(first posted 6/3/2016) I spotted this Suzuki Samurai in traffic just a few weeks ago. With “WASH ME” etched presumably by finger into the mud caked onto the passenger side door, it appeared to be the only Samurai I’ve ever seen in person that looked like it had actually been taken off-road. Aside from being dirty, the body looked incredibly straight, and it sounded good to boot. It triggered flashbacks of my own adolescent aspirations to purchase a new vehicle of my own.
I was a newspaper delivery boy for the Flint Journal from the summer of 1987 through the fall of ’90. While not an actual “job” job like at a supermarket or mall kiosk, it was my first taste of employment and responsibility outside of my parents’ household. I had to be home promptly by the time the newspaper bundles were delivered to my house on weekday afternoons, and I also had to be up at the crack of dawn to make deliveries on weekends.
I developed skills to quickly rubber-band (or bag on rainy days) the individual newspapers after stuffing them with advertisements, to figure out and memorize the most efficient path to traverse my route, to accurately throw and land papers on porches as I rode my bike, and in persistence and courtesy in dealing with my customers – some of whom were occasionally irate when I had accidentally banged their metal screen doors. It was a great job for a kid that taught me a lot about myself, others, and business, in general.
Part of what I did with my projected earnings was estimate what I could buy if I saved every penny. (I quickly learned that it’s not your money until you actually collect it from your customers.) A brand-new Suzuki Samurai convertible like our featured car was one such object of my adolescent desire. I had a copy of the 1988 new car pricing guide from Consumer Guide which I pored over until most pages were either dog-eared, covered with Cheetos dust, or both. My goal was to save enough money from my paper route in order to afford a new car by the time I was sixteen in a handful of years and could legally drive on my own.
I didn’t want a Yugo. By the time I was delivering newspapers, Yugos were considered awful by most kids roughly my age, and some were already being scrapped after just a few years of use. A new Chevy Sprint (starting at $6,380) would have been more affordable than the Samurai, but it was, well, a Chevy Sprint – not a bad car, but not worth the sacrifice of everything from Atari games and birthday money, to my annual trip to Cedar Point amusement park. A new Pontiac (née Daewoo) LeMans would have been about 25% cheaper than the $7,995 Samurai, but again, not my jam. The Samurai appealed to my pre-teen brain on several levels: it seemed new and novel, like a small truck for the same money as “just” a car, and it was a convertible! What kid hasn’t dreamed of owning a convertible?
How my goal of saving for car ownership actually played out in real-life is a different story. My “Samurai Fund” was leaky – trickling into the Genesee Valley Mall, Playland Arcade, East Village Video, or the local convenience store on my block. I wasn’t going to Convenient Food Mart to try to illegally buy cigarettes, or anything. At that stage of my life, I was far too afraid of getting in trouble. I’d go to the corner store to break bills to make change for my newspaper customers when collecting for the month, and would usually end up spending some of my money on candy, gum, a Wet Willie frozen slush, or a quick game of Shinobi, a favorite video game of the era. That stuff all adds up, so, ultimately, no Samurai for Joe.
Nonetheless, the sight of this Samurai reminded me of a time when all of my earnings went for leisure, toys and fun, with none of it going toward living expenses and bills. Hopefully, the next generation of Dennises will be more prudent with their earnings than I was – that is, without sacrificing the joys of being just a kid with a paper route and the dream owning a new car.
Downtown, The Loop, Chicago, Illinois.
Monday, May 16, 2016.
The photo of the author was taken in the East Village neighborhood of Flint, Michigan.
Some time around or in 1989.
Related reading:
- From Gerardo Solis: QOTD: Would You Buy A New Suzuki Jimny?; and
- From Ed Stembridge: Roadside Outtakes: “Roller Girl” – Suzuki Samurai Soldiers On.
I see a little white hardtop Samurai occasionally…clean, relatively speaking, and not very rusty. There’s something so basic and simple about these that I find very appealing.
Nicely written story too, brings back teen car memories for me too. My car reality was a rusty 69 VW Beetle…nasty old thing but it got me to parties and work.
