Curbside Outtake: 1982 Isuzu I-Mark Diesel – Another I-Mark Still Clattering Along After 38 Years

Talk about the CC Effect™. Literally a day after I posted the Olds Diesel Deadly Sin article, in which I said GM should have made a V8 out of the highly reliable Isuzu diesel four, I ran into this sitting at the curb nearby. Yes, there’s another one, a coupe, that I’ve been updating here for a decade now. But two I-Mark diesels! And this one in such nice shape.

So if GM had taken my suggestion, there’d be two dozen GM cars with diesels still clattering away, given how many they made compared to the small number of I-Marks imported. More like a hundred! That’s a truly scary thought. Just as well they didn’t.

When I first approached it, I didn’t want to get my hopes up too high, although a gasser would have been a great find too.

 

I walked to the back…

 

And sure enough.

 

The interior looks quite nice still too.

 

Even a pretty quilt on the back seat. That should have tipped me off as to its owner.

 

A young woman came out of the house next door just as I was shooting. Your I-Mark? It’s a real gem, which is why I’m shooting it.

She told me she bought it a few years back, and it’s been a great car. It’s probably just barely broken in. Many years of good use yet in it; decades, actually.

She got in, started it up, and to the familiar cacophony of an elderly diesel, she drove off. I should have gotten a video.