[via Flickr]

Thanks for the tip, Lionel!

Yes, they were still putting on that 60s-style SimuWood™ plastic siding on Jeeps as late as Reagan's second term; note the plastic "dowels" and decal inserts. Enough time has passed that this stuff is now cool! This truck is also notable for its AMC 360 V8, an engine that Chrysler kept in production all the way until 1991.

I found this truck at one of the now-defunct East Bay Pick Your Part yards, so we can assume that any parts that you see here have now been digested and dumped into a Guangzhou-bound container ship.

Of course, we all know now that you pretty much need AWD to negotiate your typical shopping mall parking lot, so maybe Chrysler made a mistake by killing off the Eagle soon after gobbling up AMC in 1987. Could Chrysler have beat Subaru at its own game, had they only kept developing the Eagle?

Being a city boy, I'm no expert on the subject of vehicles made to slog through mud and/or help game wardens catch poachers (or at least look like they can do those things), and damn if I can come up with a decent ID on this out-of-town visitor. Clearly, it's had the crap modified out of it; the one-piece windshield suggests that it's a proto-Defender Land Rover 90, but it appears to have all manner of Series III pieces as well. Now's your time to shine, Land Rover experts! What do we have here?

Check out the selection of adventurer hats in the back!

I say that's a good reason to admire another one! I found this very nice Willys Jeep Station Wagon parked near Alameda's City Hall. According to this Australian Jeep worship site, the five-bar grille means that this truck is from the 1949-1953 period, so I'm calling it a '51 model.

This somewhat newer example that lives across town appears to be the same color, but is much rougher than today's Jeep. Either this truck has been kept in an argon atmosphere in a lead-lined underground shelter for 50+ years or it's a really painstaking restoration. I'm guessing the latter.

And look what was driving by while I was taking my photos!

This is the sixth Alameda Scout in the series (after this '72, this '72, this '76, and this '77, and this super-rare '80 Diesel Scout). I see a few more Scouts around town that I'll get around to photographing one of these days. Why does this totally paved, completely flat, dense-urban island have so many serious off-road, farm-equipment-grade machines? Weekend fishing trips in the mountains? Preparing for the apocalypse? You tell me!

It appears that this truck, which is painted in jaunty two-tone orange/green, has had some spewing-radiator difficulties recently. The list price on the '72 Scout II Traveltop was $3,340. That's $248 cheaper than the '72 Bronco wagon; the '72 Blazer was $190 cheaper, but you had to pay extra for the removable top.

DOTSBE tipster Kitt has introduced me to the Tilt-Shift Maker website, so I thought I'd try it out with the Scout. I'd do it in Photoshop, but I'm still a fan of the prehistoric 1997-vintage Photoshop 5.0 and it lacks the necessary features.

Back in '72, the Cheyenne option package on Chevy's half-ton pickups got you a nice plush bench seat in La-Z-Boy-grade vinyl, extra trim, sound insulation, gleaming chrome exterior trim, and all manner of snazzy comfort and styling upgrades… which, of course, still resulted in a fairly spartan truck by today's luxo-truck standards. A frame-off-restored short-box Cheyenne with four-wheel-drive, four-on-the-floor manual transmission, and hounds-tooth upholstery? We'll take it! Oh, wait- is the seller really asking $48,500 for this truck? What the heck, maybe it really is that rare and valuable… or maybe we need to visit Booth Number Two for some reality-enhancement assistance here. What do you say?
[Craigslist Kansas City, go here if the ad disappears. Thanks to Tanshanomi for the tip!]

We've got an '85 4WD Toyota pickup with just 25,000 miles on the clock, no rust, and a freshly rebuilt 22R (which must be a record for the fewest number of miles prior to a rebuild on any Toyota R engine in history). We can't manage to slog all the way through the CAPS LOCK-enhanced, red-and-blue-text description (which features such brain-scramblers as "HE HAVES OVER $8,000 WIYH THE MECHANICAL WORK"), but you can tell this truck is pretty damn nice from the photographs. It failed to sell with a $6,000 Buy It Now; in fact, nobody even tried to meet the $1,000 starting bid price. Nice Price? Crack Pipe? You decide!
[eBay Motors, thanks to Parrish for the tip]

I don't know my Jeeps well enough to determine whether this example is a '63 or '64 model. The '65s had "Kaiser-Jeep" badging, so this one is either a first- or second-year Wagoneer. With its Brooks Stevens design, the first-gen Wagoneer is definitely a good-looking truck, and quite rare nowadays.


