Welcome back to the Hooniverse series intended to light-heartedly help the global motor industry take steps towards giving us, the buying public, the cars we want. Or, in some cases, showing them what they really shouldn’t consider offering lest we pelt them with retaliatory tomatoes.
Our first Hooniverse Concept Car was a Compact Personal Luxury Coupé. Your interpretations were varied, generally it was accepted as a Lincoln, though Eunos Cosmo and even Lancia were mentioned. Even the Buick Reatta was shown reverence, so maybe the time for a re-emergence of that nameplate? A good start, then, with plenty of identities being bandied about but no confirmation as to whether it should be built. Let’s call it a maybe.
So, now for something completely different.
4×4 stuff is fun to draw. A buyer of a tough off-road vehicle is typically more interested in the look of strength, sturdiness and agility than elegance, power and poise, or at least this was the case before the blossoming of the never-get-my-tyres–dirty luxo SUVs.
If you want a tough, pared down off-highway tool your choice of new vehicle is pretty limited these days, with even Land Rover’s evergreen Defender due for retirement just around the corner. So, with that in mind Hooniverse Concept Car #2 is just that; a stripped bare, easy-to-wrench mule, and I say mule even though I seem to have inadvertently given it the facial expression of a particularly enthusiastic puppy.
So, would this sell? Who would sell it? Lateral thought can be allowed here; it’s pretty close to open wheeled which might make legislators a bit twitchy; so how about agricultural machinery and plant manufacturers? Or companies like Polaris or Bombardier?
Build or bury? The decision is yours.
(All drawings by Chris Haining for Hooniverse 2015)
By RoadworkUK
RoadworkUK is the online persona of Gianni Hirsch, a tall, awkward gentleman with a home office full of gently decomposing paper and a garage full of worthless scrap metal. He lives in the village of Moistly, which is a safe distance from London and is surrounded by enough water and scenery to be interesting. In another life, he has designed, sold, worked on and written about cars in exchange for small quantities of money.
Jeff Glucker 
Kamil Kaluski
Polaris is a good choice. My first thought was Kia though, and that's no insult. A small Samurai follow up, in the Suzuki spirit. Kia starts to be able to afford going down that rabbit hole and they need a youthful toy. Even cooler than the Renegade.
But…where are the mud flaps? That's my latest obsession. Ever noticed how mud flaps have disappeared from modern cars? I wouldn't want to drive behind this specimen.
It looks like the doors are removable, but with those minimal enclosure wheel wells and no mud flaps, that might not be advisable.
Skinny tyres in the English tradition. Since I'm more used to the local bro-dozer population, it looks sort of ridiculous that way.
Yeah, the tires may not actually be so offroad-ready. It looks like it is ready for impressive gradients though. And I imagine it being clad in some kind of plastic, certainly no shiny paint.
Skinny tyres as in TVR's Peter Wheeler's Scamander amphibious off roader..
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I have a sort of weird obsession with not-Jeep Jeeps that my bank account has luckily prevented me from indulging, so I am naturally intrigued by this.
For brand it could make a convincing Ford or it'd work for one of those really small local manufacturers like Troller. Which is, er, Ford now.
This is just after the removable bumpers are off. I don't like the Soviet Bulldog face, and would tweak the rear cap, but on the whole it is excellent.
Soviet Bulldog! Brilliant.
It strikes me as a UAZ interpretation of the Jeep JJ. http://www.allpar.com/model/jeep/jj.html
Not bad. Reminds me a bit of the early (to Europe) Ssangyong Korando:
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Thank you for avoiding the trend for gunslit windows (Hummer H2/H3, Toyota FJ Cruiser) and going for a nice, large glasshouse on it. Few things are more worthless in the dirt than an off-road vehicle that you can't actually see out of.
Give it a solid axle on coils at the front, make the rear portion of the top removable, and I'd be interested. Oh, and a diesel.
There was one thing I forgot to mention in my earlier comment: leave room in the design for modification.
This is something of a problem with the current generation of Jeeps (notably the new KL Cherokee): their designs are lending themselves less and less to owners being able to modify and adapt them for their needs in the areas of suspension and driveline. That's not to say that it's impossible to do, but rather that it's cost-prohibitive; see this link for an example.
In my time I've owned three XJ Cherokees. One was fairly substantially modified, one mildly so, and one was bone-stock. None of the modifications were done for looks, and they all had the underbody scrapes to prove that they were used for their intended purposes. But even a 4WD vehicle that is capable out of the box isn't necessarily suitable for the situations that it may intend to be used in, and being able to adapt and improve the vehicle to fit those needs is a large part of what gains it a loyal enthusiast following.
I foresee it being amphibious. With a drop-down jet-drive unit run off a PTO.
I also foresee these being made in Germany, powered by a very prosaic engine sourced from Britain and the subsequent relaunch of a famous brand.
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