I recently poked around on Google Earth while I was bored. I happened to land in Marseilles, a port city on the southern Mediterranean coast of France. The makeup of cars on its streets was distinctly French, but there were a few surprises.
I poked around long enough to make three parts! Here are the first two parts:
An old Land Rover Defender seems a laughably unsuitable vehicle for city commuting, but at least it doesn’t seem fazed by those bollards. I dig the roof rack.
Is this some sort of old Ssangyong? I kind of like the gritty look this cheap imported offroader has going on. But more importantly, what kind of person drives a crappy old 4x4 in such an urban environment?
Also, what is that derpy little hatchback behind it?
This old Toyota Land Cruiser looks a little out of place here.
This chromed-out old Jeep Grand Cherokee also seems like a lot of car to street park in such tiny spots. You can’t argue that the brash American doesn’t have bling, though.
And here we find two different definitions of “offroad.” One is a rather pedestrian Toyota Rav4 “softroader,” which I didn’t know was sold abroad. The other is a front loading dump truck, which must be very hard to see out of when full. Is there a good reason that this isn’t driven the other way round?
And what the heck, let’s conclude with a massive Swedish concrete truck! Understandably, there weren’t many offroaders of any description to be found in a large urban European city, so I threw this one in to round out the collection.