Thanks, CincyDavid. Isn’t it funny how cars we wanted to hate that served us well end up with our begrudging affection?
http://www.suzukiconversion.com/suzuki_v8.htm
The scary thing to me is that there are people who do engine swaps on these little truck-lets. That’s like strapping a 20 hp go cart engine to a skateboard.
They take the Tim Taylor approach to any situation: “MORE POWER!”
With the 10 gallon tank on the Suzuki, they’re going to be stopping a lot!
I would be afraid that anything with over 90 horsepower would twist the frame of a Samurai in two. The Samurai redefined “tinny”. A Samurai with a V8 in it would be terrifying.
A coworker has a TDI swap in his.
What a great trip back to the world of young Joe. Wasn’t it great? – every dime we made got to be spent on fun stuff. I blew a lot of my money in $2.25 increments on model car kits. My middle son is in the process of transitioning into that phase of life involving paying his way for necessities, and hoping there is enough leftover for the fun stuff.
There was something about that Samurai that was appealing on several levels. I was a fair bit older than you were, but I found them cool too, and still do. And what a great name – not enough Japanese cars embrace their Japanese-ness with a name that could only come from one place.
Thanks, JP, and I hadn’t thought about the U.S. naming of “Samurai”. Stroke of brilliance, in my opinion. Also sounds much better than “Jimny” – most U.S. buyers would have tried to buy a vowel.
Plus it probably would have got them sued by GM for being too close to the GMC Jimmy.
An excellent point.
Had a girlfriend that had a black ’85 ‘Sammy’ hardtop. It had a small lift kit on it, but still had skinny white spoke wheels and street tires on it. It was like a little mountain goat going off road. Lot’s of fun. But on the street if you went around a corner a little to fast, you could feel the rear wheel lift off the ground.
One time as I was moving my ’70 C10 with my 29 ft. 5th wheel trailer out of a spot on a dirt road, the clutch blew a couple of hundred feet before I got to a paved road. We hooked the little Samurai to the truck with trailer with a chain, put it in 4WD low range in 1st gear, let the clutch out, and with all four tires spinning at first it pulled all three off the trail and onto the paved road, just like a little bulldozer. The rest of the day was spent pulling the Chevy’s clutch and using my parts lifetime warranty to take the clutch remains (no lining on disc at all, just the metal plate) to the parts store and get it’s replacement installed.
Impressive little machine.
Wow, you had to collect the money? That’s rough – here, you were paid by the newsagent.
I recal that my mother went back to college (and ultimately dropped out) when I was about 11, and as soon as she started the course I was planning what car my parents would buy with the extra income once she graduated. Of course I assumed they would want to spend all of it on car loan payments, which led to me considering some pretty glamorous options.
My parents did rent a Spanish-built Suzuki Santana in Tenerife in 1989. My sister and I thought it was incredibly cool, but it was mainly incredibly uncomfortable. Some rental companies were offering Portuguese-built Mini Mokes at the time, which might have been even more fun.
I had forgotten all about Shinobi!
Tonito, collecting was my bane!! LOL I’m more of a “practiced extrovert” these days, but it used to take a little self-pep-talk to get ready to ring my neighbors’ doorbells. I remember occasionally seeing the eyehole in the door darken, some mumbling, and then hear soft footsteps away from the door. That was demoralizing.
What you say about the ride of these is consistent with everything I’ve ever read, but I’m liking hearing love for the Samurai.
And Shinobi is my jam, especially the bonus round on the third screen. I kind of feel like I have to find it at one of the local retro video game places around Chicago before too long.
I had a paper route for several months in 1995. I was 24 years old at the time, trying to make ends meet during a period when I was just out of school, and was having no luck finding a job in my field. My recollection is that by that point, the newspaper had gone entirely to adult carriers, who were expected to make deliveries by car – in my case, a 1987 Chevrolet Cavalier two-door hatchback.
At that time, the newspaper offered customers the choice of paying the newspaper directly by mailing in a check, or leaving payment out in an envelope for the carrier. For customers in the latter group, I was charged the wholesale cost of the paper, and it was my responsibility to collect the money. Some customers paid regularly, some only if prompted, some rarely if ever.
