It’s a fair question as to whether these Mazda-built Couriers were as tough as the Toyota pickup back in the day, but this one seems up to the task of hauling that pint-sized Tacoma in its bed.
We’ve done a full CC on these before, but the short (bed) story is of course that Ford wanted in on the booming mini-pickup market that was pioneered by Datsun here and eventually dominated by Toyota. The result was a Mazda B-Series pickup federalized and sold by Ford with its name proudly on the tailgate starting in 1972. The Courier name had been previously used by Ford for its sedan deliveries, so that was a logical choice.
Under the hood there was of course Mazda’s familiar “large” (UB/NA/VC/MA) SOHC four, in 1.8 L form for the Courier. That was eventually increased to the 2.0L version in the next generation, which also offered the Ford 2.3 Lima (“Pinto”) engine as an option. The Mazda four was a tough number, and its relatively long stroke gave it useful low-end grunt, but just not a lot on the high end.
Mazda’s slick-shifting manual was 4-speed standard, and a 5-speed became optional in 1976. A three-speed automatic was also on tap, but these trucks rather called for a stick.
This is a very clean survivor whose hauling days are likely well over unlike a number of similar vintage Toyotas that are still beasts of burdens. So maybe the question has been answered?
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1976 Ford Courier – The Second Toughest Old Mini-Pickup?
CC Capsule: 1973 Ford Courier – Far From F’d
CC Capsule: Ford Courier – A Survivor of The Lesser Pickup Epoch
I love it, brings back so many memories .
Hard to find one in good nick like this these days .
-Nate
+1
I second your thoughts. I truly love this find, and in outstanding condition too!
Ford did a significantly better job of making a Japanese truck look like part of the Ford family than Chevrolet did with the Isuzu.
These always remind me of a 67 Ford Falcon.
But then the Isuzu was made from the front half of the Florian sedan, which was rather highly/peculiarly styled in the first place. The Mazda had no car equivalent, and almost looked like it could have been bent up from flat stock on a sheet metal brake, in comparison. Much more trucklike!
My first behicle was a 76 Courier, bought used for me so I could drive back and forth to my summer job in 1983, the summer before my senior year in college. It served me well. Learned to drive stick in it, via trial by fire: Dad showed up after work with it one day and said,”here drive home”. Later that week my em0loyer gave me a piece of Kydex to patch the floor, and I used spray foam as a base to build new fiberglas rocker panels.
One interesting note – there was a running change in 1976, and the later ones got the slightly larger cab of the next gen Mazda / Courier with a more rounded back wall. Mine was the later version. (Still small inside though.)
I put 50k miles on it in 4 years. It wasn’t trouble free (far from it) but it never stranded me, and even started every morning at -20°.
Fabulous condition for one of these trucks considering their bodies were beat to crap within five years by most owners. Fortunately, whether Datsun, Toyota, or Mazda they had sturdy mechanicals to see them through life.
It seems like it was always possible to identify a ‘chicken tax’ imported compact pickup back in the day by the pickup bed (added after the cab/chassis arrived in the states) due to the numerous tie-down hooks that surrounded the bed rails.
Toyota’s compact pickup used a similar bed and the feature Courier, likewise, has the hooks in spades. I’m going to guess that the pickup beds were all built by the same US manufacturer. I could even see the beds themselves being identical, with the only difference being a tailgate with a different brand name.
I wondered how these got around the “chicken tax”. i guess adding the bed in the US, and it having those hooks to make it more of a “work truck” compared to the smooth sides you got from the domestically built trucks later (Ranger, S10, etc).
It hadn’t occurred to me that the bed-hooks were there for the specific intent of making these compact Japanese trucks appear to be more of a commercial vehicle than civilian. It certainly makes sense, though, given that they all seemed to have them.
Plus, there’s no denying that many of them were, indeed, used as commercial trucks.
I kind of think the hooks were there in typical Japanese fashion in order to add utility and usefulness to their vehicles as standard much like many other features that did the same. Look in most any pickup today and you’ll be surprised by the general lack of tie-down spots/rings/hooks, having them where these had them on the outside of the bed makes tying a larger load down or covering with a tarp of whatever super simple. It may have been easier to do back in the day of single wall beds too, the ’84-and-newer Toyotas as a random example stopped offering them, perhaps due to having a smoother bedside without the “rail” at the top like this one and the older offerings in general.
Whether “commercial” or ‘civilian”, everyone needs to or wants to tie their load down.
Back in the peak of the mini truck boom I used to make road trips to CA once or twice per year. It seems like pretty much every trip included spotting 3-5 or more trailers full of Toyota beds heading from southern CA north to Tacoma the port of entry for a lot of those trucks.
Gadzooks, even these earlier JDM Mazdas appear to have your US made bed! It certainly makes sense, doesn’t it?
