Last week, after three pieces of Wal-Mart fried chicken and half a bag of Fritos, my dad suffered a long night of stomach pains and cramps. No surprise there. However, Saturday gave way to Sunday, and Sunday begat Monday, Monday begat Tuesday yadda yadda yadda…Friday begat surgery, surgery begat complications, yadda yadda yadda..here’s a rusty mid-80’s Toyota truck.
I have a soft spot for 80’s Toyota iron, and this particular example has soft spots in abundance. The rustibility of Japanese cars of this vintage is oft mentioned, and when I saw this example while wandering the hospital parking garage, I thought of CC and took a shot, thinking it might be of some use in an article down the line. One minute and forty seconds later I came upon this:
A first-gen Four Runner with nary a soft spot to be found, except in my heart. I had an 89 with the removable top like this one, and I think of it often.
Anyway, back to dad. (If you don’t know why I’m 35 and living with my dad, read here.) Turns out his gall bladder had gone and, well, gone. So it was off to hospital for a one-day affair. *cough* Today was day four. And he’s still there. A bile duct was “nicked” during his gall bladder removal, and this has led to a setback. So I’ve spent many hours the past few days at Memorial Hospital, which I’ve discovered is a great place to take a walk. And after seeing the Toyota (non)Twins, I figured a CC Walk N’ Talk was in order.
Hi, Paul!
Even 80’s American iron gets the rust-bug once in a while.
I liked this pairing. (Took a solo shot of the SS, but it turned out awful. Hard taking decent photos in parking garages.)
This El Camino is in seriously good nick. Sorry…
Didn’t really expect to see a Tesla, but this is a large hospital with lots of doctors.
This HR5 was right in front of the Tesla. Another doctor, I’m assuming.
And last on the 6 story perusal:
A Sky Turbo, no less. I still find the Sky/Solstice to be a great looking car from nearly every angle. Too bad GM tossed it aside like a vestigal appendage.
Next stop: East St. Louis!
Nice; those early Four Runners have become quite rare; most were abused to death by kids long ago. All the best.
That’s what a Four Runner should always have been, and what I’ll always judge them by. SUVs were so much cooler before they were castrated for soccer/suburban use.
And I’m with you on the Sky/Solstice. Those and the G8 should have been the last cars to get the heave-ho during the melt-down, imho.
The G8 was a great ride but GM never made any money on them due to the rapid appreciation of the Australian dollar. From the time of approval of the G8 to its arrival the Aussie buck had leaped like a kangaroo in the order of 30%. Can’t make money on that and the car business is all about making money.
How right you are. I don’t recall which GM excecutive made the remark, but one of them once stated: “GM doesn’t make cars. GM makes money.”
“GM doesn’t make cars. GM makes money.”
And therein lies the problem. In the mid 90s when I worked as a middle manager in plastics manufacturing in Kingman, AZ, that was a clever and fashionable thing to say in our company. By the way, that company shut down. It developed a bad reputation of cutting too many corners and delivering sub-quality product. They were chasing money to the detriment of the product. There’s got to be a balance.
A good friend owned an ’87 4Runner in black with a stick. Brought it east when he moved from California in 1994 so it was still in good condition ten years later…when it was stolen and never recovered.
Today he drives a BMW Z3 but still misses the 4Runner.
In the defense of those rusty 80’s Toyotas, and many other Japanese pickups from that era if you look closely you find the cab the part that was made in Japan doesn’t have near the rust of the bed which was made in California in many cases. So you can blame a lot of the rusty bed issues on CARB and the EPA.
Best wishes to your Dad.
One day I had an opportunity to sit in a Solstice, and it even had a stick. I found it impossible to press one pedal at a time with my size 13-wide feet. My left foot was over the clutch AND brakes, and my right foot was over the brakes AND accelerator. I would not have been able to drive it at all, unless perhaps I wasn’t wearing shoes.
