Ah…my Isuzu Trooper. One of my favorite cars. Here it is in all of its Tri-Tone glory; white roof, black hood, silver body!
What I like most about the COAL series is that they are less about the cars and more about the stories behind the vehicles. They tell the stories of different periods of life. Sometimes the stories are interesting, other times they are duds. The vehicle often acts as a prominent character in the story. Last week’s COAL was rather uninspiring. While there was nothing wrong with the red Ranger, it did not tell a rather interesting story. This next COAL tells a story that has more color.
To understand the next vehicle in my vehicle history, we must go back to 1992. My parents quickly learned that after I was born, fitting a car seat in the back of a 1990 Pontiac Sunbird coupe was not going to cut it. It was traded in for a late-model Chevy Astro that lasted all of four months before my parents purchased a blue 1990 Isuzu Trooper LS. My parent’s dad loved the Trooper. It was roomy, reliable, affordable, had a great 4WD system, and was a good family vehicle for a few years. In the late ’90s, my parents moved to the country and purchased a country vehicle; a red 1990 Isuzu Trooper. The same merits that caused them to purchase the first one made them purchase a second one. It lasted them a couple of trouble-free years and served them well.
How the Trooper arrived when it made the voyage to Iowa. When we got it, it had a weird front-end squat that threw off the proportions.
I mention all of this because after the red Ranger was gone, my dad had the Trooper itch again. Seems like Joe Isuzu did an excellent job of selling the merits of the Trooper to my dad. He and I soon took to Craigslist and searched the country for rust-free Troopers. Rust-free and Troopers were two things that normally did not go together. Troopers had a tendency to rust away before their warranty period ended (something Joe forgot to mention in his advertisements). This was the reason for getting rid of the first two Troopers. Nevertheless, my dad wanted a rust-free Trooper and I was going to help him find one.
After much searching, we found the perfect Trooper for sale in metro Detroit; a 1990 Trooper, V6, 5-speed manual, and most importantly, rust-free. The listing said the car came from a ranch in the southwest. The few (cellphone) photos of the car showed that the underside had little rust. The paint was faded, but it looked to be relatively a clean car. My dad called the owner and they spoke. By the end of the call, my dad agreed to fly to Detroit, where they would exchange the title and money.
The Trooper that started it all. This is identical to the first Trooper my parents had when I was little.
There are times in life when buyer’s remorse sets in quickly. If I had to guess, my dad developed buyer’s remorse for his Trooper purchase somewhere between Detroit and the Iowa border. My dad boarded an early flight to Detriot one Saturday morning. I did not hear from him at all that day, but the following morning I woke up to the Trooper sitting in the driveway. I remember my mom telling me not to bring up the Trooper to my dad. What the cell phone photos did not show was the car had no backseat or any seatbelts besides the driver’s seat. The story goes my dad stood at the airport and had to decide if he was going to drive this Trooper 500 miles home, or go back inside and purchase an expensive airplane ticket. He took a gamble and set off for Iowa in the Trooper. The series of unfortunate events did not stop there, as somewhere between Indiana and home, the exhaust developed a leak and made the drive loud. Also, the radio did not work either.
Nevertheless, the Trooper was rust-free and ran well, so we were going to make lemonade out of a lemon. Now finding seatbelts and a backseat for an uncommon Japanese car proved to be difficult. After a few weeks of not having any luck, I finally found the parts we needed, except there was one catch. The advertisement was for a whole Trooper! A local Craigslist ad had a 1990 Trooper for $400. The thing was so rusty it could not be driven. It did have a (good) back seat, good tires, and most importantly seatbelts! After dragging it back to our house, we stripped all usable parts off of it and then hauled the carcass off to the junkyard.
How does one find seat belts and a rear seat for a car? Purchase a whole car!
