. The engineer was kind enough to seat me at the controls as we were moving along at a breakneck speed of 40mph. I didn't actually "drive" anything, but 10 year old me sure thought I was

Suggested by Jimboy II, The Sequel

This is like when you give your younger sibling a controller but it's not hooked up to the Super Nintendo. 

A duck boat in Boston.

XW2 and I were on the duck tour of the Charles River. The guide and driver, dressed as Ben Franklin, asked for volunteers to try driving it after it entered the water. He evidently thought I was qualified to drive the entire tour, all the way back to the ramp.

I was incredibly focused: we were visiting from near Philly, where a similar boat had capsized and passengers had died.

Suggested by Tom Seaview

That sounds pretty ducking cool. 

Zamboni. A quintessential Canadian experience that few Canadians I have met have ever done.

I didn't get to refinish the ice with it, unfortunately, just a few laps around the rink parking lot but it was a memorable, if slow, experience

Suggested by JaredOfLondon

You can't rush the zamboni. It's the closest to vehicular zen that any of us will ever achieve. 

A long, long time ago my now-wife and I jumped on a vaporetto, one of the many water-buses that make up most of Venice's public transport system, just outside Saint Mark's Basilica/Basilica di San Marco. It was packed so we were standing right up the front by the captain. I casually mentioned to my wife that I'd love to have a crack at 'driving' one and the captain overhead and motioned to me to come up and have a go – so that's how I ended up driving a fully loaded, dual throttle, dual engine, public transport boat up the busiest waterway in the world for a bit. The captain took over once I'd lined it up and slowed down just a bit away from the next station wharf. Some of the people on board we're definitely locals and didn't seem at all surprised or concerned, but some tourists certainly were.

Suggested by Jimbo

Bon-jorno, Jimbo.

Boeing 777-300. 240' long but the wings are 200' wide . You have place the main gear 100' behind you & the steering nose gear is also 12' behind you. To make a right turn, you go way past the intersection before actually turning. The Tiller (steering wheel) is spring loaded to go straight so going around a big round airport like Chicago or Paris, you have to hang on to the thing the whole way around. There are cameras in the tail pointed at the main gear so you don't go 4-wheeling. The rear truck steers as well. I always wanted to be a Tiller driver on a Fire Ladder Truck in the back.

Suggested by Nomoto

Driving a plane in the sky sounds difficult, but driving a plane on the ground sounds just plain weird! I'm sure you get used to it after a lot of practice, but it has to be super counter intuitive for a first-timer. Good for you, friend. 

An aircraft tug moving an F/A18 Hornet on the deck of the USS Roosevelt. They let me move it like 5 feet before they ran the nuke lieutenant back downstairs.

Suggested by OuttaHere

Nobody has ever trusted me to move their $74 million aircraft. I'm not exactly sure why. 

Does a TF-51D count? 

Suggested by Richard 

Man, what a boring answer. Hasn't everyone flown a World War II-era P51 Mustang with an instructor seat? These things are practically on every street corner. We had one in my driver training class. 

Obviously I'm kidding. This is a pretty cool thing to have flown. Good one! 

The Ford GT that Doug Demuro reviewed back in 2017 after it got shipped back from Utah. That was a pretty good day.

Suggested by Tycoon

This... is a weird car. 

I drove a new F-150 Lightning for an afternoon. I know that's not really weird.. but I'm an old analog BMW guy .. so it was super weird to me.

Suggested by PHL

Adaptive cruise control? Power steering? Instant torque? Apple CarPlay? What is this monster of modernity? 

Ford GPW. Identical to the Willys MB, but made by Ford. If I remember correctly the owner said a majority were crushed after the war, so they're somewhat rare? Got to drive it while working at a Ford service department.

Suggested by Sample Text

Those WWII Jeeps are so strange to drive. And by strange I mean mostly horrible. 

Not the weirdest vehicle, but the strangest driving arrangement I've ever encountered is how the pedals are arranged in the 1930 Bentley 4.5 litre. Rather than the traditional L to R of clutch, brake, and accelerator, on this Bentley the clutch is still on the left, but the brake is on the right and the accelerator is in the middle. It does take a bit of thought when you first start driving one of these.

Suggested by Patrick

Have you tried a Ford Model T? Despite literally millions of them having been built, they're so weird to drive. They have a reverse pedal, for goodness sake! 

1982 "High Mileage Vehicle Free-Way" is a 3-wheeled Kohler engine powered micro-car which I managed to roll on winding country road and managed to escape unharmed.

Suggested by George Z

Aside from rolling it over, this sounds like a pretty cool thing to drive around for a while. The HMV Free-Way is one of those totally bizarre post-fuel-crisis malaise-era economy cars, and it's shaped like a miniature alien spacecraft. I love it so much. 

In the mid 60's I was a high school senior, and a student bus driver. Yeah, that used to be a thing. Because of my bus training, I was selected to drive a convertible for the homecoming queen to ride in for the Christmas parade. The principal told me to go to the Ford dealership the morning of the parade and pick it up. I showed up bright and early in my Ford Falcon to switch cars, and they bring out this baby blue, '55 Ford Tbird. It had the 312 with auto. I got to chauffeur my buddy's girl friend (Future wife) for the duration of the parade. Once it was over I knew that it was once in a lifetime event, so I kept it as long as I could get by with. It was almost dusk before I got back to my falcon, and the owner was not pleased that I had kept it all day, but he didn't call the cops and I had a memory for as long as I live.

Suggested by Gary Blankenship

Driving the popular girl around in a Thunderbird during a parade is a pretty cool memory to hold on to.