I’ve written plenty about having grown up in Flint, Michigan and my decades spent in beautiful Chicago, but there are entire chapters in between that were written in the Sunshine State. My first three years of college starting in the early ’90s were spent in Gainesville, Florida (go Gators!), which represented several significant life changes for me at the time. Not only was I no longer under my parents’ roof (that is, before I moved back for one year), but I was also in a different state and part of the United States. For the first time in my life, I felt like so many choices were mine alone to make. I had wanted freedom, and I got it. However, this also meant that I now had added responsibility. It was no longer up to me to simply come up with witty, sarcastic quips about things I was being forced to do and didn’t want to.
My early days at the University of Florida, Gainesville in the early ’90s were good ones.
I now had to buy my own groceries with my monthly stipend, which meant that I had to learn what things I could afford to put into my cart at the local Kash ‘N Karry grocery store. For example: Could I live with the house-brand mac-and-cheese if it meant I could also get some Pringles? I had new friends to choose not only from the guys and gals in my dorm complex (gender-separated by floor), but also in my classrooms. This freedom of choice also extended to the curriculum in the pre-semester enrollment period. All of us had general education (“gen ed”) requirements to satisfy, but for the first time in my life, I felt like my destiny might just be up to me, and that my choices then might affect the rest of my life. This was even more so than in high school, where all I had really wanted to do was get decent grades to get into college, which was where I had just arrived. Now what?
There was a foreign language requirement, regardless of your major. I respected this idea, being a first-generation American and child of a Liberian-born and multilingual father. I was familiar with studying a language other than English going back to the third grade in my gifted elementary school, where the German-expatriate mother of one of my classmates had given us lessons in her native tongue for what I recall to be half-hour blocks. I took pride that Frau Tyler had told my parents that I demonstrated a gift for learning language and good pronunciation. I had taken French from between the seventh and ninth grades with the encouragement of my parents, who had reasoned that there are many French-speaking nations in Africa.
You’ve seen my ’88 Mustang before here at CC.
Even though I had spent my fourth grade year in Liberia, I knew I was probably never going to live there on my own on even a semi-permanent basis. It made more sense to me to learn Spanish, especially in Florida. My earlier experiences with German, Spanish (also taught at my elementary school), and French made it that much easier to dive back into Spanish, which I elected. My teacher, Señora Power, was Boricua (originally from Puerto Rico). She was probably middle-aged at the time, had curly, honey-blonde hair, and was highly engaging and hilarious. It was a real education for me at the time to learn about different dialects of Spanish spoken in different regions of the Americas. For example, the double-l consonant cluster is pronounced with almost a soft “j” sound in Puerto Rican Spanish, versus in other dialects where “ll” is more commonly pronounced like an English “y” used as a consonant.
The coursework was challenging, and there was a focus not only on learning the words, but also in correct pronunciation and stringing together and speaking coherent, conversational sentences. Sra. Power was a fun lady, but she also didn’t mess around. I felt a special responsibility not to butcher the Spanish language and to take these lessons seriously. Part of me just didn’t want to offend her. Framed within that context, I wonder if I would be as possessive and protective of English among non-native English speakers in a classroom. I feel like honest effort merits grace. College is a weird age between almost an expectation that a teenager will slack off, and him or her becoming a (mostly) self-actuated young adult. I cared about learning Spanish the right way, even if I was mostly just a “B” student.
In learning how to say basic phrases, we got to hunger and thirst, and there were some big frat guys also in the classroom off of whom apathy seemed to sheet like secondhand pot-fumes. I have since become close friends with many who had gone through the Greek system, but I’d wager that many of you know what I’m talking about here. These were guys who looked like they could have done two keg-stands for every one, single, complete, correct sentence in Spanish that was ten words or longer. “Tengo hambre” means “I’m hungry” (or more accurately, “I have hunger”).
Foolishness while behind the wheel of my Mustang in Gainesville.
