About this time last year I was laid off from my job of 12+ years (and feeling lost). With time on my hands I posted a few short items here, which was a highlight of my unexpected break. In March of 2020, I was lucky enough to land a new job with better pay, just before the pandemic put most of my area in lockdown. As an essential worker, I started putting in 50-55 hour weeks, leaving no time for my CC habit. This was a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things, to which my wife would say: “Cue the smallest violin in the world, Dude.”
Fast forward to this Christmas season, and I’m feeling connected, hopeful, and blessed. My family is well and working from home, which is all you can hope for. And in a world gone mad, I know I can always come back to the one thing that makes me feel good: OLD CARS! So, this holiday season my gift to you is a Toy Truck. What could be better?
The beautiful blue long-bed at the top is for Johnny, who was a good boy all year long. This little white (?) 4-gen is for Bart, who was bad. In fact, I think Bart must be sleeping in the cab right now because the windows are fogged up from the inside. Hmm.
This great-looking 3-gen is a true survivor, and would have been perfect for Marty McFly if “Back to the Future” had been filmed a couple of years earlier. This old thing has traveled well through time, as most of its cohort are clapped out beyond all reason.
Here is a nice pair of Tundras for Bobby and Susie. And if those GMC ads have taught us anything, it’s that Susie will go for the manlier green machine, leaving the red one for Bobby. With the front-mounted jack and winch, at least he’ll get out of the snowbank.
A banana-yellow 2-gen shot in Bow, WA, where old hippies go to dye. This could be a daily driver since it’s never in the same place when I visit. Maybe this little hauler is truly Santa’s sleigh.
This 4-gen has patina to burn, with a sun-baked hood that seems all but impossible here in the rainy northwest. Of all the trucks here, this is the one that would suit me best. If only the guy down the street would put it under my tree.
Finally, I will leave you with a truck that is definitely not a Toy. An old Willys festooned with holiday finery. So here’s hoping you all get that Toy Truck you’ve been hoping for, whether it’s a nice import or American muscle. Best wishes to all this holiday season!
If you want to know where all of these small trucks went, I can tell you!
They are in Mexico!
For many years, until maybe recently, I would see caravans of these small trucks being towed by vehicles with Mexico license plates on them, on Hwy 59 South (heading to Mexico) in SW Houston. I don’t care what time of night it was or what day, but when I would be coming or going to go dance at night, I would invariably see these convoys. That told me that these small older trucks were constantly being transferred to Mexico. This went on for years! I would suspect that they finally got all that they could get, and hence I don’t see the convoys or many of them anymore. It was amazing, sort of like the replacement for the Mexico VW bug, which was so popular in Mexico. Many thousands must have been taken to Mexico! I should have taken photos!
Over on the west Coast, I’ve seen convoys of one Toyota pickup towing another heading south on I-5, moving quite slowly up the OR and N. CA passes throughout the 00’s anyway.
More recently I used to see an older car carrier that would park in a lot near the freeway where they loaded up the old Toyota pickups.
I assume they were heading to Mexico since they couldn’t be registered in CA.
Which model years does each styling generation of these correspond to?
I think I know what you meant by “Toy”: Toyota! Otherwise I’ve already got what I want: my 2011 Ranger. Even the cheapest (or most basic) new models–see right–would be too much for my average use, though I like the fact Ford put amber turn signals back in the tail lights for the first time since ’99, IF you exclude the ’05-’07 STX which borrowed the “upside-down” ones used by Mazda; the B-Series never did away with them. Ironically, the current Toyota Tacoma no longer has amber lights after always having them since its ’95 introduction.
What I did with my Ranger back in April was find a pair of ’93-’97 tail lights with the wiring harnesses intact & splice them in with my existing wiring in conjunction with the tail light converter needed to power the brake light in my camper shell. Although the shape & overall layout of the lens is the same as the ’06-’11–the shape never changed–there was apparently a slight change in the body after 2000 in that location as the screw holes didn’t line up directly with the mounting brackets, but a surprising consequence happened: with the lenses wedged in where they would otherwise go I only needed ONE screw to hold each one firmly in place, as opposed to 4 from the factory setup. So now I have separate turn signals just like I did on my ’96 Aerostar, except the hazard flashers still run through the brake lights (including the camper shell) due to the nature of the tail light converter. The point of all this work: amber turn signals (or separate at all) are more visible & therefore safer.