The cell phone photos of the listing for the Trooper did not do justice to just how faded the paint was on the car. The roof and hood were badly sunburnt from the southern exposure. My dad took this opportunity to learn how to paint a car. He purchased some implement paint and a cheap paint gun and proceeded to paint the roof of the Trooper white and the hood black. I nicknamed the car “tri-tone Trooper,” which stuck. Troopers left the factory with either a 2.5L Isuzu 4-cylinder or the Chevy 2.8L V6. On paper, there was not much difference in power or torque between the two engines. The 2.8L Chevy was an engine my dad and I were familiar with from our Fieros. The Fieros had a multi-port fuel injection that made 140 hp and the Troopers used a single-port fuel injection that made 120 hp. Between the downgrade in power and more weight, the Trooper was very sloooow. It is important to note what a Trooper is and is not. A Trooper is not sexy, fast, luxurious, or safe. A Trooper is spartan, roomy, reliable, and tough. The only options our Trooper had were AC and the Chevy 2.8L V6. The Trooper had manual windows, locks, mirrors, a single-speed rear wiper, two-speed front wipers (slow and slower), and a rear defroster. But to Joe Isuzu’s marketing point, it did have four-wheel disk brakes!
After we got a back seat in the car, it was used regularly by the family. It became the weekend warrior vehicle, as it could haul more than two people to Menards, as well as pull our small utility trailer. I developed a strong attachment to the Trooper and found myself driving more over my Firebird. I could see how Joe Isuzu was right about the Trooper. The driving position of the Trooper allowed you to see the entire world from the driver’s seat. There was so much glass and thin pillars that blindspots did not exist in the thing. The thing was best experienced on gravel roads near our house. The 4WD worked flawlessly and I would often use the abandoned railroad bed near our house as my road home. As winter approached, I was excited to put it through the test of inclement weather.
According to Joe Isuzu, Troopers could carry a symphony orchestra and every book in the Library of Congress. I am not sure if that is true, but I can attest there was vertically nothing that could not fit in the back of a Trooper. In other markets, this was sold with a third-row seat.
The first winter with the Trooper was a winter we got an abnormal amount of snow in eastern Iowa. The Trooper’s 4WD came into use by everyone in the family. It worked every time and never left anyone stranded. The worst snow I have ever driven in I did in the Trooper. The drive from the town I attended high school to my parent’s house is eight miles and takes about 15 minutes. One winter day, we got dismissed from school early due to snow. I worked at the local grocery store and was called to see if I could work the evening shift until 9:00 PM. I agreed to work and did not listen to my mother who told me to come home. When 9:00 rolled around, I went out to the Trooper and headed home. The wind was so fierce and the snow was so heavy, I could not see much more than 6’ past the end of the Trooper. It was good I knew the back roads well, as I used the power lines to guide me due to the white-out conditions. It took me 1.5 hrs to get home that evening! The blizzard was nothing for the Trooper.
Winter came and the Firebird was parked back in the garage for its winter slumber. Sometime after Thanksgiving, the windshield washer tank developed a crack and would not hold any fluid. I found a cheap solution that would ultimately come to cause some havoc for my dad and me. When you live on a gravel road in winter, having a working windshield washing system is a must for safe driving. The Trooper’s washer reservoir developed a leak and would not hold any fluid. I took to the recycling bin and found a 1-Liter Deju-Blue water bottle. I filled it with blue winter washer fluid and put the bottle in the single cupholder in the Trooper. When I needed to clean my window, I would roll down the front window and squirt some washer fluid on the windshield. The quick fix worked well for me. Being responsible, I mentioned this fix to my dad and my sister, who were frequent passengers in the Trooper.
Joe Isuzu did lie about the interior features of Troopers. There were not many options one could get.