If a customer didn’t pay, it was not easy to get them terminated for non-payment. You couldn’t simply terminate them if they hadn’t paid for ‘x’ length of time. I don’t remember all the details, but you had to demonstrate that you had made efforts to collect the money, including leaving them notes, calling them on the phone, attempting to collect in person, etc. I mostly left my deadbeat customers notes with papers, as I had no interest in running my own little collections agency in my spare time. I understand why the newspaper didn’t want to make it too easy for customers to be terminated – the newspaper obviously didn’t want to lose customers, and didn’t want to deal with irate people who felt they had been unfairly termed for being “just a little late” in paying their bill. But the system they had in place made it so difficult to term people that it really enabled customers who couldn’t be bothered to pay their bill.
This was compounded by the fact that most people didn’t realize – or I’m sure in some cases, didn’t care – that their carrier was being charged for the papers they delivered. When I left the route, I left notes for all my customers explaining why I needed them to be current with their bills as of the date I left the route (I had paid the wholesale cost of all the papers I delivered up to that point, but would no way of ever recouping the money once I was no longer doing the route). Some did what I asked them to do. Many did not.
I have been a customer of this newspaper myself off-and-on over the years, and at some point they began requiring all customers to pay the newspaper directly (by check, credit card, debit card, etc.).
Another thing the newspaper used to do back when I had that paper route: if a customer called with a complaint about a paper, they would give them my phone number, and direct them to call me. When I first started the route, for example, I got several calls from customers with very detailed instructions about where they wanted their paper left. Two especially memorable calls:
–My wife once fielded a call from a customer unhappy that his Sunday paper had gotten wet. This was a perfectly legitimate complaint. He was one of the first customers on my route, and it had been dry out when I delivered his paper (which is why I didn’t bag it), but it later started to rain. And as luck would have it, the location where his paper was left was in the open, with no porch or awning. So I have no doubt that his paper got wet. For reasons that I did not understand, however, he insisted that it had been raining when I delivered his paper, but I had deliberately chosen not to bag it. I am guessing that he had no idea how early his paper was delivered, that it was raining when he woke up, and he therefore assumed that it must have been raining when I delivered the paper. He was also upset when my wife told him that I wasn’t home from the route yet for him to talk to (she had no way of reaching me; this was before cell phones had become near-universal, and I didn’t have one at the time). Again, I am guessing that he had no idea how many customers were on my route and how long it took to complete it (and/or didn’t especially care).
–In the first week after I stopped doing the route, I got a few calls from customers complaining that they hadn’t gotten a paper, or that the paper had not been left in the specific location they wanted it left at. I don’t know if they had called and gotten my number while I was doing the route, or if the newspaper’s database hadn’t yet been updated to reflect that change. When I left, I actually left a route list with delivery instructions to pass on to my replacement, but I have no idea if anyone ever used it, or if writing it up was a waste of time on my part.
I delivered papers at around the same time and the collections experience was more or less the same. I think I was at the end of the paper “boy” era as the other newspaper in the city had switched to adult carriers with cars. I would run into him every now and then, I knew he made more money but I remember hoping that I didn’t have his job when I was his age. He definitely was warmer in his car than I was on my bike though.
I remember running into the milkman too, that must have been the very end of that era as well. I think only one of my customers was also a milkman customer and they had a large brood.
Customers loved to blame me for the rain too, I should have figured out how to predict it would rain hours after I delivered them.
The newspaper was always pushing us to go door-to-door soliciting more subscriptions. I avoided these as best as I could, the bonus offered was never worth it. I don’t even try to be an extrovert, so I don’t think I ever signed up a new subscription.
When I had my paper route as a 10-11 year old kid, the biggest problem was deadbeats who wouldn’t pay. I was responsible for collecting all money, would get stories like I cancelled the paper, never ordered it, etc. Amazing how many adults had no problem screwing over a kid just trying to make a few bucks.
It basically wasn’t worth the trouble since I had to cover the deadbeats. My lawn mowing jobs netted me a lot more money, although that was only a fair weather job.
