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For this Halloween, we ask our writers to pick their spookiest, most festive ride for a local Trunk or Treat.
Halloween Haulers
Some holidays are easier for parents than others. Valentine’s Day only requires picking up a little box of those tasteless, pastel-colored hearts stamped with saccharine romantic entreaties. St. Patrick’s Day just calls for showing up to a parade where other people throw candy at your kids. Thanksgiving isn’t too hard for parents, so long there’s plenty of pie and you manage to keep Uncle Phil away from the schnapps.
Halloween, however, is more involved for parents than most holidays. First, there’s the costumes, then there’s the carefully curated candy to hand out at your own house, and finally there’s facilitating your kids’ trick or treating, i.e., schlepping the kids to the “rich” neighborhood where they handout whole candy bars.
The perfect, and automotive centric, solution to your Halloween hassles is attending a Trunk or Treat on the 31st. In case you’re unfamiliar, a Trunk or Treat is a get together of families, often in a school or church parking lot, where folks festoon the open hatches and trunks of their vehicles with Halloween decorations and pass out candy to trick or treaters making their rounds. It’s one stop, more communal than going door-to-door, and an awesome opportunity for the whole family to do some additional Halloween decorating.
This perfect confluence of the automotive and the All Hallows holiday inspires this month’s Critics’ Choice as we challenge our writers to pick the best vehicle on Carsforsale.com for a Trunk or Treat.
Chris Kaiser
1968 Cadillac Fleetwood Hearse
Shortlist
1995 Suzuki Sidekick
1959 Chevrolet Impala
2019 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter Van
A Trunk or Treat is, by definition, a special occasion and as such I felt the right vehicle would be one that could not only deliver as a canvas for Halloween decorations with a cavernous rear hatch but also be practical or collectable.
Leaning toward capaciousness, I immediately thought of the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter thanks to its large barndoor in back. Those rear doors are atypical compared to more common hatches you’ll find on minivans and SUVs and therefore offers a unique stage for decorating that will stand out from your fellow Trunk or Treaters. Plus, the Sprinter I found has seating for up to 13, good for carpooling and a spookily apropos number for Halloween.
On the opposite end we have the Suzuki Sidekick. Its single swing out barndoor is certainly smaller than the Sprinter’s hatch but no less compelling in the decorative opportunities it affords. The one I found is so perfectly white, petite, and blocky it’s just a sailor’s kerchief and cap away from dressing up as a Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. The Sidekick was neat, but for this Trunk or Treat I wanted something with a bit more character and the most characterful rear end design I could think of was the 1959 Impala. The ’59 Impala features a gigantic rear deck, fins, and, most importantly, a pair of large cat’s eye taillights.
I took things one step further for my eventual pick, a 1968 Cadillac Fleetwood hearse. This Miller Meteor coach-built Fleetwood is perfectly macabre for a Halloween celebration, and it has what would certainly be the most memorable of rear hatches. As a Cadillac, it has a leather trimmed interior with a large bench seat up front and a pair of small opposing seats in back. The sharply styled front end and landau roof call for a matching funeral director black suit as the driver’s suggested costume. And of course, this hearse has more than enough cargo room for the candy you bring to give out and the candy your kids haul back home.
Jesse Batson
2019 Subaru Forester
Shortlist
2016 Honda Odyssey
2023 Kia Sportage
2018 Mercedes-Benz GLC
There were a few different ways to go on this month’s choice. Do you pick a big, old Buick with a gigantic actual trunk? Do you go the pickup truck route with a large truck bed? Or do you pick something in between? I found myself searching for SUVs and even a minivan or two. Those not only have a hatch that can offer overhead cover on a rainy day, but they also have a large cargo area to store a variety of things or, in this case, candy. Plus, the cargo area of a SUV or van provides an area to set up decorations, objects, and chairs, as people often do with a trunk or treat event.
Each of the shortlisted vehicles has its advantages, but my choice ended up being a 59,550-mile, $24,990 2019 Subaru Forester. Well, not just a Forester, but a Forester Sport. It’s got a burnt (or Halloween?) orange trim over the dark gray metallic finish. I know some people weren’t fans of that, but I thought it looked pretty cool, actually. Inside, this 2019 Forester Sport has orange stitching and orange plastic around the vents and the shifter. I like the orange stitching, but the full-on orange in the other areas comes off as kind of cheap looking. I think the interior may need a couple of revisions. Otherwise, it’s a stylish SUV.