One Sunday afternoon, my dad was working on something in the garage. It was cold out and he had the garage heat on high. He soon got hot and was very thirsty. The Trooper was in the garage, and he happened to see the Deju-Blue water bottle. He opened the cap and drank a big gulp of the liquid in the bottle. He immediately came inside and yelled for me. He asked me why I had vodka in the front seat of my car (I was 17 at the time). I looked him in the eyes and told him he had just drank washer fluid. At this point, my mom came into the room and called poison control. My parents were soon off to our local hospital. When they arrived at the ER, the doctors were already waiting. Seems it is not every day one drinks washer fluid, which made finding an anecdote difficult. My mom was told to go across the street and purchase a six-pack of beer. The doctor wanted to get my dad drunk to slow down the oxygen in his blood until they could find a solution. There sat my dad in the ER pounding back beers. Nurses would come by and poke their heads in to see if the rumors were really true that a patient was drinking beer in the ER.
My dad ended up staying in the hospital for four days before all the washer fluid was out of his system. At the time, he and I did not speak about this issue, nor did we purchase blue washer fluid for a couple of years. We now talk about the issue and joke about it. While I am not proud it happened, no one got seriously hurt and it does make for an interesting story. After my dad came home from the hospital, the washer tank was fixed and the Deju-Blue bottle was thrown away.
The Chevy 2.8L V6 gave us no trouble during our ownership. The story goes that Troopers were shipped from Japan to the US and had the Chevy V6s installed in California. These motors had no advantages over the Isuzu 2.5L I4, other than marketing material for Joe Isuzu.
The following fall, I headed off to college. If you remember, I had the Firebird with me, but I also brought the Trooper for the colder months. My grandmother lived 14 miles from my school and had a very large garage. During nice weather, the Trooper sat in her garage and the Firebird sat at school. As soon as it got cold, I parked the Firebird and drove the Trooper. The Trooper was a great college car. I loved having it at school, as I did not have to worry about something or someone hitting it. The thing was also larger inside than my college dorm room. At the end of the year, I fit all of my belongings in it with room to spare. It was also at this time that my dad told me he wanted to sell the Trooper. It started to develop the same rust that the other two Troopers had. When I returned home from school that spring, the Trooper was soon listed for sale. A dentist from Kansas ended up flying to Iowa City to purchase it. My dad loaded the thing with all the Trooper parts we had accumulated and off the dentist went.
While that ended the Trooper chapter for my dad and me, it left me a huge Trooper fan. Troopers were sold all over the world under various different manufacturers’ names. They are very durable, tough, and reliable vehicles and have developed an off-road following, with their only real fault being their rust issues. Finding rust-free ones is becoming harder and harder. If I could build a collection of odd vehicles, a Trooper would be at the top of my list. For me, the Trooper was a good car and one I would purchase again.
By now I have probably confused you with what year it is in my COAL journey. We are now in the early fall of 2012. I am entering my sophomore year of college. I just sold my Firebird to make my tuition payment. I am in something borrowed from my dad, but I have the itch to purchase my own car. Luckily I found something very cheap and familiar, but needing love to get back on the road.
Holy grails of Troopers; a two-door short wheelbase model. These were sold for one year only.
P.S. I have attached links to some of Joe Isuzu’s Trooper ads for entertainment. Maybe these will make you want to go down to your local Isuzu dealer to purchase a Trooper.
Isuzu Trooper vs Jeep Cherokee
***Just go to Youtube and search for “Joe Isuzu.” You’ll be amused. Trust me, I wouldn’t lie.
Thank you, WordPress, for generously slipping a an ad under my finger and deleting my comment– with half an hour of my life– once again. I must learn to avoid comment via my phone, at all costs.
So, as I was saying…These were everywhere in the Northeast at the turn of the ’90s. They were the right vehicle at the right time– attractive, nimble and utilitarian –and, I recall — a terrific value. The hard edged, “fridge with windows” 1980s styling — that fell uncomfortably on the perceived aerodynamics of the family car — was a perfect fit for an SUV. And the “Joe Isuzu” ads were a smash– somehow turning the sleazy car salesman meme on its head.
