QOTD: What Would Be Your Papal Ride?

by Tim Healey

Published: March 10th, 2026

The Chicago Pope is getting a special Ford Explorer, built with pride on the South Side.

If you were in charge of the world's Catholics, what would you choose as your customized ride?

Remember, this unique Explorer is meant to be used onsite at the Vatican, but it won't be the Popemobile.

Please keep your answers relatively clean -- we all know where the Catholic Church is vulnerable to criticism, and this is a family Web site.

With that in mind, sound off below.

[Image: Ford]

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Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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2 of 29 comments

MRF 95 T-Bird on Mar 12, 2026

Pope Francis was quite fine with a Fiat 500L. Its people mover design allowed enough room for a few deciples or priests with their luggage. The 1.4L Multiair offered more than adequate acceleration to evade evildoers.

1 Reply
Namesakeone on Mar 16, 2026

It's already been decided that the Pope, like Jesus, should be in a Honda: "When the day of the Pentecost came, the disciples were all with one Accord in one place." (Acts 2:1)

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