Beyond looks, the 2019 Forester Sport performs well. Steering and braking are good. The Forester Sport is just as good at off-roading as it is at in-town maneuvering. Driving this crossover forward is a 182-horsepower 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine and continuously variable transmission (CVT) with a seven-speed manual shift mode and paddle shifters. Some of the 2019 Foresters come with a regular CVT, but not the Sport. The 2019 Forester Sport also gets decent gas mileage. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that a 2019 Subaru Forester Sport achieves 33 miles per gallon (mpg) on the highway and 26 mpg in the city for a combined 29 mpg.
Additionally, the 2019 Forester is equipped with 18-inch black-painted wheels, automatic high-beam headlights, LED fog lights, heated outside mirrors, standard automated emergency braking, adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning with lane-keeping assist. It earned a five-star rating from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It was also chosen as a top safety pick by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Inside? How about heated front seats, Bluetooth, a moonroof, HD radio, and satellite radio.
Getting back to this specific challenge, though, the Subaru Forester has good cargo space. I have family that owns different Subarus, including the Forester, and I’m always impressed at just how wide the area is. There isn’t a bunch of excess plastic or invading side panels. It’s a spacious, simple design. Granted, there is no dual-level cargo floor, but I’d take the wider cargo area over a dual floor any day.
With all seats upright and in place, the 2019 Forester offers up 35.4 cu. ft. of cargo space. If the second-row seats are folded down, then the cargo area opens up to 76.1 cu. ft. of space. That’s plenty of room for an elaborate Halloween setup with the hatch open. Obviously, you could store a variety of other things in there, too. Let’s say you wanted to make a trip to visit family over Halloween. You should be able to fit your suitcases and gear in the cargo area so you can take your trunk or treating on the road.
This Forester is still fairly new at a relatively low cost ($24,990), doesn’t have a lot of miles on it (59,550), and has only one previous owner. With the cargo space, the orange accents, and the driving ability, the 2019 Subaru Forester Sport is a good candidate for any trunk-or-treating event, no matter where it’s located.
Jesse McGraw
1967 Chevrolet Impala
Shortlist
1963 Chevrolet Ice Cream Truck
1971 Chevrolet Nova
1963 Ford Econoline
I decided picking a vehicle for Trunk or Treat should be something with a connection to a popular scary movie or spooky TV show. We’ve covered both topics before, but finding some of those exact cars can be tough. I came across a creepy Chevrolet ice cream truck that looked similar to the vehicle used in Jeepers Creepers, but that thing would be too much of a project to get running for just one month a year. I also found a ‘71 Chevrolet Nova that looked like the one used in Death Proof, although I felt the reference may be too niche for passersby. I even looked into old Ford Econolines to paint like the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo.
I finally landed on this black ‘67 Chevrolet Impala, a close replica of the car used by Sam and Dean Winchester throughout Supernatural. It’s a clean classic car from a spooky TV show that holds a special place in the hearts of fans. This one I found on Carsforsale.com needs a little work to fix up some of the chrome trimming, but it’s otherwise only a few modifications away from being called “Baby”. True fans of the show might point out that the Impala I picked is a two-door while the real Supernatural car is a four-door, but I think Dean would still approve.
The Impala from Supernatural is said to have a 327 CID small-block V8 with a four-barrel carburetor in the show. The actual hero car used for stunt work has a 502 CID big-block V8 engine that was cranked up to over 500 horsepower in real life. This Impala I found for sale has a 396 CID V8 with a four-barrel carb that’s been given some Edelbrock love and then mated to a Turbo 400 automatic transmission. Feels like a perfect fit between the fictional engine and the stunt engine.
In terms of modifications, we’re already almost there. We just have to debadge the exterior, replace the dash and door cards with tan components, reupholster the bench seating with all black vinyl, throw a pentagram on the inside of the trunk lid, and toss a bunch of demon hunting gear next to candy in the trunk. After all that, this thing will have adults excitedly running up with their kids in tow and would definitely be a hit at any Trunk or Treat event. Just don’t ask me to fight off any ghosts or ghouls. I’ll leave that up to the people who pulled up in the ECTO-1.