UPDATE: Dad was released late Tuesday and is back home now. As I walked out to get the Camry from the parking garage, I saw an Aston Martin Vantage parked in the “On Call Trauma Surgeon” parking spot. Great looking car in person, but I didn’t have my camera on me.
Always loved the Solstice too. Was sad when GM cut it off with Pontiac. That car could’ve been a Chevy easily.
Sorry to hear about your dad. If it helps to know, that nick in the bile duct is a fairly common complication of cholecystectomy. Nothing to worry about if carefully and timely managed. One of those rare occasions where open surgery is arguably less prone to a complication than laparoscopic surgery. And the chicken and chips had nothing to do with it. This was awaiting to happen anyway. Wish him the best of health!
I’ve had that happen to me just from going INTO a Wal-Mart….Doc said STAY OUT!
If Walmart’s fried deli-foods don’t kill you, the frustration with the customer service might.
Guess where I found the best deal on a pulse oximeter? Go on, guess!
😀
My soon to be wife loves the Solstice/Sky but the deal-breaker for us is the trunk that is really too small for even a weekend get away. If I had one I’d prefer the very rare coupe version.
This will break Zachman’s heart but the two of us saw a convertible in traffic a few nights ago (weather has just started to warm up here in NM). I asked her casually… “What do you think of convertibles?” The answer…
“They’re so loud (with the top down) and the top down is only usable for part of the year, I don’t see the point.”
“Yeah” I replied, “The only convertible I’m interested in is the one sitting in my Dad’s shed and that’s because of the family history. Otherwise I’d rather have a coupe.”
As a 19 year old, I owned that exact truck in the first picture when new.It was even the same color. I removed those awful stripes the first day. Suspension lift, body lift, big 33″ tires later, that truck was unstoppable! Yeah, I’m a bit of a redneck! Loved that truck. Now at 48 and 250 pounds, I bet I could not even get in that thing.
Nice specimens! Let’s catalog, tag and take pictures of them!
At one point last year, saw a red first gen 4Runner, with the top removed as it had been a nice day. The paint showed it had been OFF ROAD (bush marks) from brushing up against them while off roading and it even had modded weather proof audio setup in it and I think aftermarket tires but stock otherwise. Hadn’t seen one in a very long time until them.
Then again, Puget Sound is not known for rusting out cars in short order so 25+ YO cars running around are still fairly common.
That first gen xB were fairly popular when new, still plenty of them on the roads even now.
Interesting where you’ll find the more interesting cars while out and about.
The Solstice was designed by 3 committees who never spoke to each other. It was finalised by the swamper in the coffee shop. Either that or the lone designer had dyslexia.
Getting way off topic, but while I really wanted to love the Kappa twins, they drove like the project team had to benchmark numbers instead of sensations. Good 0-60 times, but engine notes like someone snoring through a paper-towel roll. Heaps of grip from the very wide tires, but an inert-feeling chassis. Seemingly little attention paid to things like shifter and clutch feel, visibility, etc.
Beautiful cars, but you got the impression that the beancounters told the engineers, ‘OK, that’s good enough’.
I was cross-shopping the Miata, S2000, and the Kappa’s in early 2006. The S2000 wasn’t any fun until you were courting a trip to jail while the Miata could put a smile on your face at any speed. I went to the Pontiac dealer wanting to give USA a chance, but the ONLY way to get a test drive was to order one then wait a couple months for “your” car to arrive. “Just say you don’t like the color” the salesman said if I didn’t like it and I’d get my deposit back. Whatever. I wanted a car then so the General lost out. I guess the car was just too popular for its own good.
So why didn’t the Pontiac/Saturn factories making Solstices and Sky’s just pop a Chevy nameplate on them instead? I thought it must have had something to do with the government’s loan conditions but maybe it was only a half-finished car and GM figured its future wasn’t going anywhere? I can count on one hand the few problems there are with a 1st-year Miata NC model.
And the fact you can’t lock a briefcase in the trunk with the top down was somewhat of a deal-breaker for me too.