A woman I was seeing then had an ’87 Trooper in a sharp maroon livery with burnished bronze side inserts, and I have fond memories of her charging around North Jersey with the exuberant driving style associated with a gal, a low powered engine and a stick shift.
Of course, the tin worm attacked early. And, though the Trooper was lovable — and not plagued by niggling mainteanance issues –it was doomed to the fatal failure in the end; the valve train “plotzed”, and took the truck with it.
But, along the way, there was one unforgettably cartoonish moment. Milady was making a right turn, and had barely snapped on the turn signal when the Trooper banged, clanged and crunched to a halt. She jumped out and ran around to find the RR axle sprung outward, free of its housing by several inches, not unlike a fire truck in a 1930s Krazy Kat animated short, where the wheels extend out and cut down unlucky gawkers.
That commercial where a masked Joe Isuzu spirits a confused Jeep customer into a Trooper before revealing himself, is pretty funny, but Jeep got the last laugh. A couple of years ago, I was shocked to find a clean series 1 Trooper parked in a shopping center; I hadn’t seen one in 15 years. Those squared-off Cherokees are still running around. Yes, Jeep produced them for much longer, but they were also made better than Isuzus.
Hi Barry, You must be pretty dexterous using the phone keyboard for comments; I have fat fingers and/or bad eyes because for me, the iPhone is too small for writing more than a few words
Even using the MacBook, I write most of my replies as an email, then cut and paste the finished reply into the comments. The email draft is my back up.
This is the result of spending 56 years in computer programing & IT management and learning the hard way how to loose hours of hard-to-replicate work on short deadline projects.
More than once.
What a story! First; regarding the misleading description and aquisition… If I may ask, how much was it purchased for, and did the seller know how far your dad came for it?
The washer fluid… you cant make this stuff up! But I would’ve assumed the first thing to try would be to induce vomiting or call the manufacturer? How did they trace the fluid over four days coursing through his body? So many questions lol
My favorite Troopers are the following generation. The facelifted 1998-2001s, with pearl white paint I think are damned good looking trucks, but hate that they are cursed with glass transmissions and second/third tier build quality.
A true unicorn is the SWB 93-95 3 door RS model, never seen one.
Some poisons will do as much damage on the way up as on the way down. You don’t induce vomiting in a case like that.
Methanol and/or antifreeze make up windshield wiper fluid. One method to deal with methanol poisoning is have the patient drink ethanol (hence the beer)–the ethanol competes with methanol in the liver– methanol is converted into formic acid in the liver (really harsh on the body in many bad ways) and with ethanol blocking it can be excreted in the urine, and there are tests to see if when it clears.
Antifreeze is ethylene glycol–it can be directly measured in the blood, but the quick way to look for it is take the patient’s urine and put it under UV light–the urine will fluoresce a green blue (a neat trick to do in the ER). Again, ethanol is used as a blocking agent although there are other drugs that are used.
The ER doctors knew what to do. Beer is a quick and readily available first step. People still die from acute methanol / antifreeze poisoning. Your dad had a small exposure (one swallow) and recovered intact.
I always had a bit of a thing for these, but did not really have a need for one in my life, and none ever parked themselves in front of me and dared me to buy it. I do remember seeing them with some frequency when they were relatively new.
It is a shame that there was no effort made to keep the rust issue at bay, or to at least slow it down via some kind of Krown or Ziebart treatment. Bringing a rust-prone vehicle into your locale (which had already quickly digested two prior Troopers in the family) – it seems that the results were what you might have predicted.
The gulp of washer fluid – that is a new one for me too. I guess if you have to suffer something like that, it might as well be something for which the treatment is a lot of beer.
Thanks for writing up a Trooper.
