The 10 Best Cars For The Perfect Road Trip

Road trips are an undeniable right of passage in America. They're right up there with sneaking out of your bedroom window as a kid. Of course, to do a road trip right, you've gotta have the perfect set of wheels. All budgeting aside, you'd be hard pressed to find a better ride than the 10 listed right here. 

It's the classic second-generation shape that many still regard as the most beautiful ever made. Combine that with a beastly 427 cid V8 under the hood, and who cares how much gas it's gonna guzzle. The theatrics of cruising down the highway in something like this are unparalleled.

In its day, this was quite possibly the greatest road trip car on Earth. The rolling embodiment of grand touring, the Daytona has only gotten better with age. Just try to name a better car to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway. Take your time.

What? A modern car!? Oh yes, for the simple reason that this is a car that won't beat you up and wear you out before you get to your destination. Plus, it's still faster than anything you're likely to come across on the highway and it can handle just about any weather you throw at it, from heavy snow, to perfectly beautiful 72 degree days that beg you to put the top down.

The 1950s version of the boring family station wagon is really one hell of a design exercise. Rolling down the road in this is absolutely nothing like a Griswold vacation.

You can't go wrong with a modern version of that hot rod station wagon your dad always wanted. Thanks to a Corvette-derived V8 with over 500 hp under the hood, if a Christie Brinkley lookalike happens to pull up next to you in a vintage Ferrari 308 GTS...you’ll absolutely blow her doors off. 

Have you ever found yourself driving down a seemingly abandoned highway in the middle of nowhere and thought, “What would happen if I just...turned, right now?” Go ahead, make an argument as to why the Defender wouldn’t be exceptionally badass when it comes to living out adolescent driving fantasies.

Before you start laughing this off as a strange choice, think about what it can do: the beauty of this one on a road trip is that it encompasses just about everything. Damn fast? Yep. Comfy? Check. Decent off road? You bet. And extra points because it can pull your camper or boat behind it.

When you’re cruising at 70 mph through middle America, and you look down and see that horse emblem running free as the scenery blurs past, there’s an intangible awesomeness that fills your being. It’s something everyone needs to experience at least once in their lifetime.

Will it break down a half dozen times or more on a trip across the U.S.? Yeah, probably, but the beauty of the old VW Bus is that it’s so damn easy to fix it’s never really broken. Besides, whenever you're on the side of the road...you're at your hotel already.

What is the F-Type, really? It's the spirit of the 1960s wrapped up in a tribute to its XKE ancestry, disguised as a relatively inexpensive grand tourer. Sure, it’s blisteringly fast, but it’s also a brutal and loud car that’s every bit as much about the visceral driving experience as it is the speed. If you can afford the car, you can afford the gas it'll take to blast through America's best back roads...and you absolutely should.

Aaron Miller is the Rides editor for Supercompressor, and can be found on Twitter. He once drove across Texas in the middle of summer in a Mustang convertible with the top down. His forehead smelled like a steakhouse.

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