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Let’s get one thing straight: the Amarok, Hilux, Navara and anything else sporting a body-on-frame chassis is not a ute. The big sell, at least in the Antipodes, is that these girders with boxes on top are the new breed of utes.

But they’re not utes; ute is short for ‘coupe utility’, i.e. a coupe with a utilitarian bit out the back. Like the old Holden and Ford Australia products. These are pickup trucks; ladder-framed monstrosities of ponderous gait and perplexing popularity. The original idea of the original ute – for play on Sunday and work on Monday – might still exist for cashed-up tradesmen, but they’re now being touted as family cars by week and indispensable additions to the camping / fishing / windsurfing… well, lifestyle.

But let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that you reside within the tiny fraction of people who actually put kayaks or dirtbikes or scuba diving kit into the tub out the back and set off to the nearest national park for sun-kissed vibes and good times. What are you to do without the pickup truck?

As we’re about as active as a Google+ page, we turned to an expert – the sort who considers mountain biking a holiday, competes in motorbike enduros and is generally the Tigger to our Eeyore. He’s the peak ‘active lifestyle’ kind of dude. And still has all his hair. We definitely do not despise this person.

Oh, and he drives a van. A Hyundai van, in fact, called the iLoad, which is basically a stripped-out i800 with a bench seat up front and 4,426 litres of space out the back. Now that’s probably harder to find in Blighty than the sunburned country in which he resides, but it’s not like we’re not tripping over Transits here.

And now behold the genius of the van. You can lock your expensive gear away in a van, out of the elements and away from both the light-fingered and heavy-handed. To do the same in a pickup (or indeed a ute), you need a hard tonneau cover or canopy, which then limits your space to what you could manage to fit in a decent estate or SUV. A van will take two dirt bikes side by side, plus all the gear you could possibly need for a weekend spent turbocharging dust up your nose. A pickup will give you the choice: buy and tow a box trailer, or leave your precious at the mercy of the elements and the morality of passers-by.

It doesn’t have the cachet; it won’t have ads voiced by a man whose vocal register ranges from a low E through an overdriving Vox AC30 and the sound of actual earthquakes. What a van will have is space, security and the satisfaction of not being duped into paying more for something far worse.

• Instead of a Land Cruiser: E-Class All Terrain

  Much like the Velar comes with its own… let’s call it lifestyle baggage, the Land Cruiser comes with its fair share, too. In our fair land, it’s of mud-covered farmers and the hyper-minted urbanites that buy properties among them and play at being what their neighbours do for a living.

  And that’s what the Land Cruiser is: an essential tool to the sons of the soil and those who insist on inhabiting the broadly uninhabitable. In Britain, on the other hand, with its manicured hedgerows, pony clubs and mock Tudor, a Land Cruiser is no more than a lifestyle vehicle. Britain has been covered in paved roads since it was called Britannia, so buying a vehicle that can summit your average Himalaya errs a touch on the side of overkill. What’s worse, the Land Cruiser’s ride height, Brunellian bridge construction and solid axles – qualities that make it a literal lifesaver off-road – deal with B-roads and country lanes about as well as a motorised grand piano.

  So Land Cruiser buyers are accepting daily flaws in order to play at being an off-road toughie. If you’re just going to play at being outdoorsy, but need something with space, solidity and the ability to get across a field that looks like Glastonbury after the festival is over, why not get something that doesn’t compromise reality for fantasy? The E-Class All-Terrain will hop up and over the kind of thing any non-farmer is likely to throw at it, has enough off-road cues to satisfy whatever particular part of your psyche insists that such a vehicle is necessary in your life and, helpfully, is also a comfy wagon that excels on the road – where you actually spend your time.

• Instead of a Fiat 500X: a Ford Bronco

  OK, so it’s probably not the most defensible logic to say that you shouldn’t buy a particular car with ‘lifestyle vehicle’ trappings, just to recommend another car that, sure as night follows day and hangovers follow gin, is going to be marketed as a lifestyle vehicle.

