In this paper, we present diversity coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (DC-OFDM), an approach to maximize the probability of successful reception and increase the reliability of OFDM-based systems through diversity coding. We focus on the application of DC-OFDM to vehicular networks based on IEEE 802.11p technology and analyze the performance improvement using this new technology. It is shown that DC-OFDM significantly improves the performance of vehicular ad hoc networks in terms of throughput and the expected number of correctly received symbols.