The '63 International Harvester half-ton Travelall 4x4 sold for $3,011 (and was also a great-looking machine), while the 4x4 Wagoneer 4-door went for $3,332. Farm equipment or military truck heritage? Either way, you're looking at some pretty sturdy iron. And, while we're pricing 1963 vehicles to take you and many passengers to the woods, we can't forget Detroit. The '63 Dodge Power Wagon Town Wagon 4x4 would rumble off the showroom floor for $3,104. GMC could put you behind the wheel of a Suburban Carryall 4x4 for $3,489, while the Chevy version would set you back $3,305. Which would you choose?

1989 wasn't such a great year for Romanian strongman Nicolae Ceauşescu, but, even as the rabble beat down the jeweled doors to his palaces, he could console himself with the inspiring thought that the "Romanian Jeep," the ARO 244, was available for sale throughout the world. Even in the evil, decadent United States, a truck shopper could march right into a seedy office above a taxidermy shop in New Jersey an ARO dealership and obtain the product of the glorious workers of Câmpulung. Sadly, few did so, but don't fret about your ARO-less state; we've managed to find you not just one but three 1999 ARO 244s (go here if the ad disappears). You see, even after the fall of the Ceauşescu regime, the ARO-American dream was kept alive, and these trucks were brought over in order to try to get EPA certification for legal sale in the United States. One is equipped with '97 Mazda MPV running gear and allegedly runs (though it "needs some TLC work from bouncing NY roads"), and the other two seem to be parts trucks. You'll have one good one running fine in no time… at which point you'll discover little-known sections of your state's Vehicle Code, as you attempt to register it. Thanks to Aircooled_Poirot for the tip!

If you're going to buy a commie Jeep, you might as well buy a serious commie Jeep, from the home of the revolution itself: the USSR! Yes, the GAZ-69, which served as the main light off-road vehicle for the Red Army for decades. You've got to figure that anything built for the Red Army is going to be simple and sturdy, like a good pair of Russian winter boots, and that you'll be able to use tallow, mud, or even nothing at all as an engine lubricant in one. We'd all like such a hammer-simple machine to take off-roading, but where could you possibly find a GAZ-69 here in the home of retrograde imperialist capitalist warmongering? Why, Hemmings Motor News, of course, where this 1961 GAZ 69-M may be seen in all its glory and fame. Fame? That's right, the makers of the last Indiana Jones movie used this truck- which was allegedly driven by some famous actress or other in the film- and now it can be yours! The price tag is ridiculously somewhat steep, no doubt because the seller believes the aura of such a glamorous cinematic appearance multiplies the truck's value by a factor of three, but just let him or her sweat out a few more weeks of recession and you'll likely be able to score it for a far more reasonable sum. Supposedly it "RUNS AND DRIVES FANTASTIC" and there are probably other details in the description, but they've been rendered indecipherable by the CAPS LOCK FAIRY, who has sprinkled her headache dust all over the words. We're guessing that it ran and drove well enough for 17 seconds of filming, and that you'll be on the phone to Semyon, grumpy sales rep for a truck-parts house in Vladivostok as soon as you take delivery, calculating how many rubles you'll need to get this thing back to Red Army specs.

You hear a lot about the Toyota Land Cruiser, but don't forget that Nissan also made an off-road truck back in the day! That's right, we mean the Nissan Patrol, and you can get this '69 (go here if the ad disappears) for under a thousand bucks. Well, that's the asking price; reading the statement "i have it parked behind my house in Norwood and sold the house so I need to n move it" and checking out the photos makes us think the real price might be a lot lower. It ran when parked "a few years ago" (probable translation: 1995), and Colorado is pretty dry- probably not much rust. How hard could it be?

Let's look at the question of which vintage 4-wheel-drive to get in a different way: say you're an African warlord and you need to move your stash of gold bars and AK-47s across the border before some up-and-coming regional strongman takes it away from you. What vehicle do you want to use? No, you can't have a Toyota Hilux- that's against the rules of this game. That's right, you'll take an old Land Rover! So when you're scouring the mossy, mildewy wilds of coastal Oregon for a nice off-road machine to take on the kind of camping trip that resembles the Bataan Death March, what's it going to be? You got it- this '1960ish' Land Rover (go here if the ad disappears). Sure, it needs everything replaced a little TLC, and the rust problem is terminal somewhat severe, but it's only $350! In a single sentence, the seller maps out the road in front of the next owner of this fine British machine: "Has motor where it should be but tranny parts are in back seat of vehical & does not run." See, the motor is where it should be! Easy project, for sure!

