Curbside Finds: Not Your Usual Pickups

I took advantage of a break in the rain this weekend to get a bit of fresh air for myself and our dog. Just a block from our house I spotted this Ford Falcon Ranchero, which I had never seen before. It turned out to be the first of several non-conventional pickups that I saw on my walk. A few of these I’ve featured here before as Outtakes, but seeing them all within the scope of a 15 minute walk (at the pace of a dawdling dog sniffing all the wonderful smells that a rain uncovers) prompted me to take more pictures, as I’d never really thought about the theme that connects them all. We have plenty of F150s, and Tundras, and RAMs and Silverados in my neighborhood, but you won’t see any of those in this post.

I’m pretty sure this is a 1964 Ranchero, assuming the trim is original. The first year of this body style, featuring a 289 V8 and an automatic.

The “DeLa Santa Cruz” sticker refers to a local city park, De Laveaga which features both a conventional 18 hole golf course and a popular disc golf course, as well as being the venue for our annual Shakespeare festival. Perhaps the owner is a fan of all three. The bed’s contents suggest that the 52 year old 289 needs to be topped up with bodily fluids on a regular basis.

I’ve photographed this GMC Caballero, a Chevy El Camino clone, before but I’ve never seen it under its own power. However it’s often in different spots by the curb and on this day it was parked around the corner from its usual home, so it does move. And I think that primed hood is new. This is a fairly late example of the final GM A/G body style which lasted from 1978 to 1987, here powered by a fuel injected 4.3 V6, which suggests it’s an ‘86 or ‘87. I find these pickups (utes?) very appealing.

Our climate is generally pretty conducive to avoiding major rust issues, and what rust there is on older cars is typically top down from salt fog or dripping surfboards. This Caballero shows some signs of perforation around the base of the rear window and lack of, or clogged, drainage in the bed probably doesn’t help. Given that we’ve had several inches of rain in the two days between taking this picture and writing this up, the bed might be getting full. I’d walk over and check it out but I’m feeling allergic to rain about now.

As could be seen in the background of the previous photo of the Caballero, there’s another more conventional but still rare pickup across the street. This Mazda B2200 is of similar vintage to the GMC, and my gut sales data meter says it probably outsold the Chevy and GMC utes in California in those years. My wife had a similar but darker gray B2200 when I met her and it lasted a few months into our marriage before being replaced by a VW Vanagon (T3)camper.

Like the Caballero, in fact like all of the trucks pictured here except the Ranchero, this Mazda has been in the neighborhood for years and is parked in a different spot almost every time I see it, so it’s a runner. Short bed, 2 wheel drive, 4 cylinder 5 speed, bench seat … this is as basic as it gets but still chugging along after 40 years.

Just down the street from the Caballero is another long time neighborhood resident, and of about the same vintage as the GMC and the Mazda. And despite its patina, this Ford Ranger with a fairly rare utility body is indeed here in California, not Oregon. This example is from the years after the first facelift, 1989-1992. As the owner of a 1986 Ranger, I was invited to a Ford marketing focus group to preview this version in 1988. The changes didn’t seem like a big deal but it was interesting to chat with some Ford corporate types and enjoy free wine and appetizers. They also discreetly gave us $50 in cash at the end of the session. I think it was $50, maybe less, but it seemed pretty good at the time.

17 minutes after taking the first photo of the Ranchero, I passed this neighborhood regular. By now I was already thinking about the “unusual” theme for a CC post; I had already walked past half a dozen Tacomas and even a 2wd Toyota pickup of the 1984 to 1988 generation without bothering to take any photos. Those things are a dime a dozen here. So at first I didn’t break my step. But then I remembered that this truck is the fairly rare Stepside version of the Tacoma.

And it’s not a 4 wheel drive, but the 4 wheel drive lookalike PreRunner version, which is 2 wheel drive but with the taller suspension and six lug hubs of the 4 wheel drive version. And even without the stepside bed, its regular cab and short bed put it very much in a minority of Tacomas, even those of the first generation. This truck sports the final facelift of the first-gen Tacoma, with its rather toothy 1950’s Buick looking grille (at least in its usual chrome; this one is blacked out) which debuted in 1998. This generation of Tacomas still had a steel bed, which was replaced in 2005 by a composite bed interior still used to this day. But what I don’t know, and could find no credible info online, was whether the stepsides had steel or fiberglass/composite outer fenders.

POSTSCRIPT: In the interest of science, I went out at 6:30 in the morning to check on the Caballero’s bed drainage, and the Tacoma’s fender material. The good news was that the GMC bed was almost fully covered with water at the back and about 8” deep at the bed wall, so no perforated rust. The bad news was that by the time I had walked there, the rain was starting to really pour down, so the dog and I turned around and headed quickly home, but not before walking past the Tacoma and tapping its rear fender. Steel. By the time we got home Riley and I were drenched, but these are the sacrifices we make to keep our readers informed.