A number of the mini trucks, from all manufacturers, were owned by friends and many appeared at our Ozark stream frontage farm, usually with a dirt bike in the bed, along with other essentials like a beer keg, etc. My Boss at the Solar home design/Build outfit, a very “Mother Earth News” type of concern, was also a fan of Datsuns. So I occasionally had access to one. I was impressed enough to consider purchasing, but never did. The single wall beds showed all manner of outward dent form shifting loads. then the tinworm would attack. When a truck became a necessity in my rehabbing an old Edwardian in St. Louis, a full size Chevy was the choice.
These were great little trucks. As a kid on Vancouver Island, they were everywhere.
In 1987, I was sick of driving taxi, so I got a job at the local Mazda dealer. The B2200 truck was by far my favourite vehicle sold there. That’s saying something because Mazda has some really good product at the time.
A later (77-85) Mazda was a fixture in my neighborhood for years and showed signs of regular work use. It as recently replaced by a Transit Connect, make of that what you will. My only experience with this generation Courier was a U-Haul box truck. It’s odd to think mini trucks with boxes and flatbeds and even mini dualies used to be common
I drove several of these at work, and also had a friend who owned one (he was a coworker, and he liked the ones at work so much he bought one of his own). We had sticks and automatics, early and late models, and I loved them all; one of my favorite vehicles. Good times.
This featured truck is in great shape.
My dad had a ’75 Toyota Hilux shortbed with 5 spd manual that I contributed to its beating, but damn it was fun to drive and the Corolla motor could kick ass. It was a major factor in me getting my own truck, the ’82 Toyota SR-5 which I had for 14 years, and might still have if it wasn’t so rusted out (those chicken tax beds rusted much more rapidly than the rest of it). When I finally became a homeowner in 2000, the need for a truck was overwhelming, so I got a ’01 Nissan Frontier I4/5 speed manual regular cab (by then king cabs dominated the market) which I still have @289,000 miles, and worth keeping since it’s analog to today’s digital cars. I still would like to see some small trucks on the road instead of these lifted behemoths that like the 4×4 SUV of yore that most have never worked a day in their lives doing what they were meant to do as a truck. The specimen seen here is like the the optimal size for a homeowner to do some dirty jobs, and it serves either as a 2nd vehicle or as a truck. As for the Hilux, my dad eventually gave it to a friend of his who was down on his luck, and decided that a minivan devoid of its 2nd and 3rd row seats was the preferred cargo carrier to an open bed.
We had the Mazda originals, great utes they could take a thrashing and come back for more providing the timing chain was changed regularly,Govt dept I worked for had several
I hired a Mazda ute to collect a dead car I bought I told them why I wanted a ute and what I would do with it and Avis handed me the keys, I towed a large heavy tandem axle recovery trailer with a 55 Austin Westminster aboard, engine out and on the flat deck approx 21/2 tonnes back to where I lived ok it struggled to stop all that and traffic lights were a problem but I made it 1.8 engine, I suspect it was more than recommended towing weight but Avis was right I didnt need a Holden 1 tonner or Falcon/Valiant ute I’d requested.
As far as I recall in Zambia on the mines in the 70s the pickups were mostly Mazda and Datsun with some Toyota thrown in and that all had the tie down hooks so that’s nothing to do with chicken tax.
My parents had a Courier when I was a kid. It had a few gremlins, as I recall, but no major failures. I couldn’t tell you what year or generation it was; probably one of the earlier ones. All I could say for sure is it was white and a stick shift.
Anyway, here’s the crazy part: I’m from a family of seven, and I remember on a few occasions all of us cramming into it. That would probably have been at the latest, when the oldest of us was eleven or twelve, and the youngest was around four. I think three of the seats involved were laps (including the driver). Now, this was pretty rare – my foggy childhood memory suggests something like 5 times – and only going a few miles to family friends to drop off a goat or pick up some hay or something.
Still, there was an accident: Dad went to pass a truck with a hay bale on it – one that was obscuring the tail lights – and the truck turned into us. Turns out it was coasting up to a turn, but hard to tell since the signals were blocked. Thankfully this was pretty low speed and nobody was hurt. I’m sure my parents would be locked up and we’d have been turned over to the questionable foster care system (I’ll take my chances in the overloaded Courier, thank you) if they tried that today. For my part I take some old-school, Montana redneck pride being able to tell a story like that. Just don’t tell NHTSA, please. Based on the PSAs, they’re already convinced I’m a perpetual drunk itching to get behind the wheel and too stupid to figure out a seat belt even on the one day a month I’m sober…
I worked with a tool and die maker who put a Ford 260 V-8 in his. It was a clean little rig but he said it got a little squirrelly in the rain🤐