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For a Toyota to qualify for Project Car Hell, it must be rusty, rare, and packed with impossible-to-find options. We've found all three with this 1989 Toyota 4x4 van (go here if the ad disappears), which has some body rot (in a refreshing display of honesty, the seller sums it up in a single word: "Rusty") and the super-rare-in-North-America 4x4 drivetrain option. There's an assortment of minor (you hope) repairs to do, and it's nearly certain possible that the overheating problem will be tougher to remedy than the seller implies, but it's a Toyota! That means you can't just get it back to factory condition. No, you need to make it into a high-powered, mud-slinging, mountain-climbing beast, just the thing to help you flee the burning cities of the Financiapocalypse in style! For that, you'll be exploring the power-handling ability of the drivetrain's components by bolting on a supercharger (preferably with air intake inside the passenger compartment, for added ventilation), then adding some gun racks and maybe a still. Hey, you'll need to be able to produce "whiskey" from fermented possum innards, once you've reached your compound in the mountains/desert/bombed-out industrial park, because barter will be king in the post-Financiapocalypse world.

Let's say society holds together just well enough to provide for a veneer of civilization, yet without the steady jobs and stuff of the pre-Financiapocalypse world- what then? You need to be ready to make money street racing! You see, the legions of the unemployed will need entertainment, and what's more entertaining than no-guardrails racin' action down Main Street, with paid-off cops refereeing and wheelbarrows of worthless fiat currency changing hands with each match? In order to roam from town to town, fleecing the locals like those guys in the '55 Chevy in Two Lane Blacktop, you'll need a serious sleeper to race… and you can't get much more soporific than a Chrysler minivan. We all know that you can get 12-second quarter-mile times just by going crazy with the boost in a turbocharged Voyager or Caravan, but they're a little hard to find these days. However, we're on the case, and we've found this 1989 Caravan Turbo for you (go here if the ad disappears). The price? A mere 400 bucks! It's an automatic, but you can get a 5-speed in one (preferably the nice Getrag out of a late Shelby Mopar)… but first you need to put it back together. You see, the seller alleges that it was running when he or she pulled the engine and transmission a while back. You might wonder why you'd want to remove the engine from a perfectly good runner, but sometimes you just get bored- next thing you know, the engine's on the driveway! Get it back together, add insane boost levels, and you'll be ready to take the money of those Camaro-drivin' suckas!

Yeah, OK, a 24-year-old Wagoneer isn't exactly a to-die-for classic, but you don't see many of the pre-Chrysler Jeep SUVs these days- why, this thing has got actual emblems from the AMC Death Throes Era. And how about this fine, incredibly realistic-looking "wood" paneling?


Is there any large SUV in the Bay Area that doesn't have a Keep Tahoe Blue sticker? Did the dealerships issue these things?

You could get yourself a Travelall based on the D-1000 half-ton truck chassis for $2,705 back in 1965. The half-ton '65 Suburban sold for $3,270 and the Jeep Wagoneer 4-door was $3,395. What a deal! Of course, you'd have to pay more to upgrade the Travelall from the 240-cube six to the 304 V8 (a wise investment for a vehicle weighing well over 2-1/2 tons).


This appears to be a two-wheel-drive version, so you wouldn't want to take it on a camping trip involving heavy-duty mud-boggin' action. Ground clearance is still great, though, so those dirt roads will be no sweat.


I really could have used this sort of diagram on the first three-on-the-tree car I ever drove- definitely would have saved me a lot of confusion.

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Most of the time, when I see a jacked-up 4x4 with big mud-slingin' tires in a context as distinctly urban as this, it strikes me as a silly vehicle. Not so with an International Harvester!


This Scout might not be a '72, but the grille is a '72. No doubt some parts have been swapped here or there, so there's no telling at a glance.


If it is a '72, the available engines were a (non-AMC) 304 V8 and a 196-cube four-cylinder. Base price with four-wheel-drive was a mere $3,340, midway between the $3,588 list for a Bronco wagon and the Blazer's $3,145 price tag. I'm pretty sure the vacuum gauge dangling from dash was a non-factory option.

