You Can Only Have One Car To Do It All, What Are You Buying?

There are very few cars that can do it all. If you want something that is economical, hauls all the stuff you need it to haul, handles corners with a little fun, and could be pressed into some kind of motorsport to get your enthusiast excitement out, your options are limited. There’s a reason dorks like me end up with seven cars. I have lately been thinking about what it would be like to consolidate and condense my car enthusiasm into a single car. Maybe instead of seven mostly-done projects I could have one seriously sorted car that does everything I want it to. Man, that would really reduce my registration and insurance costs, that’s for sure. 

So, as the cost of everything continues to balloon, are you considering downsizing to just one car? Do you already have just one car and you look at people like me with unregulated disdain? Is the one car you have already your ideal one-car-solution, or given your druthers would you select something a bit more fun, more economical, larger, smaller, what? I’m trying to get a conversation going in the comments here, because I like chatting with the readers of Jalopnik. Sound off below what you think the ideal one-car garage holds. We’ll have some healthy repartee about it. It’ll be fun, I promise. 

Be reasonable about it, I don’t want to see anyone saying a McLaren F1 or Ferrari F40 is their ideal one-car solution because that’s just plain silly. Come on, at least make it a 911 Turbo or something I could actually believe. What’s your pick for the best one-car-to-do-it-all garage? 

I live a pretty simple life. I don’t have a long commute because I work from home. I don’t have kids, so I don’t really even need back seats, but they’re nice to have. I’d like to have something fun, but I’d almost prefer that it’s not fast because I find I get bored easily with big-power cars. There’s something about having to keep the revs up and in the right gear to go quickly that gets my blood pumping.

There’s certainly a case to be made for a fast wagon like the Volvo V60 plug-in hybrid with tuning from Polestar. I’ve wanted one of those forever, and it would certainly be the strange bedfellows of economical and fast, but maybe not the most fun. Maybe a hot hatch like a Toyota GR Corolla would serve my life better, but I don’t know if I could ever be okay with paying that big price tag, and after driving them both back-to-back I’m picking a GR86 every time anyway. So maybe I should go with the tried and true predecessor to the 86, the venerable Scion FR-S. I briefly had one (above) and loved it; maybe it’s time I offload all of my stuff and get another one.

Man, I’m not sure I can come up with an answer for my own life. Maybe this question is harder than I thought. Or maybe you guys are all better adjusted adults than I am and you can narrow it down to just one solid everyday kind of car. So let’s hear it. What’s your pick and why? Sound off, crew, we’re talking the good stuff today!