This one frat bro with long grunge-hair said, “Tengo hombre,” in the irreverent accent that you’re probably accurately hearing in your head right now. Sra. Power lowered her readers on her nose, looked at him with dead eyes, and said, “That means, ‘I have a man!’ It’s ‘Tengo AHM-BRAY.'” The entire classroom roared (including me, I admit it), but Sra. Power retained her straight-faced expression to great comic effect, whether or not this was intentional. That moment made me love her so much that you’re reading about her right now, thirty years after the fact. It would have been awesome if an out-and-proud gay guy in the classroom would have chimed in afterward with “Tengo hambre y tengo un hombre“, but it was a different time in the ’90s. Things have come a long way.
The sight of an Isuzu Hombre has always since reminded me of Sra. Power. Believe me, it has been a long time since the last such sighting. Just who was responsible for naming this thing? It’s a rhetorical question and I don’t expect anyone in the CC readership to really know, but naming a truck a “Man” or “Dude” was phoning it in on so many levels. The closest thing to this that I can think of is MAN Truck & Bus of Germany, but that name had originated as an acronym (as I was constantly reminded by a fellow high school classmate with a calculator with that logo, who had lived in that country). This is not even the same thing. Even more confusing to learn was that this Isuzu truck wasn’t even built in Japan, but in Shreveport, Louisiana. (JP Cavanaugh had written this excellent essay on the Hombre almost six years ago, for those of you who want some facts.)
“Hombre” is what bros sometimes call each other, but that’s about the only non-Spanish-speaking context I can think of in which that word seems to fit. Can you imagine an ad campaign around this Chevy S-10-based truck in which various people exclaim, “That’s my Hombre!” That’s just as bad as “Tengo Hombre!” would have been. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, because almost nobody bought these. I can’t even find a final tally for the Hombre’s five-year production run from between 1996 and 2000, let alone a breakout for each model year. It’s not simply that I’m feeling lazy at this writing. I couldn’t even source a print ad from the same ’98 model year as our featured pickup, so the ’97 brochure cover I borrowed will have to do. Just think of this essay as a reminder to try to put some actual effort into pronouncing foreign-to-you words correctly.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, March 31, 2024.
Great post, hombre. Go Gators.
Go Gators!
Excellent writing! Refreshing to see
Thanks, Scott!
I still laugh on the rare occasions when I see one of those. I wonder who came up with the idea to name Japanese nameplate cars Amigo and Hombre.
And thanks for the shout-out on my old piece!
Perhaps because Yūjin and Otoko would have been too Japanese sounding. It continues to day, I find the Kia Telluride a real head scratcher, since never having been there I still associate it with 1960’s pickup trucks.
Joe Isuzu, obviously.
Seriously (well, that kind of doesn’t apply here, actually) any company that built its US advertising and marketing around the Joe Isuzu character obviously had their tongue in cheek a lot. Including these names. I always took them in that vein.
JP, I was just glad that you (anyone) had written up the Hombre before so I had fewer issues with including minimal factual content! Now that Paul mentions it above, the tongue-in-cheek approach to the Spanish names given to products of a Japanese nameplate makes sense in that vein.
When I was in Bolivia I recall seeing many Isuzus.
Maybe the Japanese person at Isuzu who came up with naming their cars “Amigo” and “Hombre” for the American market came from South America?
There is a large population of Japanese expats in South America.
That has got to be one of the last Hombre’s…period, and in such good shape. Perhaps you’ve located the only Isuzu collector in Chicago.
You’re so right about the silly name. I recall being so dismayed by how Isuzu had seemingly lost all direction by the mid-1990s, just as I was starting the rest of my life Isuzu-less. We’d had 2 Isuzu-Chevy trucks and a Trooper II from college times in the 1980s into the 1990s, but with the bloat, confused marketing, and increasingly awful dealer network (at least in my area), when the Trooper died, that was the end of Isuzu in my house. An Amigo or an Hombre had no attraction.
Jeff, this Hombre is in decent shape, but I’d describe it as more of a ten-footer. It was obviously well cared for years, the impression I get whenever I’ve seen it around.