HELP WANTED: NAME THE ILL-MOBILE

Nike 6.0 and the BMX Crew are at the first stop of the AST Dew Tour in Baltimore. We've created this beast of a machine and we need help coming up with a suitable name. It's a souped-up, tricked out, action sports shred-mobile: part amphib, part 1970's camper, 100% rock and roll. Let's name this thing!!

The 8-wheeled ill-mobile is capable of crossing deserts, climbing mountains and taking the team to any secret spot. Racks for bikes, surfboards, wakeboards, skateboards, mean going anywhere for any scene. There's an on deck bbq for grilling up fresh meat, a deluxe camper shell salvaged from a junkyard in remote corner of Oregon and a basement couch for a front seat.

Rails to grind are featured on both sides, and a quarter pipe folds down for impromptu sessions. The stereo system requires 2 car batteries, a set of jumper cables and a little luck, but once it's blasting, it's like a stick of dynamite in your eardrum.

[Nike via Core77, special thanks to Recovry4x4 at Steel Soldiers for the ID assist.]

It's been a couple months since our last Scout in this series, and this is the oldest one I've managed to find on the island so far.


In '72, you could get your Scout II with a 196-cube four-cylinder engine (that's 3.2 liters, for you fans of the metric system and/or really big four-bangers) or a 304-cubic-inch V8. No, that's not an AMC engine- genuine farm equipment here!


Breakers breakers, any takers? It's been a while since CB radios were relevant; whatever vestige of CB that the cellphone didn't kill, cheap and powerful FMS/GMRS radios finished off. Still, a CB antenna on a Scout just looks right.

We've seen six International Harvester vehicles so far in Alameda, which means we get a poll. Which one do you like best?

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Tokyo July 17 2008 — Mitsubishi Motors Corporation will unveil its new Pajero Sport*1 SUV model at the Moscow Auto Salon 2008 (The Moscow Motor Show) to be held at the Crocus Expo in Moscow between August 26 and September 7 (opens to the public on August 29). The new Pajero Sport will be phased in selected regions*2 such as Russia, the ASEAN area, the Middle East, Latin America and Oceania starting in the fall this year.
*1 The model will carry a different name in different markets: Montero Sport in South America, Nativa in Latin America and Challenger in Australia.
*2 The new Pajero Sport will neither be sold in Central & Western Europe nor in North America, where other types of SUVs are favored.

The new Pajero Sport features dynamic and sporty exterior lines, complemented by a stylish and vast interior space that engenders a sense of comfort, purpose and safety. This cabin, available in either a 2-row (5-passenger) or 3-row (7-passenger) seating configuration is also very practical with water-repellent seats and a waterproof luggage compartment floor, ideal for leisure use.

Mitsubishi's latest SUV will be powered by a choice of three engines which all deliver outstanding motive performance and fuel economy: 2.5-liter and 3.2-liter common rail direct injection diesel units and a 3.5-liter V6 gasoline unit*3.

In terms of architecture, the body of the Pajero Sport is mounted on a new ladder frame to realize high levels of durability and reliability, consistent with the needs of its target markets.

Mitsubishi's All Wheel Control philosophy, forged through its participation in the Dakar Rally and other contests, informs all of the company's 4WD systems. The new model will use the Super Select 4WD system, also used in the Pajero*4 SUV, which transmits drive torque effectively to all four wheels on all types of surface. The body, frame and driveline not only give Pajero Sport outstanding off-road performance but allow it to deliver excellent drive dynamics over all surfaces.

The choice of the Moscow Motor Show to unveil the new Pajero Sport is a clear indication of Russia's eminent position within Mitsubishi Motors. In fiscal 2007 Mitsubishi Motors sold some 100,000 vehicles on the Russian market, boosted by the ever successful Lancer line-up and a popular range of SUVs.

MMC is confident that the new Pajero Sport SUV will make a strong addition to its SUV range, which also includes the Pajero and Outlander. Coming on the heels of the introduction of the Lancer*5 sports sedan last year, this will allow MMC to expand SUV sales and hit a total sales volume of 140,000 units on the Russian market in fiscal 2008.
*3 Russian-spec vehicle will only be available with the 3.2-liter diesel engine and 2-row, 5-passenger capacity seating arrangement.
*4 "Montero" in Spanish-speaking countries and "Shogun' in the UK.
*5 Galant Fortis in Japan.

MMC will hold its Press Briefing at the Mitsubishi Motors stand at 17:20 on Tuesday August 26.