Laugh all you want but I used to have one of these and when a buddy and I flipped his truck on an icy I-10, 4 miles into TX from NM with wind chills down to -20F, that bad boy hit all the way into Ammarillo.
When I moved out here to WA in '99, I still had it and after some frustration, convinced the guys at AT&T it was possible to keep that phone as a secondary device on the same number as my new 'flip' phone. Again, the whopping 3 W output saved me again after a mechanical failure where no flip phone would've had the power to hit a tower.
I kind of miss not having that bad boy packed behind the truck seat for that 'just in case' scenario.