Isuzu used to have at least a few vehicles that I thought were genuinely cool. I still think the first generation Impulse / Piazza is still fire, four decades later. Even the VehiCross seemed to indicate there was still some innovation left at Isuzu, but it’s hard to believe that one is almost 25 years old…
Just who was responsible for naming this thing?
Joe Isuzu, of course!
But, of course! It didn’t even occur to me when I wrote this that I should search YouTube for a commercial to link…
I like the thing. I’d take one in a heartbeat. Ideal for light forest work.
Those who have difficulties with the name may change the badges.
Isuzu liked to paint (or use some kind of applique) the name on its vehicles really big. Notice the giant ISUZU and slightly smaller Hombre on the tailgate. So, de-badging might be tough.
Then again, if you got one like most of the Isuzus that I owned, it would be a relatively short matter of time before the tailgate just rusted off. Problem solved. 🙂
I think that all would take to remove the badges is a hair dryer, as there were just decals on it. Done, and done!
In a sort of CC Effect™, I’ve seen TWO of these for sale on Facebook Marketplace lately. When they were new, smart folks who wanted to save a few bucks over buying one with a Chevy or GMC badge bought them. Now that they’re old, very few people remember that it’s a domestic-built truck, so they think parts for an Isuzu will be impossible to find. Once again, knowledgeable folks can buy these used for cheaper than a Chevrolet.
Brilliant, Evan. I hadn’t even thought about its make contributing to its affordability relative to its Chevrolet and GMC counterparts.
To me the Hombre name and the styling don’t match, they could have turned the heat up on the looks a lot more. But I guess in those years everything had a clean aerodynamic vibe going on.
Sra. Power sounds wonderful!
And GM didn’t want to make any drastic changes to the Brazilian-sourced panels used to build the Hombre.
For the next and final Isuzu rebadge, the Colorado-based i-Series, GM expended even less effort.
Sra. Power was indeed a great teacher and lady.
And to your point, a masculine sounding name like “Hombre” would beg for more aggressive styling. Not Pontiac Aztek-aggressive, but something.
Good point about the name and styling not matching. At least Isuzu’s Amigo lived up to the name (and then some).
A fun read! Thanks, Hombre! Hombre? – as in old time Western Movies, “He’s one mean hombre!”
Thanks, Thomas – and right!
I don’t have much to say about the Hombre – it’s just a base model S-10 with a different name and nose. But you reminded me about pronunciation…
Long ago my father-in-law was contemplating a temporary assignment in Saudi Arabia. It would have been lucrative and he took a few crash courses in speaking Arabic. When having to repeat something back to the teacher, he said the female teacher frowned the broke out laughing. It seems his attempt rendered a perfectly crude and profane sentence. She wouldn’t tell him what he had said, other than he said it perfectly.
So, yes, correct pronunciation is everything.
Hahaha! I like your father-in-law.
These Hombres also had another distinction: front and rear fenders that featured subtle blisters or raised sections. One can’t even tell from certain angles and depending on what the light is doing.
I don’t recall the Hombre as being THAT rare. At least not compared to the Isuzu Vehicross, Ascender, Axiom or even Amigo. About on par with the Oasis, though nowhere near a common as the Trooper or Rodeo.
Of the Isuzu models you mentioned, only the Trooper, Rodeo, and Amigo weren’t super-rare, at least in the part of the country where I was living when these were newer vehicles. I haven’t seen an Ascender in I don’t know how long. I’ve seen a few VehiCrosses around over the past decade or so, but not because they were plentiful – probably more because their current owners appreciate their novelty.
There’s a Hombre that I see around here occasionally, and I thought it rare enough to photograph it through the windshield one day. But not rare enough to get out and take a whole series of photos. And in other (semi-related) news, I saw an Oasis today.
I’m terrible at pronunciation, and foreign languages in general. In high school I took Russian, and my teacher, while an excellent and challenging teacher, had absolutely no humor when it came to pronunciation. I struggled more than a bit with that. In college I took German, which I found much easier from a pronunciation standpoint.
