These Are The Worst Cars Our Readers Have Ever Slept In

Sometimes, you're out on a road trip and you just don't make it to the hotel one night. Maybe you got caught in traffic, maybe you were just optimistic about how much driving you could really do in a day, or maybe you planned this all along, saving your AirBnB cash by crashing in the driver's seat for a night or a nap. Regardless, if you're reading Jalopnik, you've probably slept in a car at some point. 

That's why, earlier this week, I asked you to tell me about the worst car you've ever slept in. Anything form a camping overnight to a childhood nap in the backseat counted, and you returned results all across that spectrum — from minutes to hours spent catching Zs on four wheels. Today, we're looking through your responses, and we're going to see exactly what makes for the worst sleeping car imaginable. Let's see what you said, and figure out if we can discover any common threads. 

Picture this: A dad, two children under the age of 12 (of which I was one), and a Great Dane leaving at 3:00 am from the suburbs of Chicago to drive to the suburbs of St. Louis in a Ford Pinto (not even the hatchback version, but one with a trunk) to show the Great Dan in a dog show (think Westminster, but way smaller, outdoors, and not at all glamorous) and trying to sleep on the drive there.

I would prefer not to picture that, actually. That sounds better. 

Submitted by: JerriesBerries

20ft U-haul with a pair of bucket seats that you can't recline. I seriously considered climbing in the back and moving a bunch of stuff around to make room on an uncomfortable couch I had in the back.

If you'd gotten in the back, you would've absolutely baked in there. There's no winning with a U-Haul. 

Submitted by: Chase

When my wife and I were a bit younger, we booked a last minute trip to New Orleans and had an early flight out of Baton Rouge. To save a few bucks, instead of staying another night at the hotel and leaving at 3 or 4 AM to go to BTR, we decided to drive there the night before and sleep in the car until it was time to drop it off and head to the terminal.

It was an early third-gen Focus hatchback and had a decent amount of room for two people. What made it terrible was the near 100% humidity and heat. I didn't want to run the car the entire night so I would start it up to cool the car down if it got too hot, which was every 15 minutes. Those 5 hours were pretty miserable as well as the 12 hours of flight delays in an airport with only one airside food option. 

Seth, if I were you, I would've just slept in the airport. 

Submitted by: ODDseth

I spent the night sleeping in my 2000 Tacoma extended cab. Camping is great fun, but not when you finally get to the campsite after dark and it's pouring rain. I could barely even recline my seat because I had a bunch of stuff in the back that I didn't want to leave in the bed.

Around these parts, we call arriving at the campsite in the dark "pulling an Amber." If you're arriving back at a campsite after dark, while drunk, it's a Mercedes. 

Submitted by: badrear

The cab of my 1994 F-150 regular cab with the sport buckets and jump seat. Lumpy to the max.

Meanwhile, the bed was perfectly flat except for the ridged drop-in liner.

For the next trip, I brought a thick workshop mat along in the bed and had a great night's sleep.

A bed in the bed is the move, though ideally with some sort of bug protection above it. 

Submitted by: potbellyjoe

'78 Corona Wagon. Back seats folded. Two tween boys. Car packed from bottom to about 1 foot from the roof. Back and forth from Vancouver to Calgary a couple overnight trips for a move. We were basically luggage. (Oh, and waking up in the snack tray of jello, remnants of which never did come off the roof, was a hoot.) Gotta love the 80s. I still have PTSD. 

Hey, at least you got to be inside!

Submitted by: Marc Corra

We had tickets for the 2006 Olympics, but there were no hotels available, so we rented a car and a parking spot at a train station. They gave us a Smart forFour. Seats barely reclined, hardly space to keep our bags in the car while we slept. Would not recommend.

"We" is suspiciously nonspecific about how many people were involved here. Were you trying to sleep four in this thing?

Submitted by: AndrewB

Back in the early 90's my best friend and I decided to road trip his '66 Mustang from Los Angeles to Guadalajara, Mexico. The why is not important. But it was quite the adventure trying to sleep at a gas station in Mexico in the front seats of that car. The trip gave the us and the car a beating and rather than drive it back to LA, my buddy sold the car for a significant amount of cash and we flew home. Good times.

Google tells me this is a 28-hour drive, which seems reasonable enough to manage with just one overnight. This really does sound like such a classic American adventure, though. I'm kind of jealous. 

Submitted by: Pelican Flyer

My grandpa had an Olds Custom Cruiser Wagon. it had the rear facing seats in the back. I'm like 8, my cousins are 6 and 7. We got to sit in those rear facing seats on a drive through country roads in southern Indiana. So, super twisty, super hilly. I fell asleep, feeling queasy. I awoke to the sound of Cousin 1 barfing on the floor then on cousin 2. I then proceeded to barf on the floor and Cousin 2.

This was not the last time someone barfed in the custom cruiser. Those southern indiana roads are brutal.

Do not recommend sleeping in an Olds Custom Cruiser Wagon.

This is the most Family Truckster-looking car I've ever seen.

Submitted by: Buckfiddious

Miata is always the answer.

What, do you need space to sleep, or something?

Submitted by: 17Seconds