I had a 1988 Trooper II LS in “Spectra Red”, Gray and White, bought new. At the time, there were a lot of these that came from the factory in 3 colors…although I will grant you that having a different color hood was definitely non-stock 😉
I’ve been meaning for some time to write up my Trooper experience as it was truly one of the few cars I’ve ever had (truthfully, it was always considered my wife’s vehicle, which is why it avoided being covered in my COAL) that I would re-own in a flash. I truly loved that vehicle for what it was…which is very much as you’ve summed up the experience in your article.
I may have had a different take on Trooper ownership if mine had rusted out from under me as yours – and quite a few others – did. Rather, mine just managed to present a fairly constant slow drip of mechanical failures until it was eventually done in by a greedy dealership’s maintenance dept and a bad head gasket. Nevertheless, the Trooper was a “trooper” in the sense that when it was in good working order it was absolutely the most useful vehicle I’ve ever had. Dogs absolutely loved it. And it was pretty much unstoppable in snow. Loved that car.
Great story about the washer fluid. I may not be a doctor, and I don’t play one on TV, but I somehow don’t think that “sit in the ER and drink a 6 of beer really quick” is exactly standard medical procedure. But hey, you (and your dad) got a great story out of it…and that counts for a lot.
I’ve always seen these first generation Troopers as honest, no nonsense vehicles, similar to how I viewed International Harvesters. They may not be fancy, but you knew what you had and what they could do.
My wife entered into our marriage with a second generation Trooper that she loved. Big, solid, more refined and pretty horrible for gas mileage. It was a great vehicle except for commuting and the subject of a future COAL.
Isuzu marched to a bit of a different drummer those days, using its quirkiness and dependability to stake out its own position in the market. Great vehicle!
What a story! Your dad’s liver seems to be a Trooper as well!
The poison in washer fluid is methanol aka wood alcohol. The treatment can include ethanol. So instead of downing beer he could have thrown back some Deja Blue!
The liver will first deal with ethanol before working on the methanol. Being drunk buys time.
The liver turns methanol into formic acid which is the actual poison. Slowing that process down is the goal of the ethanol intake. Inducing vomiting would have been the best initial reaction.
A friend of ours had a Trooper. I never had seat time in one but your description of it tells me why he liked it to begin with. He lived in Arizona at that time.
Thanks for another great chapter in your COAL, Fierorunner. I’ve never owned a Trooper but came close, test-driving a new one in 1990 or so. 4 door, 4 cylinder, 5 speed, single-color beige as so many of the early ones were. And there were many around for a while, now mostly gone though there are two regularly running around our town, and one is a 2 door. But the educational part of your story was wondering, and then learning (thanks to Wikipedia of course) what Déja Blue is.
Ah, WordPress/Akismet actively eating comments again…
I always liked these first generation Troopers and viewed them as honest, no frills, supremely capable vehicles – similar to how I view International Harvesters.
My wife brought a second generation Trooper into our marriage in 2009. It was moved considerably upscale from the first generation but retained the toughness under the nicer trappings. With the larger Isuzu V6, it was solid, powerful and incredibly thirsty, not so great for a commuter vehicle. But that’s a story for a future COAL.
Isuzu marched to a different drummer back then – great vehicles!
So many smiles and outright laughs reading this post.
And – only after knowing that your dad survived the blue drink ordeal – the paragraph with the nurses peeking in to see the beer fest was the source of the big laugh.
When my wife and I were planning our move from Manhattan to NJ she really liked the Trooper. I did too; it had a purposeful design inside and out, looked to be good in bad weather (as you documented so well), and we loved the Joe Isuzu ads. But caution led us to more conventional vehicles with lower centers of gravity and we ended up with a Mercury Sable wagon.
My father and I used a water pistol filled with washer fluid to clear the ’64 Beetle’s windshield. This was same solution we used on his old post-war cabin cruiser but where the fluid was just plain water to clear off the salt water spray before the windshield got a crusty white film of salt on it.
I think the best image in this post is you following the power lines to guide yourself in a 6-foot visibility snow storm. That was a smart, gutsy, and creative move.
