It’s Wednesday, so that means it’s time for another The Autopian Podcast. Today’s episode is a hodgepodge of important topics: Jason gets very upset about the car glovebox that can only be operated through the touchscreen, David explains why he had Jason make him custom oil for his Nash Metropolitan (more on that next week), and everyone wants to talk about sleeping in cars.
The video above is highlighting the discussion about the glovebox, which is worth your time, but I wanted to pull out the conversation about sleeping in vehicles because, it’s true, that people are obsessed with this concept.
Back at the old lighting site it was almost a game to see who could spend the most nights sleeping in a van or a car (or make other people do it). I once made Patrick George and Travis Okulski sleep with me in a Sprinter Crew van and it would have been fine if it didn’t drop to 18F overnight. Oh well!
This came up because we saw pics last week of the Ford Transit Trail, which looks to be an attempt at muscling in on the ProMaster and Sprinter in the #vanlife market. The van looks comfortable and we’ll have a lot more information on it as we get closer to the review.
It’s worth listening to for one of my favorite stories about David falling asleep in a Postal Jeep while trying to drive cross-country, but what I’m curious about is something David said about sleeping in his Toyota’s Landcruiser. David says that the rear cargo area is too small to sleep in so you need to remove the second seat in order to sleep. Or! You can just sleep in the second row. Here’s a pic of a Landcruiser second row from one that was listed on Cars and Bids.
Actually, that looks pretty comfortable.
Even the New York Times is getting in on this, with a story about taking an overnight luxury bus from Washington, D.C. to Nashville, TN.
Obviously, sleeping in a car is a choice some people have to make because they’re in a dire economic situation. That’s terrible and I think it’s a concept in the back of our minds all the time, that we could end up living in our vehicle, and so we want to read about it and think about it to know that it’s possible.
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