This is 100% on-point. It wasn’t just my spending habits that eroded what I should have been making and saving from my paper route, but also adults who had no problem blowing me off when I tried to collect or trying to dock me from what they owed for stupid reasons.
I also mowed neighborhood lawns and loved it. My parents never charged me wear-and-tear on the family Lawn Boy push-mower, which I appreciated. It paid well and also gave me a taste for landscaping and working outside by the time I was in my 20’s. I would still love to do that kind of work in retirement.
I have always wanted to follow a mudded up 4×4 into the mall and while the owner was shopping, I’d wash all of his mud off and just go sit across the parking lot to watch his reaction when he comes out.
I think by the time I had my first job (Christmas season ’95), I was fully aware that there was absolutely zero chance of my getting a new car. I’d never even seen my parents buy a new car, as a matter of fact–their usual M.O. was to buy well-used, pay cash, and hope for the best. With the car question pretty well settled for the time being (I knew I’d be getting the old Malibu as my first car) my money instead went, primarily, to musical gear–I bought a fairly nice guitar and amp, as well as odds and ends. Still entailed a good bit of saving to convert my relatively meager income into the four-figure price tag required! I think my starting income was something like $4.75/hour?
The Samurai held some passing interest as a kid, but even then, I was so focused on classics that it didn’t capitvate me for very long. Its successor Sidekick (and badge-engineered companion Tracker) were well represented in my high school parking lot though, due to similar virtues that you mentioned–4wd, convertible, and low cost of entry. Several that were a few years old, and one lucky classmate got a new one for his 16th.
I’m with you about getting “back to basics” with my tastes turning to (American) classics at a certain point. I did like the Sidekick / Tracker much better than the Samurai when it came out – it seemed just a bit more substantial, and when Chevy put their badge on it, it seemed to give it a bit more legitimacy. (At the time.)
My $1,500 ’76 Chevelle Malibu Classic was probably far more accepted in my GM hometown than a Samurai would have been, though I remember seeing a handful of them around on the streets of Flint.
The Sidekick/Tracker was much, much more refined than the raw, primal Samurai. It was a much better on-pavement car and had much better acceleration and a smoother ride. I have no idea how they compared off-road to the Samurai because I never drove one off-road.
Chris M: What kind of guitar did you end up with? My first guitar was a Japanese-made Squier ST-331 Stratocaster. I got it used at the local guitar store for $125. It has one humbucker in the bridge, no tone control, and one volume control. The output jack is on the pickguard, and strangely enough, it has a short Gibson-like 24.75″ scale as opposed to the 25.5″ scale more typical for Fender. It was a great guitar to learn to play on and I still have it.
Our family had an ’87 Samurai in its fleet for about 18 months back in the early 90’s. My mother bought it used from a friend-of-a-friend, as he had decided to go back to school and needed funds. It was cute, it was fun, it was capable, but damn, that thing was a misery to drive on the highway, which unfortunately we needed to do in order to get it anyplace that might be more suited to its preferences. My brother remembers it fondly, as he and his friends were more inclined toward activities involving mud, mosquitoes, beer and fire.
Having started my early work life in the Summer of 1982 as a ride attendant at a local waterpark, I always get very nostalgic at this time of year for those “Good Old Days” when school was out, work was fun, money seemed easier to hold onto, and goals seemed so attainable.
These Samurais are very highly regarded for their off-road ability in the Pacific Northwest and tend to be quite pricey when sold….
They will go places other vehicles couldn’t dream of due to their size.
Yes, they will. I drove ours to the top of a mountain looking for remnants of a fire lookout tower (an odd interest of mine). I got near the top and came to a spot so tight that I had to pull up all the way, back up while turning, then turn the other way and continue on my way. A regular Jeep or pretty much anything larger than a Samurai wouldn’t have made it through there but that little bastard squeezed by just fine. I made it to the top, turned around, and drove back down the mountain. When I got to the tight spot I had to do the same maneuver and squeezed by and drove down the mountain. All I remember finding on top of the mountain were the concrete footings of the long-removed fire tower and the huge bolts that held the tower in place. That little Suzuki was a great off-roader.