I still have a lust for the ’80s-’90s old-style Toyotas & Nissans though, especially the 4×4 versions. The ’85-vintage SR5 still looks attractive even today (I found an ad from the back of an old National Geographic magazine). But with the Ranger I love the fact you can still get factory replacement parts for a design that has stayed mostly uniform since 1993. I don’t have 4WD but DO have Cooper Discoverer AT3 4S all-terrain tires which can get me far enough off-road without breaking the bank at the gas station. 😉
Seasons Greetings! You’re blessed to have made it through this tough year.
I can’t help but think of the Hilux – a favorite around the world – especially in developing countries, where they are workhorses.
Curious thing: in South America aside from the perennial best seller Ford F100 pickup, Toyota took a long two decades’ effort to convince customers their Hilux was the most reliable pickup ever. Meanwhile, until Toyota gained his Number #1 reputation and #1 best selling pickup in the region as it’s leading today among ALL Latino countries, just think back 1984 when Ford F100 series was always the unbeatable #1 but guess who tiny pickup was the #2 best selling before Toyotas? You got it: Peugeot 504 pickups .
The pacific northwest has that special preservation weather. Seems like only minimal car care and cleaning is required for a very long lifespan. Being a Minnesotan it’s a once a year occurrence to see just one truck of this vintage on on of our streets and always in the summer. Seeing these pictures has brought back memories of relatives that have since passed from Puyallup, Seattle and Raymond in a good way. Remembering the smell of douglas fir turbo charging my olfactory sense crossing the Cascades. My Grandfather had a Datsun Sundowner that still looked good after 30 years. He was the frugal type to maybe get a carwash once a year.
I don’t know about that since fir and pine trees, mixed with water, don’t get along with many cowls parked under them. My girlfriend, back in 1982, had a Datsun 610 pickup which lived in San Francisco and Sonoma. At 10 years old it was quite the crusty thing around the cowl, lower corners of the front window and the lower corner of the fender.
When I bought my 65 F100 the inside the side vents, Paul knows, the area was packed with pine needles when I put my hand in. While the metal was rough there was no rust through which was amazing even if San Jose lived.
The other problem we see in the PNW is shown on the truck that is white, OK white under all the growth. It starts with pollen which sticks well to the car and provides a secure anchor and nutrition fold mold to grow. Eventually that gives a place for other things to anchor and grow.
These vehicles seem mostly to be from in and around Bellingham, WA. Like Paul’s home of Eugene it is a college town that is small enough that commutes are short yet big enough so that there isn’t a need and/or desire to travel to “the big city” very frequently. So part of the reason they last so long is that many of the cars rack up miles quite slowly.
I think I saw that blue truck that is parked in front of the front yard garden a couple of weeks ago when showing a house in the Sunnyland neighborhood. I got there a little early so I drove by the house I lived in for a couple of years back in the 80’s. Of course yards like that and Toyota pickups of that era and color are common all around Bellingham.
Well I,m often called Johnny so I would gladly take that blue Toyota for Christmas 🙂
In Australia, we cant get a nice styled bed on a basic single cab Hilux, only an admittedly more practical, but ugly flat tray like this, though most are white with an aluminium tray.
Well my xmas present to me was another classic, the Hillman broke something serious in the engine I went down to look a picked up 3 free engines to make one of and dropped in on an old friend who is aging out of old toys cars engines phone phonographs the lot and prised his Superminx estate away from him very original car still has the factory paint, drives well and runs almost silentlyI drove it back to north Auckland last week now it sits in a friends shed awaiting repairs while I went back xmas day and filled my Citroen with the parts that came with it hardly any of which it needs plus a trailer load of gearboxes an engine and other bits, now to sort it all for keeping or selling on big job.
These are still all over my town but it’s nice to see this presentation of photos and narrative. Thanks! The two most recent households that have moved into our block each have an older Toy, one “4th Gen” (‘84-ish) and one the following gen (‘88+), both basic 2wd. There are enough around that they’re still easy to find for sale but prices are still going up. A truck that might have been $2K ten years ago is now $3K or more, and has another 100,000 miles of use and patina – or decay. By the way, just to be a nit-picker, the driveway shot of the “pair of Tundra’s” is actually a Tundra and a 1st Gen regular cab (aka RC) Tacoma.