(first posted 5/2/2017) Many vintage cars and trucks have resurfaced with the warmer, spring weather in Chicago, lately, as if in a swarm. This early Scout II (a 1971 or ’72 model, identifiable by the pattern of the front grille) was one of last week’s finds. Bright, afternoon sunshine just feels so good after being confined to a cubicle and its drab, fluorescent lighting, and fresh air can serve as the perfect antidote to breathing stuffy, recycled office ventilation for eight or nine hours straight.
I had mentioned in a recent post how, since childhood, I’ve often wondered about the lives of drivers and passengers of vehicles spotted in traffic. What could have been involved in the journey of this classic sports utility vehicle from its date of manufacture in Fort Wayne, Indiana to afternoon rush hour in the urban jungle of Chicago’s financial “Loop” district, over forty years later? What follows are the kinds of thoughts and questions that come to my mind.
Perhaps the owner was actually from Ft. Wayne or one of its surrounding areas. Let’s do some quick math – he looks maybe fifty. He might have been an adolescent when the last, ever Scout II rolled off the assembly line in 1980. He had always wanted one, having liked them as a kid, but fast-forwarding to young adulthood and going off to grad school, SUV’s (to which they were not yet commonly referred) were not favored as regular, everyday transportation. He remembers watching the local, Six O’Clock News during family dinner and learning about how International Harvester’s labor disputes and factory strike had affected community morale in a particularly bad way.
His first, new car out of school was an early-90’s Infiniti G20, which he thought of at the time as his “budget” BMW 325i. Fast-forward to five years ago, a buddy with whom he had grown up back in Ft. Wayne had sent him a link from Craigslist advertising our featured truck. It had lower miles, was used but not abused, and most importantly (and rare) of all for the Scout II, it had only a minor smattering of fixable rust.
The renovation, though not as extensive as it might have been, was still costly. When behind the wheel, though, our owner is suddenly transformed into the rugged, adventurous outdoorsman in I-H print ads he remembers from his parents’ National Geographic magazines of the ’70s. His next, great escape now always seems within reach (if not just around the corner), and the restoration project has undoubtedly been worth more than its price.
While driving the Scout in traffic, especially downtown, he continues to be mystified by just how many positive reactions he gets from other drivers and passengers in traffic, and also from pedestrians on the street. “There’s no way they could all be from Ft. Wayne,” he thinks to himself, also patting himself on the back for possessing what must be his inherently good taste.
After all, his Scout is the perfect antithesis of all the cookie-cutter Camrys, Altimas and Tahoes that surround him in city traffic and on the Dan Ryan Expressway. With his hat now under the front seat, the fresh air feels good on his face, and buffeting is only moderate, as the Dan Ryan creeps slowly for much of his drive home. He has long since graduated from that baby Infiniti to a Lexus LS460 that shares his suburban garage with the Scout and his wife’s late-model Audi A4, but only one of these vehicles truly holds his heart.
Then, again, who knows? Maybe he’s just a guy who just simply likes the Scout II. As the CC slogan states, it’s true that every car (and truck) has a story. Given the pristine condition and rarity of our shiny, Tonka-like Scout II, I feel there’s got to be an interesting background here.
Downtown, The Loop, Chicago, Illinois.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017.
For other fans of the Scout II:
Here’s a must-read from JP Cavanaugh: Curbside Classic: 1976 International Scout Terra – The Hometown Truck; and
Here’s a firsthand account of a similar truck from Eric VanBuren (aka Scoutdude): COAL: Cornbinders Of A Lifetime, Part Two: 1973 Scout II Cab Top.
Thank you Dennis for another great read and accompanying photos.
Thanks, Michael. I appreciate that.
Great piece, Joe. You seem to engage in the same kind of mental meanderings that I do when I see an old car. But I would suggest an alternative: the owner’s father was a management guy who worked at International HQ in Chicago. Old Bob bought his Scout with his employee discount and used it on the weekends to take the wife and two small kids camping. The kids got older but Bob kept the Scout, getting body and paint work done every few years. Now that old Bob is gone, his son loves the old Scout. Or not. 🙂
Also, you remind me of two things: First, I keep missing a camouflage-painted Scout II in my area. One of these days I will catch it. Second, am I the only guy here who, when he sees a new Jeep Renegade, has a brain that translates that shape into a Scout II?
Thanks, JP! And I like your story as much (except I didn’t come up with it. 😉 ).
No, the driver seemed to be enjoying this drive just fine.
As for the new Renegade, I can see traces of the Scout in it’s frontal styling, with that blunt nose and twin, round headlights framing a rectangular grille with vertical slots (like the grille of the ’73 & ’74 Scout II).
