I stepped outside my front door this morning and drank in the chill air. I definitely could have used a jacket, but I wasn’t going to get one. I noticed a little pigment in the leaves. A drum line practiced somewhere in the distance, thundering out a cadence. Summer hibernation was over.

See, I don’t do well with heat during a normal summer. Get me outdoors 2-3 times a day for a stupid hot summer like this year’s, and I can barely function. I end up retreating a bit, wishing I could lock myself in a cool cave somewhere and sleep through the whole thing. So when I left the house this morning, jumping into the cold, I started to wake up a bit. It put me in the mind of the weeks to come, when every tree will catch fire and we start warming the cider.

And then I wondered, given the proper resources, what’s the best thing to drive in the fall? Hit the jump to see my picks.

7. ATV

You can drive anything with windows on a great fall foliage tour. Last year some friends and I woke up freakishly early and took my WRX wagon out to see the sun cresting the burning trees. But not every great view can be found along the road. Sometimes you have to hunt down the hidden trails, to dive into the orange forests and see them from the inside.

6. Foden Steam Cider Truck

Apple cider is liquid fall. And it’s your best bet for warming up during the hayride, unless you want to hand your keys over to a DD. Pull up to the fall bonfire in a Foden steam truck and you’ll be a hero. And it’s fast, too. See it here overtaking a race car.

5. Leaf Blower Supercharged Race Ranger

Strapping a gas-powered leaf blower to your intake is the cheapest way to supercharge your awesome desert race truck. You knew this, of course, because that’s exactly what you did/want to do. As an added bonus, you can use your new supercharger to clean up yur driveway.

4. Classic Locomotive

If the ATV color tour seems a bit demanding and you’d rather just stand around and drink your truck-tapped cider while the stunning autumn scrolls by, find a railroad foliage tour. Get to the open car for the best experience. It won’t be running full speed, so you won’t get your nose frostbitten, and as long as you can avoid breathing the diesel fumes, you’ll have a capitol time.

3. Sean’s Farm Truck

You know how you planned this nice hay ride and bought all those bales, only to have a bunch of punk kids tear them up and throw them at each other? A good solution might be a mini hay ride in the back of Sean’s beat-up old farm truck. The one that happens to have a 502 and runs 12s. That might shut the kids up, though you’ll have to invent the world’s first hay bale racing harness. I see no setbacks here.

2. Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder

If you’re willing to bundle up, there’s nothing like a top-down fall cruise. Your attractive passenger can try to catch the leaves as they fall from the boughs arching over your favorite river road, and you can take in the colors in a fast, blinding blur. Sure, you could do this in any convertible supercar, but the Gallardo (and its R8 twin) is all-wheel-drive, so wet patches of leaves won’t give you as much trouble as they might in, say, a Caterham Seven.

And the #1 vehicle for fall cruising?  See what we came up with over at Streetside!  What are your favorite fall cruisers?

Andy Sheehan is a staff writer for StreetsideAuto.com and remembers where he was 11 years ago.