  But the 500X, regardless of the metric you judge it by, is one of the worst offenders in the modern car market. It fails at anything approaching lifestyle, given its tiny storage space, rear leg room that amputees would call ‘a bit tight’ and the complete inability to tow anything more than its own bulbous body. And even though it’s the purportedly tougher, off-road-ready Fiat (being based on the Jeep Renegade), it’s about as trail-ready as a pair of stilettos. But of course it is – it was never meant to go off-road; merely to look like you’re the sort that does go off-road.

  Now that we’ve established that we’re not exactly fans of the 500X, let’s turn our attention to the new Ford Bronco. Like the 500X, it leans heavily on the name, styling and ethos of a car from the black and white days, but unlike the X, it actually delivers. That’s because the Bronco isn’t the spin-off of the reboot of the original. It’s not the same simple piece of machinery it started as, but where it can go and what it can do are the same as the slab-sided original. It’s retro done right, off-road done right and, hell, lifestyle done right.

• Instead of a T-Roc cabriolet: a Flyin’ Miata

  Clearly, if you’re looking at a T-Roc cabriolet, you have a sense of humour. Whether your sense of sight is as sharp is bound to be up for discussion, but let’s leave matters of taste to the kind of people who think they know better than you about what you should like.

  So, if you have a sense of humour about the car you drive, and are in the market for a lifestyle vehicle (we’re reaching the narrowest part of the Venn diagram now, folks), something safe, sedate and straightforward really isn’t going to slice the Dijon, is it?

  Therefore, let us humbly suggest one of the most hilarious cars you can buy in these exceptionally unfunny times: the Flyin’ Miata. Of course, the standard Miata (also known as the MX-5 in non-American parts of the world) is a tremendously fun car. But fun doesn’t necessarily mean funny, and they’re often mutually exclusive. Riding a jetski, for instance, is fun. But for actual hilarity to occur, chances are a spectacular dismount from said jetski and subsequent impromptu enema have to as well.

  Luckily for you and the staff at your local hospital, the Flyin’ Miata a) poses a much lower risk of unwanted water ingress, and b) manages to be both fun and funny at the same time. The secret is adding power until logic departs and absurdity begins, but never giving into the seriousness of aerodynamic grip. Or any grip, come to think of it. That way, you’re free to cackle like a loon at the staggering shove, slingshot acceleration and tiny window of grip. Just a small nota bene, by the way: cops tend not to find any of this as funny as you do.

• Instead of a Ford Focus Active: a Subaru Outback

  Remember that part where we kept recommending ruggedised versions of regular estate cars as preferred alternatives to lifestyle vehicles? And… um, remember the Ford Focus Active?

  We had a good long think about why exactly the Focus Active feels so… well, forced, when we laud the exact same idea coming from German manufacturers. Is it because the whole premise of plastic cladding and skid plates on an estate feels like a sop to crossover buyers, and only the brilliant execution of the Allroad and All-Terrain save them from the fate of the Focus? Is it because the regular Focus is such an honest, unpretentious thing, a quiet achiever in a sea of big-promise-little-proof meretriciousness? And why, exactly, did we come up with a question that involved both a multi-hyphenated adjective and a word that’d stump a spelling bee champion?

  Frankly, the answer to all of these questions seems to be a resounding ‘how the hell should we know?’, but we do know this: Breaking Bad was just not as good as everyone thought it was. Also, the Focus Active works as a car, yes, but not as a car that passes the ‘lifestyle vehicle’ sniff test.

  So what does that leave you with? Well, how about a car that’s done the plastic cladding and skid plate thing for so long that it’s hard to imagine a time without it? A car that is every bit as honest and unpretentious as the regular Focus, a car that’s just as much of a quiet achiever but can send a bevy of SUVs home with their tails between their legs when the going gets tough? It’s the Outback, of course, the secret weapon of the crossover-averse and SUV-intolerant, a car that manages to fit into your lifestyle, not force you to live up to its lifestyle. And what more could you ask from a family car than that?

