I’m A Radio Broadcaster That Needs To Maintain The Airways 24/7! What Car Should I Buy?

Will lives in Ohio and maintains radio station signals, which requires driving to some remote areas to ensure everything is working properly. His 2001 CR-V is getting a bit old and he would prefer something with more power and more capacity. With a budget of $15,000, what car should he buy?

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Here is the scenario.

Hey all, I’m a rookie radio broadcast engineer, which means I am on call 24/7 to maintain signal from the microphones to the antennas at a radio station in town. This often means driving into the middle of cornfields in harsh weather when most problems with radio towers happen. I’ve been driving the same 2001 Honda CR-V since high school, and it’s well over a quarter million miles. It’s survived work and school, towing my Volkswagen sandrail cross country, years of going offroad with only two-wheel drive, an engine change, and even lending it to my sister for a year. Its never let me down, and I’m more than comfortable working on it, especially after its engine swap. However, I would prefer to have something more suited to my line of work with plenty of space for equipment and the ability to tow another vehicle without feeling like I’m stressing it. I’m pretty set on getting a truck of some kind, but during my search I’ve grown agnostic towards brands, and I’m honestly less sure of what I want the more I look.

Ideally I am targeting

– No less than 200 screaming eagles at the crank. I get a little tired of 148 hp in my car.

– Must have extra seating for friends and tools. Two benches would be really nice!

– Must have a transmission cooler and/or a decent towing capacity

– Must have plenty of space to move bulky things.

– Should be a piece of cake to work on. A lot of times I find myself in the middle of no-where with just the tools and spare parts I have on hand

Budget of no more than $15,000

Will, that’s a pretty interesting gig that I’m sure requires some creative problem-solving. It’s definitely time to move beyond the underpowered crossover into something a bit more suited to the task. While the obvious answer is a truck, the question then becomes, which one?

You mentioned towing another vehicle, so a V8 is probably a good thing to target in addition to room for buddies and gear. Here is a 2008 Dodge Ram with the Hemi-V8 and trailer tow group. It’s yellow so you won’t lose it in the field and it certainly seems like a well-cared for example with only about 100,000 miles despite being almost seventeen years old. There is a recorded accident on the history which would require some further investigation, but if everything is up to spec this truck checks a lot of boxes. You have seating for six, in addition to a big 6’4″ bed for anything you need to get to or from your towers. These older Dodges were easy to service and many are still on the road today.

If you like your old reliable Honda CR-V but you need a little more space, all-wheel drive, and the ability to tow, you want a Honda Ridgeline. Instead of the underpowered four-cylinder in your car, this one will get you Honda’s venerable J-series V6 making 250 horsepower and 247 pound-feet of torque. Your towing capacity will instantly rocket up to Honda’s claimed 5,000 pounds, which isn’t enough to pull a Chevy Suburban, but your sandrail should barely be a factor.

The Ridgeline was a marvel of engineering when it debuted, bringing a weird hybrid of high-strength steel boxed ladder frame into Honda’s unibody truck design. It’s a solid truck that drives a lot more like a crossover, so you don’t lose any of the road comfort you’re used to and would have to compromise with a larger truck (like the ones my colleagues have suggested). This example is unfortunately a boring silver color, but with less than 91,000 miles on the clock and a very reasonable $12,900 buy-it-now price, it’s really the only choice you can make.

Well, Will, the good news is, even with a modest $15,000 budget, there’s a good chance almost anything we recommend is going to feel like a rocket ship compared to your quarter-million-mile Jetta. But since the Jetta’s been able to handle whatever you’ve thrown at it, I say resist the urge to buy something body-on-frame. It may be better off-road, but you’ll pay for it driving around town. So I say stick to a crossover with a little extra ground clearance that’ll still pretty comfortable on a daily basis.

Since you didn’t say where you live in Ohio, it was hard to know where to look, but this 2015 Honda Pilot looks like a pretty good deal at $12,995. It isn’t the fanciest Pilot you could buy, but it’s well within your budget and gets its power from a good, old-fashioned V6 that makes plenty of power. I’d like to think your new car won’t break nearly as often as your old one, so you won’t necessarily need to break out your tools in the middle of some random field, but if you do, at least this one doesn’t have a turbocharger. Still, it makes 250 horsepower, which should be more than enough to keep you happy.And while there’s no bench in the front, it does still sort of satisfy your request for two benches with its second and third rows. When you don’t need the way-back for your friends, you can just leave it down, and you’ll have plenty of room for whatever stuff you haul. The all-wheel drive and extra ground clearance (at least compared to your Jetta) are just the icing on the cake.

From a former radio station worker to a current one, Will, you’re doing the lord’s work. Radio — terrestrial radio in particular — is so important to the music discovery ecosystem, and I’m glad there are folks like you keeping it up and running. You deserve a car worthy of your station, something that doesn’t just meet the base trucklike needs of your job but sits as a nice place to spend those rainy drives out to the local antennae. Will, you deserve a Land Cruiser.

Now, I know, you said you’re pretty dead-set on a truck. But your use case seems to be largely towing-based, rather than hauling things in the bed, so I think a body-on-frame SUV with a tow capacity of 6,500-ish pounds (depending on options) ought to cover you just fine. I grew up in a family that used Land Cruisers as tow vehicles, and I can tell you neither I nor the cars died in the process.

Modern Land Cruisers are expensive, but the 100 series — the first Land Cruiser with the tow-ready V8 — can still be found cheap. Sure, you’ll be getting a truck with 200,000 miles on it, but it’s a Land Cruiser. C’mon. It’ll last forever on Toyota engineering alone, and twice as long if you change the oil one time. With that higher mileage, though, you’ll get a removable third-row seat — it may not be a double bench, but it’s even more seating.

Here’s a Land Cruiser out by you for $9,800, but it’s far from the only one. Check Facebook Marketplace, check Craigslist, look for a Land Cruiser that strikes your fancy. You’ll get a comfy interior with all the seats you could ever want, and enough tow capacity to carry whatever you need to haul as far as you need to haul it. Plus, they’re just great cars.