I know the feeling. I had a newspaper route in 7-8th grade, and the money always disappeared. I started working in a gas station on Saturdays when I was 15, and the same thing happened. Then I got a job at another little gas station, working both Saturday and Sunday, and the owner paid me $35 in cash for that. That’s over $225 in today’s money, each week, all in cash. Not bad for a 16 year old, although I worked like a dog on Saturdays (Sunday was very slow).
I spent way too much on food (I hated my mother’s cooking), and other junk, but I did save enough for a nice new stereo, with AR speakers, a Dual turntable and a Japanese Nikko amp. And lots of records to play on it, which were not cheap back then. That’s where most of it went.
I wanted to buy a car too, but since I had gotten caught driving my parent’s car without a license, my punishment was no license until I turned 18. And I was smart enough to realize that buying one and keeping it around until then was not a good idea.
But I did almost buy a ratty ’57 Chevy, which I was going to keep somewhere away from home, to drive illicitly. Good thing I didn’t follow through on that.
That puts things into perspective quite nicely. My starting hourly rate at 15 was $3.35/hr. I can vividly remember the thrill of getting a paycheck that exceeded $100 for a whole week’s work! I probably poured no less than half my income back into my employer’s pocket, as my workplace was also my playground, but somehow it still seemed like I always had money in my pocket for cassette tapes, illicit beer and cigarettes. I’m not particularly adept at the conversion process, And it’d be presumptuous to cite the age difference, but if $35=$225 in 196X, I suppose that’s why $90-$100 in 1982 dollars seemed to go so far.
The minimum wage was $3.35 in 1982? Wow, that increased slowly in the 80’s and 90’s. It was only $4.25 when I started working in ’95!
I think at the time it varied by state. This was NJ’s minimum wage, and at 15 we had to file “working papers” with our employers, signed by a parent or guardian, agreeing to certain criteria for work hours during the school year and others that applied during breaks. It was a big deal in the life of a kid back then to make that inroad into the adult world of work and income. Damn, I feel old now.
When I got my first job in 1987, bagging groceries, it was $3.35. This was in Massachusetts. I was paid the premium rate of $3.70 because I had already turned 16 and was willing to work the 6-9 closing shift. It was harder to find baggers for that shift, in part because the store hired a lot of 15-year olds as baggers, but they couldn’t legally work after 6:00.
Paul, I had made the late-80’s equivalent of that $225, I might have asked for it all in ones and made cash-angels on the floor of my room. Talk about big bucks!
I was only grounded from the family cars only a handful of times, but thankfully, most of my friends lived in my neighborhood or had cars of their own, so it didn’t hamper my mobility all that much. I was about a year younger than everyone in my graduating class, so I was used to bumming rides from people.
But no driving until 18? Dang. No wonder we get to read your fun tales of rebellion.
Nothing wrong with mud, beer and fire. Especially if boobs are involved 🙂
One of my favorite COALs – I actually owned two, having had to sell the first one after a year when my driving history caught up with my insurance company ($4,000/year to insure the ‘Zuki!). Getting married and crossing the 25 year threshold brought the insurance back to manageable levels, so I bought another and sold it a bit before our first child was born. That’s Mrs. Ed, on our honeymoon in St. Augustine, Florida.
Awesome picture and article, Ed! I’m trying to wrap my head around $4,000 / year for insurance. Wow. I do remember that once I turned 25, my insurance payments dropped substantially – even for a non-turbo 4-cylinder Ford Probe.
While these have long since disappeared from the used car pool in my area (central Massachusetts), I’ve seen at least two around within the past few years.
One belongs to a guy who used to work in the same building as me. IIRC, his is an ’89; he bought it new and has hung onto it through the years. I would describe it as an original vehicle that has been used but well cared for. I assume it was originally his daily driver — he was probably in his late 20s in 1989 — but has long since become a spare vehicle. It only comes out in the summer. He would drive it to work every now and then, and it was always funny to see it in the parking garage sitting amongst all the other mostly late-model vehicles.