When I was looking up pictures of the last Scouts, I came across a prototype for the Scout III – and that, to me, looked more like the Renegade.
The SIII styling bucks or the SSV, Scout Supplemental Vehicle Prototype? A couple of the SSVs still exist but the SIII was put on hold, and never made it to the prototype stage because of the SSV program. The SSV was supposed to sell along side the SII and was based on the SII chassis.
Scoutdude, thanks for chiming in (and I was hoping you would).
I guess I was referring to the Scout III SSV prototype, but looking more closely at it, it doesn’t really resemble the current Renegade all that much. Still a very cool-looking truck.
That is one of the SSVs and has nothing to do with the SIII that was abandoned to focus on the SSV. The chassis is all SII.
I saw this one (or one very, very similar) tooling around my neighborhood last summer!
As one of the ads used to say, “Fight back with Scout”.
An antithesis to cookie cutter cars indeed. I had a friend in WI as a teen who swore by Scouts and drove nothing else. By the mid ’90s- he had several due to the rust issues. He finally found a clean ’67 and probably is still driving it.
Those pictures and your narrative brought back those forgotten memories.
Thank you for a wonderful write-up, always look forward to your writing.
I have a reproduction T-Shirt with the “Remember last winter? Fight back with Scout!” logo that the originally used the year after a big winter storm had hit the NE.
Would that be in reference to the s**t the NE dealt with in January – February 1978? ?. Bad times, Bad times! ?
I believe so.
Another great story, Joe… but I gotta ask: How in the heck in the midst of rush hour traffic did you capture BOTH sides of the Scout? Was it two separate sightings perhaps? I know you’re really good with that always ready camera, but these shots look like they would’ve involved some dangerous darting out into traffic resulting in some horn honkage. Yikes!
Simple. It appears that he was on the driver’s side at a crosswalk, and the Scout was sitting there at the red light, while Joseph crossed the street and then kept shooting while the Scout drove off? Make sense?
Exactly this – the stoplight was on my side last Tuesday.
Ok, it makes sense now… duh ? I feel so dumb now. Usually, his “In-Motion Classics” are either a) going by, or b) going around a corner, sometimes even towards him with a left turn so he can get both sides. What I failed to consider was that this time, it was Joseph that was in motion. ? Thanks guys.
Thanks, Retro-Stang Rick! I have run many times with my camera to try to get my shot, but in traffic is off-limits, say, 95% of the time. 🙂
I win some, I lose some.
An orange car will always put a smile on my dial!! The colour is over the top in a good way, and the rest of the vehicle is beautifully judged.. black and orange and stop!
A phenomenal photographic story Joe. I’m thinking the original owners would be similar to the folks in the Mike Mandel/L.A. early 70’s pictures of this weekend? Maybe somone like the suspicious old doll in the Olds 88 with the catseye glasses?
Pikesta, thank you so much. Even if this Scout hadn’t been traffic cone-orange, I’m sure I would have noticed it. 🙂
Of those great pictures from Mike Mandel from yesterday’s post, I’m thinking the Dad (?) in the ’56 Chevy 150 2-door sedan would have been the best candidate of that crop as the original owner of this Scout II.
The thing I found most interesting how close in size the nearby, modern SUV seems to be relative to the Scout. At first, I thought a Chevy Traverse but maybe it’s some sort of Hyundai.
Rudiger, now that you mention it, you’re right. Dimensionally, the Scout and that Hyundai Tuscon next to it in traffic look about the same size. I’d be curious to know the variance.
IH Scout II:
OAL: 166.2″
WB: 100″
W: 70″
H: 65.7″ (though this one is obviously much higher)
2nd-gen Hyundai Tucson:
OAL: 173.6″ (compared to the Scout, more front overhang and less rear)
WB: 103.9″
W: 71.7″
H: 65.2-66.3″
Both vehicles are considered compact in their respective lineups and for their time.
The window shape of the Tucson is definitely reminiscent of the Traverse, but two sizes smaller.
Awesome – thank you for researching and posting this!
Very cool, survivors of these Scouts are rare over here the rust bug munched happily on most of them, but a twin of this one gets posted on a NZ FB classic car page quite regularly, so at least one is still circulating.
It is really had to pin down the exact year of a SII because many got wrecked and repaired with what ever could be found while others got a grille change because the owner liked one better than the other. The 71-2 grille seems to be one of the most popular to swap in place of the later grilles with the plastic insert. On an unaltered rig the fact that the grille was painted body color would make it a 71 while the 72 had a silver-grey grille and was bolted to the valance rather than spot welded like the 71 to facilitate painting them separately. They did the same thing on the 73-4, body color and spot welded in 73, bolted and silver in 74.
