Buying a vehicle from a defunct manufacturer can be a crapshoot, as parts availability may be sketchy. That makes today’s Nice Price or No Dice Trooper a bit of a gamble since Isuzu is long gone from the U.S. scene. We’ll have to decide if its price is a bet we’d gladly take.
“You gotta give ‘em that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thang,” You know, maybe if VW had named its 181 the “Thang” here in the U.S. instead of the “Thing,” it would have been more popular. We’ll never know. What we do know is that, at $12,000, the 1974 VW Thing we looked at yesterday wasn’t too popular around here. That was evident in the 57 percent No Dice loss it received.
Do you know what is popular? That’s right, SUVs and crossovers. Car buyers seemingly can’t get enough of them. That’s been the case for the past 30 years or so, ever since Ford introduced the wildly popular Explorer.
It’s strange, then, that Isuzu, a company with a model line steeped in SUVs and a long history of truck building behind them, couldn’t make a go of it in such a market. Maybe it was bad luck or a voodoo curse, but Isuzu’s rapid decline from a car-maker to a seller of badge-engineered trucks made by others to eventually pulling up stakes is a sad and sorry tale.
On the bright side, the company built some solid trucks along the way, and we have one of those to discuss today. This 2000 Isuzu Trooper rocks 152,500 miles on the clock, and while it shows some dents and scrapes for those miles, it looks to be in pretty good condition overall.
According to the description in the ad, this Trooper:
has had no accidents, runs and drives very nicely. It’s been cared for inside and out. Clean California title, just smog certified and recently serviced. The tires are nearly new, there are no warning or service lights on. It’s very nice and ready to go anywhere!
Mechanically, this is one of the best Trooper models to buy as it has the later 3.5-liter DOHC V6 making 215 horsepower. That’s paired with a corporate parts bin 4L30E four-speed automatic, Borg-Warner “Torque On Demand” 4WD system, and a tow package.
Everything seems original here, right down to the two-tier factory stereo unit and funky ’90s pattern on the mouse fur-upholstered seating. For those demanding a minimum of ostentation, there are power windows and locks, cruise control, and working A/C.
There’s nothing too fancy here, although the truck does give off Range Rover vibes without that marque’s inherent reputation for poor reliability. There aren’t all that many other options for someone seeking a reasonably roomy two-row SUV with a bit of a quirky nature and a sad history of corporate failure. The question for us is whether this unique beast fitting that bill might be worth its $4,650 asking.
What do you say? Is this clean, if not pristine, Trooper a go at that $4,650 price tag? Or does that price make this just another Isuzu failure?
You decide!
Humbolt, California, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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