I never encountered the other local Samurai until maybe the past year, but I now seem to see it quite a bit. It appears to be mildly customized (e.g., paint, wheels). I am guessing it belongs to someone who is “Samauri enthusiast” (and/or perhaps an enthusiast of Japanese vehicles from that era in general) who decided that they really wanted one of these, and sought out and found a well-preserved example, probably somewhere with a climate more conducive to their preservation than the local one.
Great story Joseph, it reminded me of my time delivering the Winnipeg Sun at the same age. Every single day except Christmas, New Year’s, Easter and Thanksgiving I had to deliver that rag at the crack of dawn. This was of course the coldest part of the day, we had one January where it never got above -20°C so it was usually around much colder in the morning.
Collecting from the customers sometimes resulted in major disappointment as I’d break even due to the many deadbeats on my street. I think deadbeats were given 2 chances to pay before an actual adult intervened. The flip side of course was when they finally paid, it would be a (relative) windfall for me. It’s funny looking back now, there was always some old ladies who would write cheques for $1.70 every two weeks. Christmas was great as I’d get lots of delicious baking, usually eating a bunch before I got home.
I also spent far too much time planning my future purchases with unrealistic expectations. I saved and scrimped but ended up with my ’65 Barracuda that never saw the road. Much of my savings was blown on video games, candy and hockey cards. I actually still have the hockey cards and my focus on buying older cards from the 70’s and 80’s has actually resulted in a valuable collection. Even got a Gretzky rookie card, not that I’ll ever sell them.
There’s lots of these Samurais out here in the BC mountains and all of them look like the one in your photo. Side by side UTVs are slowly replacing them as there are very few Sammys left that aren’t beaten to death. I’d love to have one, but as always the driveway is too full.
Nelson, it got plenty cold in mid-Michigan, but I can’t even imagine delivering papers in your kind of weather. I do also remember getting checks, and amassing them before I’d have my mom drive me to Citizens Bank to make my big deposit. Gosh! – I just remembered actually balancing a check book! You should hang onto your card collection just as long as you can.
Cute little trucklets .
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I always liked the closed body version .
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If you look in the remote Desert communities that cater to Retirees , these are here and there , often with decades expired license tags as they only go 100 miles a month to the store and Dr’s office….
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-Nate
A friend was living on Maui about ’84-’85 and bought one new before the Samuari was offered for sale on the Mainland. It may have been one of the first brought to California. He sold it here at a profit.
There are still a surprisingly large number of survivors here in the coastal suburbs of Los Angeles, a cc-rich area rivaling Eugene. One local business even uses an ’87 as a service truck, having added a roof rack.
Last summer there was a Samurai, sans mud, parked in my neighborhood south of Wicker Park. They’re rare enough around here that it wouldn’t surprise me if it was the same one. I still like them.
I was hoping to inherit/purchase my mom’s ’89 Buick in college but they traded it when they bought their next car. And with minimum wage being $5.15 in the mid-90s, and some of that having to go towards living expenses, I wasn’t anywhere near the market for a new car. I remember being excited when I got a raise to $7.25 an hour (and I was administering a network of Solaris workstations- technical manpower was not hard to come by at my school.) Finally bought my first car (and first new car) out of college at age 20.
Thanks for the article, Joseph!
That’s awesome. I was just past your neck of the woods last night (west, in the Humboldt Park area). There’s also a green one in Rogers Park not far from where I live, which is also in pretty decent shape.
Good for you – I have yet to purchase a new car. Living here in the Windy City and not needing one, I don’t see that happening any time for me in the near future. 🙂
I love how they knew it was a ridiculous vehicle and snarkastically mocked themselves right in the ads.
Those Samurais got a bad deal when Consumer Reports rated them unacceptable, because they would tip over easily. My brother saw one in Arizona with outrigger wheels attached to each side that said ” Tip over proof ”. Suzuki introduced the wider Sidekick shortly after.
My 1st job was also a paper route. I used my 62 bug for that. I wanted to save up for a new 1st generation Honda Civic hatchback. They started at $2600 back during the late 70s and I probably could have saved for that. But I was stupid and got involved in Scientology. They talked me out of my savings. When I dropped out, I started saving again, but this time for a 72 Datsun 510.