The clue that this is probably a different year with a swapped grille is the bright trim on the grille opening. That was part of a package that included stainless vent and roll up window frames along with a trim strip. The lesser models, like mine have those items painted.
Scoutdude, thanks again for your expertise on the subject. I learned a few things today. Often times, when I’m researching model year changes and can’t find exactly what I’m looking for, it’s all about playing “Hocus-Focus” like on the Sunday funnies to see what’s different from year to year. This info is helpful.
Any chance you’ll post a picture of your Scout? No pressure.
I’ll do better than just post a single picture, here are the COALs on my SIIs.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-cornbinders-of-a-lifetime-part-two-1973-scout-ii-cab-top/
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-cornbinders-of-a-lifetime-part-three-1972-scout-ii-traveltop/
Awesome. (Dumb search engine – how did I miss these? 🙂 ) If you don’t mind, I’d like to link your orange ’73 post to this one.
No problem
”It is really had to pin down the exact year of a SII because many got wrecked and repaired with what ever could be found while others got a grille change because the owner liked one better than the other.”
Or got a grill change because one of the owners had too much fun with his Scout. I recall chatting with the owner of a Scout II several years ago when I arrived at an event in an FJ40 Land Cruiser, and he soon tracked me down to talk about 4x4s. He eventually mentioned that he had just had a load of fun driving cross country through old fences, and I noticed that his Scout had a rather beat up front end. I assumed that the fences needed to be replaced, and he wasn’t engaging in any hooliganism, and just smiled and chuckled.
Great pictures! I love how the big, bold ORANGE Scout stands out so much, against the pale commuter pods in the picture. This could be an ad for one of those companies that modernizes old 4×4’s. Sure, cars are way better constructed nowadays, but we definitely lost something style-wise in the process.
My dad’s best friend used scouts for his snowplow business forever ! When he finally retired in the early nineties I think it was as much to do with not being able to find another reasonable non rusted scout in eastern Ontario as anything!
I can remember him having a couple on the road at any one time and the rusted out hulk’s of their predecessors in the field out back…. all in the company tremclad purple!
We had a IH and Jeep dealer (the Wagoneer was Well known as the Duxbury Cadillac) in our beach town. Internationals had great powertrains, I remember starting a torquey 345 Scout from zero in 4th gear without much drama.But they where the worst when it came to rust. A friend that lived on the beach new Scout had rust holes after 6 months! The Travelall and pickup where popular as well.
Six months? That’s probably on par with an early Chevy Vega!
Our neighbors across the street in Flint had a Travelall that was later replaced by an 80’s Caprice Classic wagon. That Travelall was maybe two, or maybe three, I remember ever seeing in and around Flint when I was growing up there.
Probably right on the Vega rust, if they could be driven on the beach.(its like driving on salted roads year round.)
Thanks, everyone, for taking the time. International Harvester (and its fantastic, Raymond Loewy-designed “I-H” logo) will always have a place with me. My grandfather used to let my brother and me drive his I-H Cub Cadet riding mower around their farm (mowing apparatus detached, of course), which are some of my earliest, fond memories of “driving” something.
To this day, my younger brother still talks about having gotten the throttle control all the way up to “full rabbit” on that thing (which our grandparents forbade). He might have, but part of me wants to call B.S. LOL
Even this “green bleeder” is developing a soft spot for IHs, both in the field and on the road. Especially those 2+2 tractors. Man, were those “anteaters” neat or what?
Joe, picture #2 is practically a work of art! The way the vertical black windows of the building echo the horizontal white bars of the crosswalk. The way the Scout is perfectly positioned between the 2 anonymous white cars. The way the scene is almost entirely monochromatic except for the blazing orange awesomeness of the Scout. If I were the owner of that Scout I’d frame that sucker!
Superb find and photography as usual, Joseph, and having been a middle aged guy (42 at the time) with an early 1970s open topped SUV in recent years, I can attest to ownership of a vehicle like this Scout being the product of some unusual coincidences and a great pleasure while it lasted. In my case, I happened to drive past a very nicely restored and modified (Chevy 350 V8, big wheels and tires, and a lift) FJ40 Land Cruiser with a For Sale sign within walking distance of my house, and I had to buy it. I have never experienced a vehicle that brought out so many positive reactions in people — men, women, young, old, car people, car-indifferent. Every drive involved thumbs-up from passing drivers pausing to check out the vehicle, and someone smiling and asking me questions every time that I parked (I learned to set aside 5 to 10 minutes every trip to talk to people). After several years I decided to sell it, but of course I regret having done so. This Scout no doubt has an equally or more interesting story to it.