Love the ad where Joe’s mom nervously looks around at the near misses of lightning as Joe tells his first two lies (that you repeated in the caption of the red trooper’s photo).
I have memories of driving in whiteouts with only the running lights and navigating by the snow plow cut and snow drifts on the side of the road.
The joe izuzu ads were classics.
I’m the father of this guy (and maybe the cause of some of these tales).
Thank you Wolfgang for the layman’s explanation of the “beer buys time” ER part of this story. The small hospital I was at didn’t have the proper antidote and it was going to be hours before the university hospital across town was going to have the proper meds mixed up.
The Trooper is one of those vehicles I’d buy in a heartbeat again if they made the exact same vehicle new in 2022.
Addendum to the story. Fierorunners sister was disappointed that the dump run chapter didn’t make it into the story.
We were reroofing our house and had a trailer full of shingles that needed to go to the dump (probably a 4k# load). I sent junior and his two younger sisters off in the loaded down Trooper. There’s more to the story however the good part was listening to my three children’s versions of how the Trooper navigated an Interstate 80 clover leaf on-ramp on a blistering hot August day.
Proud that Fierorunner pulled that off in the slow motion of two sisters screaming out the windows “we’re going to die” while that little Chevy V6 screamed for all it’s worth, while adjacent traffic roared by probably honking at the fool with the shingles flying out his trailer. Oops
It’s not often you hear of people wanting to a buy another example of something that has rusted out on them twice…you must like Troopers a lot!
Wow – you weren’t lying when you said this story has a lot of color!
I can’t imagine being in your dad’s position of having to choose on the spot whether to commit to this over-advertised Trooper or to admit defeat and fly back home. But it seems to have worked out in the end. And the washer fluid story – wow!
I love these Troopers, partly because the few people I’ve known who’ve them have used them for off-roading or for tough country projects, and absolutely loved them. We still see them occasionally here in Virginia, most often modified to some extent.
And thanks for the links to the Joe Isuzu ads — I’d forgotten most of those, so it was great to re-watch them.
a whole bunch of Joe Isuzu ads at one location:
Thanks! My daughter and I just watched those together and both of us loved them.
Another terrific chapter.
I’ve had a real thing for these since they first came out. I really wanted a bare bones 1.9L four with a stick and the 2-door body, the only way they came in the first couple of years. But that was not going to work for Stephanie and two kids. Oh well.
I still rather want one. There’s several around here, and they are not rusty. So if you really want another, try Oregon. But they’re disappearing rather quickly.
THese were very common once upon a time sold as Holden Jackaroos mostly 4 banger petrol not the best engine in the lineup, the best was a 2.8 turbo diesel four, anyway rust got most of them now even the ex JDM Bighorns have mostly disappeared, later model sold under various Isuzu Holden and Honda badges are still around as part of the SUV boom older models are being kept alive if possible.
“Holden Jackaroo” is a GREAT name for a vehicle!
Now, the question is if they were sold as “Jackaroo II” and if so was there ever a Jackaroo I.
Troopers/Bighorns/Jackaroos are still super-common in Taumarunui Bryce! Must be at least a dozen or more still in regular service. Most are the second generation, but our local engineer and his wife have a high-roof gen-1 as their daily driver.
That accidental ingestion of windshield washer is something! Good thing it worked out okay in the end.
Good reason for those warnings to keep poisons in their original containers!
Great story! In 1988 the Trooper became my runner-up when upon buying an old house I needed something more useful for Home Depot runs than my little Toyota coupe. Alas the completely different driving dynamics (tall, not very wide) completely threw me off and I bought a Nissan King Cab, which served me very well for 13 years and 250k miles.
But the next car was a Trooper – in 2001 with the arrival of the kid I needed 4 doors and airbags. My LS is still running these days although on a relaxed schedule since it’s up at our vacation home. Still love that thing; the seating position is superior as are the sight lines. I’m sure it will be part of my will distribution of estate….