In My Garage

It’s 11:00pm on a Saturday, and you’re being overwhelmed by a creeping hunger. A call to your favorite pizza joint brings the dreaded, “about 45 minutes”. Time slows, hunger pangs tear you apart. Just as you think hope is gone, you hear the familiar rumble of a neglected engine, the squeal of barren brakes against warped rotors.

Your pierced and tattooed, trucker hat-clad savior has arrived, and you will not die this day. Thank goodness your hero of the late night was driving one of these, the Top 5 Pizza Delivery Cars…

5. The Geo Metro: No way do we leave the Metro off our list. 1-litre of fury unleashes a massive 55 hp to a very basic 5-speed (unless your pie man has saved his tips for the LSi). Low cost of ownership (51 mpg highway) and looks only a mother could love make this a perfect choice for a pizza delivery professional. And cheap… right now Consumer Guide Automotive lists the estimated price of a 1990-1994 Metro at $0-$1100! You can’t beat zero, though it must be frustrating for everyone trading in their Metros on our number 4 vehicle.

4. The Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera: No car disappears into its surroundings like a Cutlass. Every time the police issue a lookout for a “dark-colored, mid-sized sedan”, Cutlass owners everywhere get nervous. This is the quintessential grandma car with purpose. Plenty of room to carry multiple pies to the frat party, and cushy enough to keep our delivery professional on the road all night without fear of road butt. Reliability isn’t exactly a bragging point, as most develop some pretty serious transmission issues. But they do get good gas mileage and there are plenty of them around, so pizza guys can always junk one and then find its doppleganger on the local used lot.

5: So very, undeniably Metro

4: Put out an APB, it's the Cutlass

3. Plymouth Sundance / Dodge Shadow: A part of the famous K-car platform from Chrysler, these cars shared a family tree with the legendary(?) Reliant, Caravan, and Daytona. Base engine is a 2.2-litre 4-cylinder generating a whopping 93 horsepower. If your pizza man is daring, he might even have the turbocharged version under the hood! Imagine rocketing down the freeway to an emergency pie drop in a 19 year old turbocharged Plymouth… a rush of motoring excitement, to be sure. Nevermind that one of the documented issues with the car is an engine mount that “tends to break”. We feel they’ve got potential to put the pep back in pepperoni, because everyone looks cooler driving a Sundance (and you can quote us on that)!

2. Volkswagen Jetta: For pizza technicians aged 16-22, the Jetta is a given. They are infinitely “tunable” with mismatched panels, unpainted body kits, and stick-on doo-dads from Pep Boys. Reliability is a major issue with the Jetta, so trust that your delivery professional has also gained skills as a mechanic (and who doesn’t like greasy fingerprints on the pizza box?). Tired of delivery cars’ headlights piercing your living room window as they pull into the driveway? No worries with the Jetta. Thanks to inferior plastic headlamp covers, the light will be a soft and foggy glow. Great gas mileage, lots of interior room, and all the potential tuning excellence put the Jetta squarely at number 2 on our list.

3: A festival of awesome, the Sundance

2: The Jetta, tuned for delivery

1. Toyota Corolla: Four economical doors, ultra-low cost of ownership, not one aesthetically-enriching feature, and zero temptation to modify or upgrade anything… all this makes the Corolla a perfectly bland and boring delivery vessel for pie professionals across the globe. The Corolla does for dough delivery what Esperanto could only hope to do for language. Driving a Corolla will add years to your life (due to an utter lack of excitement), and it will also get you where you need to go in relative comfort in relative safety. Cheese crusaders cajole at our number 1 pick, the Toyota Corolla.

1: The Corolla. Blah.

Got your own idea of what makes the ultimate pie delivery wagon? Worked in “the industry”? Let’s hear your stories! Join the conversation below…