Brings back good memories. My Scoutmaster in the mid 70s had a green one of these, with the hard top. In addition to hauling us Boy Scouts, it was his work truck ( he ran a garage).
Now I’m the Scoutmaster (but on the other coast), there’s not really anything equivalent these days. I drive my scouts around in an old Outback instead…at least it’s 4wd like the Scout.
Scouts in a Scout. That is excellent, Craig.
Great writeup as per usual, JD! I cant get enough of these old school open top bobtail 4x4s…having owned 5 Jeep CJs/Wranglers, I can assure you that until you’ve driven a few of them on a nice day opened up like this…you cant possibly imagine how much fun they really are. Out doing some trail riding is the most fun, but even in an urban setting it just doesn’t get much better. Whoever called the shots on the resto-mod really nailed it too. No dumb blingy 20″ wheels, rows of LED lights, or any other gimmickry. The clean and simple look allows the appeal of this thing to shine right through. Great catch!
Nice, reminds me of my old orange 79 Scout II Traveller, although mine was more of a tangerine color.
I have a “soft spot” for the Scout, My grandfather, who was the biggest “Ford Man” in the family (or was he just really anti GM?!) had several International pickups and lastly a 2nd gen Travelall. When I asked him why International, (seeing how Ford was pretty successful with light trucks!) His response was “International made TRUCKS not cars.”, International would themselves ply this very concept in Scout ads: “… anything less is just a car”…. ?
At one point these were “company cars” for middle management in my old neighborhood. The IH parts Depot is now Broadview Square mall. Mom and Dad still have bricks from the old building.
Don’t ask Dad what he thinks of Archie McCardell. You don’t have time.
Always loved Internationals in all their forms. As a kid I understood the logo perfectly, It looked just like my Dad driving away on his tractor, even though his tractor was a Massey Ferguson, at least it was red.
I think I can see dual exhausts on this Scout, so I imagine it would have been making a beautiful sound in those city streets.
Love the story. Love the color. We won’t call it Kubota orange.
I’m an I-H guy all the way. I have owned or had contact with Cub, Super A, 140, 424, and 484 tractors, L, R, B, S, VCO, CO4070 A and B, 4200, 4300 (the old long nose ones) 9300 trucks.
Down to just ownership of a 140 industrial tractor with factory yellow paint.
We won’t call it Persian Orange either. 🙂
The color is more or less Omaha Orange.
It happens every spring In New York City too. A Urban Cowboy Riding a Bronco.
I live in Chicago and see that Scout near my sons school in Lincoln Park, when I drop my son off. The driver usually has his kids in the back, so he must be dropping his kids off at school too. Given the neighborhood, I always just assumed he was some rich guy who bought a restored toy. I like your story better, even if I doubt it is correct.
One of my childhood neighbors was a retired rural mail carrier and for a long time he drove a retired Scout that had seen post office duty. Whenever my dad saw it drive by, he would say that International engineered themselves out of business by making their products too well.
Another from the “you never see ’em anymore” file. There seemed to be a good number of Scouts around when I was a kid, and I knew someone in college who had a later one (’78 maybe?) but they’re all pretty much gone today. This bright orange rig is a nice sight, especially against the muted colors of the cityscape. Great story too!
I saw a few of these in Australia back in the day but not many. Not much of a market for them. Farmers clung to their Land Rovers except of a few who tried Land Cruisers or Patrols, and city folk weren’t buying this sort of thing yet.
Here’s a green one…
Most Internationals in NZ had an A prefix meaning Australian built, they made bloody good trucks in all sizes and must have sold well, 7 pickups were rebodied as coupes for rep use could be more but at least 7.
Scouts may have been made in Ft. Wayne’s, but IH itself has a long history in Chicago. Wouldn’t be surprised to find out your Scout owner was somehow associated with IH way back when.
I miss Scouts. I miss IH light trucks too. Perhaps they would have failed eventually, but their departure from the market was surely hastened by one man, the infamous Archie McCardell. In the annals of corporate board mismanagement, hiring Archie McC proved to be a disastrous decision by the IH board. Keeping him on as long as they did compounded the mistake and left IH twisting in the wind for a few years after the board finally did muster the courage to fire the arrogant idiot. Regardless of how you feel about their products, the story of IH is a real business tragedy.
My BIL had one very similar to this, red in color, was a fun vehicle to ramble about in, met an untimely end when his angrty, soon to be ex wife opened the hood and ripped out every wire she could find, and then went under the dash and did the same thing.