I owned an ’86 Samurai, a convertible .bought new in January of that year. I literally drove the S out of it, as my commuter on 110 mile RT to my office in San Ramon, Ca. Had my wife and 3 young children in it once on the Richmond Bridge in a windy condition and it nearly scared me to death, so twitchy, it was the last time I did that with my kids riding along. I had to rebuild the transmission at 69k miles and when I sold it in ’91, it had 106k miles, was burning oil and not running well. I had fun with it, but durable, it was not. Bought a new ’91 Plymouth Colt to replace it, about as basic as it gets, no AC, 4 speed, had to install a stereo. Bought it at $5995, a loss leader at the dealer. That car was rock solid!
Teenagers had jobs!?!?
The ones that wanted stuff. 🙂
It has been a while since I’ve been to a mall, but so many of my teenaged peers worked there back then. Now, there are signs limiting the number of teenagers that are allowed in one group, enforced by security guards. A lot has changed in the almost 25 years since I was in high school.
Any job I had as a teen has long been taken over by adults who are trying to raise kids, etc., on minimum wage. I never thought I’d see anyone over 25 delivering pizza. Now they all seem to be about 38.
Some Teenagers needed to pay the rent and eat……
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-Nate
Plenty of these running around Guam by the time I left in 81. I’m not sure they called it a Samurai but there were plenty of suzukis with two stroke engines. Seems like they came out with the four stroke just before I left. They did the same thing in their bikes and the two stroke bike engine had a tremendous reputation for durability.
They went everywhere and they were low geared to the extent that they would pull everything. Love seeing them still running around.
Looks like somebody got around to cleaning it up; I just spotted your Samauri today while leaving work by Chicago and State:
Great shot Joseph.
Had a Suzuki Sierra (Au market Samurai name) as my first car. It was a narrow track, 1 litre hardtop, with the metal dashboard.
Incredibly good off road, it would get in and out of almost anywhere and just about climb a wall.
On road it was no so good, and had a top speed of about 95 km/h. It was frankly terrifying on the highway, especially when a B-double road train passed me and just about blew me off the road.
It very nearly ended up being washed away when I crossed the flooded East Leichhardt River in 1988.
[url=https://flic.kr/p/5WCvVu][img]https://c3.staticflickr
Hey Joseph, I’m glad you like my little truck =) . I live in Humbolt Park. I am a delivery driver for an online service and that is my delivery truck =) . I apreciate your story and thank you for making my little truck a part of it.. =)!
I was like “Hey that’s Jorge!”
When I was in high school, we had a 1986 Suzuki Samurai convertible. I drove it a lot. I took it off road numerous times and never got it stuck. It was small and would go places that even a Jeep wouldn’t have fit. It was a great off roader. However, it wasn’t so great on pavement. It was slow. Really slow. The ride was incredibly harsh. Driving on the highway was an adventure. The little engine didn’t like doing 70 MPH but we never had any mechanical problems with it. Tough little bastard. Its reputation as being flippy was well-earned. Ours had extra wide low profile tires that had been put on it before we got it but that only helped so much. One day I made a 90° from one street to the other and the two left wheels came off the ground. I was 16 and stupid so I tried it again and got it on two wheels again. I was always more careful after that. I can only imagine how easily it would have been to flip if it had the stock tall, narrow tires on it. There was a parking lot at a local grocery store with a bump between two sections of the parking lot. I found that if I hit it at about 20 MPH I could jump the Samurai about two feet off the ground. The thing was about as tinny as tinny gets. It was made of very thin metal and was quite dainty. The doors were about 6 inches thick. It was noisy and the back seat was useless. I had a lot of fun in that little bastard. It was uncomfortable but would go nearly anywhere. My dad sold it to my uncle who still has it. I still miss it nearly 30 years later.
Best version I ever saw of that “WASH ME” meme was on the back of a semi which had apparently never been cleaned forever. It read, “DO NOT WASH — TEST TRUCK”.
I almost drove off the road.