Yes, it’s our candidate for the worst vehicle we’ve ever driven, but it also shows just how far the Chinese auto industry has come
Meet the Freedom Wildfire, a three-wheeler microvan that looks a bit like the result of a Toyota Previa having an illicit affair with a Reliant Robin. That’s “Freedom,” as in something that has definite consequences; and “Wildfire,” as in a situation that often goes out of control and threatens public safety. It is head, shoulders, and shoddily-constructed torso ahead of anything else on the road in terms of the worst vehicle I have ever driven. And yet I can’t stop laughing.
“The worst automotive decision I’ve made?” Owner Mike Baur ponders the question for a moment or two. “I think this might be the worst decision I’ve made, period.”
But he says so with a grin, and an accompanying laugh comes from his friend Owen Bubb. The pair frequently engages in slightly dodgy automotive adventures, and the shed in which the Wildfire sometimes lives is full of a smattering of oddball machines, including a wood-framed Morgan; a Citroen 2CV; a Mercedes R107 SL (with a manual transmission, fairly rare); and an ex-Netherlands-police Moto Guzzi motorcycle. Most recently, they hopped in a Volkswagen-based MG TF kit car and set off to drive for Seattle, the car slightly exploding mid-route.
By some kind of twist in the internet’s system of tubes, Baur found this three-wheeled egg on a local Facebook marketplace listing — but it turned out that it was actually located in Montana. This was a very different kettle of blobfish, but Baur bought it anyway, and both he and Bubb went to Montana to drive it back. Through the Rockies. In winter. Yes, it rolled over once.
First though, a discussion of what the Freedom Wildfire actually is, because it is both a fun little quirky niche interest thing; and also something that should abjectly terrify any western automaker. Founded in Steubenville, Ohio, Freedom was an early attempt to import Chinese-made mobility solutions, and market them in the U.S. This went so poorly that the EPA yanked its ability to sell vehicles. Just because certification documents were missing or falsified! Thanks a lot, big government.
But for that brief shining moment, you could order yourself up three wheels of glory for the heady price of just under eight thousand American yankee-bucks. For your money, you got—well, not very much, actually. Registered as a motorcycle (which it basically is) the Wildfire offers more protection from the elements than two-wheeled transportation, but not a lot of what you would call “luxuries.”
This is how basic things are: the air vents are not real. Fake vents! One of them has a speaker for a cassette deck in it, the sliders don’t do anything, and the heater is actually a separate unit mounted in the passenger footwell. “I think it works,” Baur cautiously offers.
You do get air-conditioning, of a sort, via a roof-mounted vent, the forward edge of which flips open to create a ram air effect like the hood scoop of a Subaru WRX, directing cooling air and any passing insects at the driver’s head. The windows roll up and down; in terms of safety equipment, seat-belts are present and functional; and happily there is at least excellent visibility, because this thing offers the crash protection of a Hummel figurine.
As Baur reverses the Wildfire briskly to position for photos, Bubb yells, “Don’t roll it!” We all remember the Top Gear episode where Jeremy Clarkson repeatedly put a Reliant Robin on its flank, though that was a bit staged and the Wildfire is not that tippy. However, it will roll if provoked, and the fact it has just a single brake up front for the 12-inch wheel is not ideal.
Baur lost a side mirror to the Wildfire turtling on Rockies-crossing attempt number one, but the second excursion was marred only by a few tire issues. At a solid 80-km/h cruise – more like 50 on the uphill sections – the Wildfire soldiered along for 1,200 km without complaint, getting surprisingly good fuel mileage along the way—its main feature.
Power, if you can call it that, comes from a 650-cc twin-cylinder engine located beneath the front seat. No, really, just lift up the front seat after undoing two tackle-box-like catches and there it is. The transmission is a four-speed manual, and with a clutch that’s basically just an on-off switch, the correct method of operation is to rev it to the stratosphere, then lurch forward as if rammed from behind by an SUV.
Having said that, the Wildfire is so horrendously terrible that it loops back around to being excellent. It’s an automotive joke, but it is an extremely funny automotive joke, the kind that makes you chuckle just to look at its improbable low-rent-sci-fi-shuttle profile. It is anything but boring.
Now for the terrifying part. As a product of the Jiangsu Sandi Motorcycle company, the Freedom Wildfire is exactly the kind of poorly constructed vehicle that everyone expected of the Chinese car industry in the mid-2000s. A lot of early Japanese cars of the 1950s were pretty wonky, too, but by the 1970s and into the 1980s, that industry had matured. Look at most of the vehicles coming out of modern China, and it’s taken the country’s manufactures barely over a decade to go from this slapdash three-wheeler to EVs lapping at the Nürburgring.
The Wildfire didn’t change the face of motoring, but its descendants likely will. In the meantime, this fun and fragile little tripod looks forward to a life of automotive adventure, convinced of its invincibility, potential victim of a slight crosswind.
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