But honestly, until now, I didn’t actually know what the word Hombre meant, so thanks for the explanation. And I’m still not sure how to pronounce it. Ordinarily I’d pronounce it as if it rhymed with “Humber” but after reading your article I assume its actually HomBRAY.
The H in Spanish is silent actually, so it’s more like “ombray”, like hola for hello is “ola” etc.
Be glad you grew up speaking/learning english, it’s by far more difficult to learn than most of the others, with all kinds of non-sensical rules and pronunciations. Such as “through” (the door) vs “trough” (as in what a pig eats out of) vs though (as in despite).
And stuff like the way you thought hombre was pronounced by verbalizing the last two letters out of order… litre, timbre, etc. vs plenty of other words including liter that is the same exact word but there’s also timber (wood), both words among many that are pronounced the same while having letters in a different order…
Thanks – now I know!
Jim, thanks for this. English and all of the irregulars. My foreign-born dad spoke decent English (as a professor he had to), but it wasn’t the best. He still had issues with pluralization of things like cereal (“cereals”) and the occasional verb conjugation. This was by no means a measure of his apparent intelligence. To your point, I’m glad this was my first language, though I wish I knew more than one. I could always do one of those courses like Babbel.
Regarding learning a new language: Over the past few years, I’ve been learning Afrikaans – just teaching myself from a book, and also from reading Akrikaans websites and listening to music.
I’ve found it very enjoyable to learn a random new language on my own terms, with no pressure at all. I know most people would be far more advanced than I am at this point, but it’s just something I’ve been doing for my own enjoyment. Certainly a random thing to do, but it’s fun. But I’m still sure my pronunciation is terrible.
I feel this! Self-motivated learning or exercises are a whole different ballgame. My teenage self would raise his eyebrows that my current self often spends Fridays after work voluntarily writing thousand-word essays for a car site.
“The H in Spanish is silent actually, so it’s more like ‘ombray’….”
Do they also roll the “r” in Hombre? Always found that rolling “R” difficult.
Thanks.
Eric, I say this counts as the CC Effect – two Isuzus that you’ve spotted recently.
And Jim beat me to it – it’s “OHM-bray”.
Thanks!
Enjoyed the article and amusing story about the importance of knowing the differences of pronunciation and words in Spain compared to Latin America. Nice pictures of the Isuzu-badged S-10.
Couple stories:
1. Took two semesters of Spanish in high school. First semester teacher was from Mexico; second semester from Cuba. Second semester teacher’s Spanish very different from first and confused me. I gave up Spanish thereafter.
2. I met a Gringo who grew up in Panama. Told the story he was interviewed by one of the Spanish-speaking news stations here about some work he did in Panama. Interview was conducted entirely in Spanish. Off camera, the interviewer commented he spoke very good Spanish, but sounded like a street thug.
3. Knew this fellow in college whose last name was spelled J-O-N-E-S. Turned out he grew up in South America and pronounced his name “Hon-ace.”
Thank you! I guess my takeaway when learning about the different Spanish pronunciations is that like in English, or any other language, there are all kinds of dialects. Depending on who I’m around and by comparison, I feel sometimes like either the most proper-pronunciation person who ever lived, or like I grew up adjacent to the ‘hood – and this is while speaking the way I always do. I guess it all depends.
Great article as always, Joe.
But by focusing on the “Hombre”, you’re not looking at the Isuzu part. I have heard a lot of people (English-speakers, that is) pronounce it as “Izuzu”. Never understood why. It’s nowhere near as challenging to decipher as weirdos like Hyundai or Peugeot, yet many folks can’t seem to manage it.
Ee-SOO-zoo. It’s not hard, hombres.
Thank you, Tatra87! Oh, man – “Izuzu”. That would drive me absolutely nuts. Right up there with “supposably” or “irregardless”.
Passed a Mitsubishi badged Dakota today on the highway. Of course Mazda had Ford produced small pickups and SUVs . This is all quite the opposite of the 70s with Chevrolet LUV , Ford and Dodge badge engineered Japanese built pickups being sold in the USA.
Ah, yes – I always seem to forget about the second iteration of the Mitsubishi Raider!