  • Instead of an Audi Q3: a hearse

    Seems a bit odd to throw a humdrum small SUV in this list, right? Wrong. Audi spruiks the Q3 as “the perfect lifestyle vehicle for those wanting to enjoy the city and the great beyond in equal measures”.

    And if your lifestyle is one where you enjoy the city and “the great beyond” in equal measure, or indeed equal measures, there can only be one vehicle that satisfies your love of inner-city and the aftermath of death.

    Yep, as much as Audi’s hapless copywriter might have meant ‘enjoy the city and beyond’, they invoked the exact idiom that refers to where we might end up after we die. So, what better way to get acquainted with the only thing that’s guaranteed to happen after you die – a funeral?

    Handily, a hearse makes just as good a fit for life as it does for death. Its capacious back makes moving apartments less of a chore, picking up a few things from a local market a breeze, and finding free parking a cinch. Just pull up out the front of your local house of worship and get out looking solemn.

    Really, a hearse will fit anything that life throws your way – including death. And what other car could claim that?

  • Instead of a Mercedes GLC Coupe: a BMW X4. Just kidding

    We’re not mad, Mercedes, just disappointed. We were so proud of you for the 190E Cosworth and the SL Pagoda. You did such great work with the C111 and we were pleased as punch when you got together with AMG; we always knew you two were right for each other.

    So why did you go and throw it all away on the GLC Coupe? Oh, because BMW was doing it? If BMW jumped off a cliff, would you do it too? Is this just a phase or do we need to call someone?

    Look, you already build a car that’s as useful to your average family as an igloo in Arizona, and it’s called the G-Wagen. Yeah, we know that’s not what you want it to be called anymore, but that’s the name we know and that’s the name we’re sticking with. The G-Wagen is as ridiculous and overwrought as anything on the road today, but it keeps getting a pass because it earned every bulge and flare and emasculating edifice. Unlike the GLC, its off-road credentials don’t stop at a gravel driveway. And it’s impossible to pretend like you’re a mega-rich Novye Russkie in a GLC, even if it’s the 63.

    Like we said, Mercedes, we’re not mad. We just wanted to make sure you knew that calling an SUV a coupe doesn’t make it so. But more importantly, you don’t need gimmicks for anyone to love you. Just be yourself and you’ll be fine.

    • Instead of a Citroen H van: a Jeep Forward Control

      Apparently, it’s impossible to serve coffee in East London without the acquisition of at least one Citroen H van. Whether it’s used as its designers intended, or just as set dressing, it’s as vital to proper macchiato production as a loose-knit beanie and holier-than-thou attitude.

      But what if you could step outside the paradigm and forge your own way? What if you could pick up one of the most original vehicles ever, that also happened to be a pick-up?

      Now, if you’re the sort to remember information you’ve just read, you’ll remember that we had a pretty serious dig at pick-ups a couple of thousand words ago. But the fact is that ladder-framed vehicles have a place and a purpose. It’s not what they’re shilling on the airwaves. It’s as a humble truck. Y’know, truck? The bit that’s meant to follow ‘pick-up’, but we all got too lazy to say the whole lot?

      And a truck – that is, a truck that’s worth its salt – isn’t made for frippery. It’s purely for function. And so it goes with the Jeep Forward Control, or FC. It’s named for its driving position, perhaps the most functional nomenclature known to man. It uses a forward-control driving position to ensure the maximum amount of space for its prospective payload. As for payload, the FC is designed to be able to carry one kilogram for every kilogram it weighs. Or pound, or stone, or however it is you measure mass times gravity in your neck of the woods. And you can carry six-foot-long loads with the tailgate up.

      The Jeep FC is as practical, simple and robust as a hammer, and offers distinctive – and distinct – set dressing for your cafe in a sea of grey-painted H vans. Just don’t buy into the aesthetic too hard and start exclusively selling black coffee strong enough to dissolve a coin and bitter enough to call you cheap afterwards.

      Image: Mecum

      Source topgear.com