Forget the Outback. Forget the Crosstrek. Forget every Subaru stereotype that’s been welded to queer culture for the last three decades. Jalopnik asked readers a simple question this Pride Month: What non-Subaru vehicle deserves to lead every Pride parade? The answers were stranger, funnier, and more thoughtful than any corporate rainbow-wrapped fleet vehicle could ever be.
The winner in sheer audacity might be the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. Reader Factoryhack made the case with surgical precision: the symbolism, the seating for six, the sunroof — sorry, “bunroof” — for waving to crowds. It’s a parade float that already exists, and hard to argue with that logic.
But the thread’s real charm was in the deep cuts. A hot pink Geo Tracker with period-correct tape-on graphics. A Candy Raspberry Geo Metro convertible, five-speed preferred. A white VW Cabriolet with cow-print seat covers. These aren’t aspirational vehicles. They’re joyful, weird, unapologetic machines that refused to conform to automotive norms even when they rolled off the assembly line.
The blue NA Miata nomination surprised no one. “Miata Is Always The Answer” is the automotive internet’s oldest catechism, and it applies here as cleanly as anywhere else. A car built purely for the pleasure of driving, compact and convertible and utterly unconcerned with projecting toughness — it fits.
Then there was the provocateur’s choice: a brodozer. Reader Rick C. suggested rolling a lifted, coal-rolling pickup truck down the parade route specifically to hijack the cultural signaling. “Once the social association kicks in,” he wrote, “it’ll be better than an asteroid taking out the dinosaurs.” That’s not a car recommendation. That’s psychological warfare.
The most historically grounded pick was a Checker Marathon taxi in rainbow livery, a nod to the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. Stonewall started Pride. The Checker Marathon was the New York taxi of that era. The connection is direct and unforced.
A pink 1959 Cadillac Coupe DeVille convertible earned points for being, as reader Stillnotatony put it, “outrageous, flamboyant, classic, cool, and a parade all by itself.” That’s five adjectives, and every one of them lands. Few cars in history have occupied physical space with as much shameless confidence as a finned ’59 Caddy.
Former Jalopnik staffer Mercedes Streeter went two-wheeled, recalling riding a 1982 Suzuki GS850G in Chicago’s Pride parade alongside a group of lesbian and trans bikers. The leader rode a Road Glide. Someone else brought a Royal Enfield. The answer wasn’t a specific bike — it was “a fantastically queer motorcycle,” which is less a vehicle recommendation and more a state of being.
One reader nominated a McLaren F1 because the driver sits in the center, not off to one side. A bisexuality joke delivered through supercar packaging. Another simply wrote “a Chrysler as big as a whale,” a B-52s reference that needed no further explanation.
Reader OuttaHere didn’t theorize at all. They’ve actually been asked to drive their red Bentley Continental GTC in this year’s parade. A drag queen will reportedly be perched on the tonneau cover. That’s not a hypothetical. That’s a calendar event.
What connects these picks isn’t horsepower or price or brand cachet. It’s that every single one of them refuses to be boring. The Geo Tracker didn’t care about your masculinity complex. The Wienermobile didn’t care about your sense of propriety. The ’59 Cadillac didn’t care about subtlety.
The cars people associate with Pride aren’t the ones draped in corporate rainbow wraps every June. They’re the odd, the bold, the gloriously impractical. They’re the vehicles that already lived outside the lines before anyone asked them to.
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