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Detroit, 5:17 AM
Sun Nov 29
8 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/08/09
Gotta love a 2-door car with not only the requisite A- and B-pillars, but also C-, D-, E-, and possibly F- is you want to get picky.
Always like the tail light treatment on the later ones, too. Everything was angular, but not in a CTS-sorta way. #1979
11/08/09
They called it 200-SX so we Americans would think of sex...
Had they kept it Silvia, we'd have pictured Sylvia Miles from "Midnight Cowboy"... #1979
11/08/09
Nissans and Toyotas of the 1970s were like shrunken American cars with an extra serving of whiz bang. The 200-SX is a good example, because it looks a whole lot like a 1968-72 mid-sized GM coupe but with exaggerated features such as an exceptionally sharp fender crease, extra-large stretch pants taillights, and a swept-back C-pillar with requisite "head wound" plastic vent.
Sure, the 200-SX was awkward and overstyled, but it helped prove that small cars could be as baroque as big ones -- and that the Japanese could dish out cheesiness even better than the Americans. #1979
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11/07/09
But it's Caterpillar yellow, and gone back to live in the wilds of Maine. A fair trade all around. #internationalharvester
11/07/09
You say "Scout II", I say "Scout II"... #internationalharvester
11/07/09
11/07/09
Well done!
11/07/09
11/07/09
You guys just WOULD choose the Scout for DOTS on the very day I'm supposed to R&R the T-90 threespeed in my '63!
I know a few things about Scouts;
*Shortest development time ever! Concieved in 1959, IH had them in the showrooms in time for the '61 model year. Without computers to help, no CAD/CAM, just pushing paper. Marketing 'focus group'? Please.
*Very high build quality. All fasteners were fine thread, and the nuts were all tack welded to the sheet metal, for the most part, they're all still there 45 years later. (I like the ones holding my bumpers on that have the IH logo embossed on the top, you just don't see that anymore!)
*Too high build quality! Scouts cost a fair penny more than their Bronco / Blazer / CJ cousins. To this day you see big three derived vehicles on CL with "Scout II (Dana 44)" axles listed as upgrades.
*IH would never make two parts when one could do double duty. Hence the 152 and 196 4-cyl. engines share a lot of parts with the 304 and 392 V-8s. And I can take the steering gear out of that RHD (yellow) Postie and put it in the LHD one behind it (and still get a lot of "crowdsourced" parts over the counter at NAPA.)
*Simplest vehicle to work on. Designed to be maintained by cornhuskers, hoosiers and oakies far out on the property with a crescent wrench.
*Today, the 2WD versions (which they eventually stopped making altogether) can be picked up cheap, have not been off-roaded to death, and can be made 4WD by a drunk monkey with a left handed screwdriver for elephant's pay.
11/07/09
I've never driven one, but I would guess that the small size and short wheelbase would have made it one hell of a trail truck.
Ah, those were the days when "SUV" meant "truck," not leather-upholstered rolling living room. #internationalharvester
11/07/09
By the mid-70s IH's looked really old hat compared to almost all the competition. Sales declined because the public increasingly wanted trucks to be more like cars.
In the early-70s IH should have instead abandoned the big truck market and concentrated on making a complete and fully modern line of compact trucks, wagons and Scouts. That would have allowed them to avoid directly competing against the Big Three and weather the two oil crises much more easily.
Alas, such a gambit would have required thinking outside the box. After all, bigger was considered better. Indeed, when it comes to trucks that's even more the case today. #internationalharvester
11/07/09
The Scout had been substantially redesigned and enlarged in 1971, and the pickups, Travelall, and Scouts sold very well through 1973. However, pickups and Travelalls were never all that profitable, and sales declined after the fuel crisis of '73. There was also the problem that in order to buy a recreation-oriented pickup, people had to go to a heavy truck dealer instead of a "friendlier" auto dealer. Under pressure to cut costs, IHC dropped the light trucks after 1975. Pickups were made in Mexico for the local market for a few more years. Interestingly, IHC looked into badge-engineering Dodge pickups with the IHC name. Despite the loss of the pickups, IHC did very well until late '70s. The big trucks were selling like crazy. The fact that Scouts were still based on the 1971 redesign was not seen as a problem - after all, Jeeps Wagoneers, Cherokees, and pickups were lightly-facelifted 1963 designs. New Scout prototypes were under development for introduction in the early '80s. However, in 1979, IHC ran into a perfect storm of severe labor troubles, poor management, and collapsing sales after Fuel Crisis II. By 1980, the threat of bankruptcy forced massive cost-cutting and the existing and proposed Scout programs were cut. The reorganized Navistar after 1985 concentrated on big trucks and has never looked back. #internationalharvester
11/07/09
IH hedged its bets by continuing to offer full-size light trucks while introducing the compact Scout. That strategy worked okay during the 1960s, but by the 1970s IH no longer had the economies of scale to keep two completely different light-truck platforms competitive against a Big Three that was redesigning its offerings more frequently and making them more car-like.
As you point out, eventually IH did discontinue its full-size light trucks and added variants to the Scout platform. They didn’t sell very well. The flat windshield and ultra-stark interior design may have worked okay on the Scout, which was a hard-core off roader. But the Scout-based Travelall was terribly crude compared to even the Jeep Wagoneer, which by the late-70s was ancient even by truck standards.
Yes, IH was at a pronounced disadvantage to AMC-owned Jeep when it came to its commercial truck-oriented dealer network. That’s why IH was under much greater pressure than Jeep to offer more modern products. If in the early-70s IH had focused its limited dollars on a fully modern, Scout-based line up, it could have given Jeep a real run for its money instead of fading quietly into obscurity. #internationalharvester