Many car enthusiasts probably feel that we have collected both knowledge and experience over the years, often making it easy for us to come up with an assessment or attitude. But the above question puzzled me – so I need help.
I not only tend to gather together cars but having lots of space out in my countryside house I also collect different reclaimed materials for my garage project (don’t ask). One evening some years ago I went to pick up some windows far, far out the countryside on the island of Zealand (yes, even further out than I live). The seller turned out to be a very civilized woman (yes, even more civilized than myself) and since I myself was happy about my then pretty recent move from the city to the country, not least due to my almost endless space for my car hobby, I happily asked the lady about her motives for selling her city house and moving to the country.
I was pretty baffled when she calmly explained that it was part of her preparations for mayhem. In fact I was speechless. At least until she elaborated that it was, after all, only an economic mayhem, not your more typical nuclear war-only-cockroaches-survives-mayhem. Her version was based on bank crashes, state bankruptcy and general chaos where everyone would be screaming for their money. In her words mayhem enough to make most of society’s infrastructure break down in which case it would be a great advantage to be self-sufficient. And that was what her country house project was about: Becoming self-sufficient in energy, food, water and the like, and her project was coming along well.
Thus, her angle differed somewhat from mine, which was and is mostly about becoming self-sufficient with garage space for a hopefully growing car collection based on still abundant available oil reserves and well-functioning refining processes. But we still understood each other and had a good talk about the really quite interesting and rather daunting subject. For the sake of good order, I just want to mention that she did not quite pinpoint exactly when this mayhem would occur, only that it would be within the next few years. Our meeting here happened around winter 2016 and I failed to whine about the stagnant prices on the Porsche 911 that could be interpreted in the same direction. Interestingly the Porsches have in fact recovered somewhat while her gloomy expectation certainly does not feel as improbable now as it did back then. Anyway she discovered that I was into cars and then the difficult question was raised:
Which car is the best for mayhem?
This is quite simply so very far away from all of my usual ways to rate a car that I simply could not answer. To help me along the way, she told me that she herself had considered gas generators, just as they were used during the war (where they found use precisely because petrol was rationed or rare and quite inaccessible) – but she had no idea where to find one, and could I then help her with that, at least. Again I had to disappoint her, but I did air my suspicion that gas generators might not be quite the solution today either.
Subsequent research has shown that this is probably not entirely wrong: A gas generator converted car runs on unburned gases from burning wood, and this it is a very inefficient process, where 2.5 kilos of wood provides about as much energy as a liter of petrol. Not to speak of it being very dirty energy that required some good cleaning, even on otherwise quite tolerant pre-war engines.
After our meeting I gave quite a lot of thought to the question – and not least its premise: If petrol or diesel becomes either horribly expensive or unsustainable or “just” if our entire payment system collapses – what do you do if you still want to operate your individual transport? I quickly sensed that those of us with a penchant for old cars might have an advantage here – if the old ones are otherwise in good condition, then with their simple technique there must logically also be less things that can break. No power windows, power steering and remote central locking in mayhem, no thanks. And certainly not a big computerized brain wanting for updates that don’t come or completely intolerable to low octane fuel.
My basic idea quickly settled along the lines that it is at least important to save on the petrol it self, so the starting point must be a fairly efficient vehicle. Mad Max (the cover photo) got that completely wrong, in other words.
It will also be an advantage to have a very simple and robustly built vehicle, able to keep running for quite some time, even on a minimum of spare parts. With those parameters, I arrived at a Citroën 2CV: Air-cooled, two-cylinder, light and economical. And wouldn’t even Mayhem appreciate its cheerful approach to being a car?
Maybe not. But if you think about it, it does make sense: The 2CV was originally designed for French farmers and their basic transport needs – which is somewhat reminiscent of the mayhem premise, except for the wine.
Except maybe for the fact that it’s running on gasoline. It is quite difficult to make petrol yourself if you take the self-sufficiency quite literally. A 2CV will probably be able to be converted to a gas generator, but then it would lose more than half of its power and/or economy.
This then led me to the conclusion that a diesel car might be the case? It is much easier to make oils that a diesel can run on, out of the comfort of your the kitchen. Not diesel oil as such, as this like petrol is refined from crude oils from the subsoil – but biodiesel, such as rapeseed oil. Not only can you produce your own oil, you can even buy conversion kits for modern cars so they can drive on the stuff. However, this is hardly the case with modern cars under mayhem if you think it through: I guess there will also be a shortage of turbochargers, EGR valves and the like?
Well, simple and solid must be the way forward, pointing towards a non-turbocharged diesel of solid construction as probably my best bet: A Peugeot 1.9 D from the sixties or seventies (then you can choose your favorite body style, just make sure to find one without rust – and by the way I would personally go for four drum brakes in a 404) or the old Mercedes’ from back then taxis were always Mercedes.
Should you prefer a Mercedes I would suggest a 200D should suffice, since no one really wants to be in a hurry if society has stalled. Both Peugeot and Mercedes diesels have a reputation for being rather indestructible and should be equally solid on home-grown oils. Personally I imagine that it would still (perhaps to an even greater extent than usually being the case) be very satisfactory to drive a Mercedes if the world as we know it has actually broken down and come to a grinding halt.
On a more serious note it could very well be that I have overlooked something in the unusual exploration for the best car for Mayhem: In that case – feel free to correct me, teach me or just come up with alternative ideas for cars suited to this specific need in the comments below.