Topic: Reliable classic cars for winter

[Retro Rocket]

Do you guys get the Japanese lite pickups.?  I have a 1994 Isuzu 2.8 turbo diesel twin cab 4X4 that you couldn't kill with a nuclear bomb, great truck, good on fuel , excellent engine and goes anywhere.....

[seanbarney41]

Do you guys get the Japanese lite pickups.?  I have a 1994 Isuzu 2.8 turbo diesel twin cab 4X4 that you couldn't kill with a nuclear bomb, great truck, good on fuel , excellent engine and goes anywhere.....

yup, had a little Nissan 2.0 4 banger with 5 speed, it rusted out too, but I still miss it...bought it for $300, lasted 4 years/40k miles

[Retro Rocket]

Do you guys get the Japanese lite pickups.?  I have a 1994 Isuzu 2.8 turbo diesel twin cab 4X4 that you couldn't kill with a nuclear bomb, great truck, good on fuel , excellent engine and goes anywhere.....

yup, had a little Nissan 2.0 4 banger with 5 speed, it rusted out too, but I still miss it...bought it for $300, lasted 4 years/40k miles

Had mine for around 8 years and put lots of miles on it, still runs like a clock.....In that time i have changed a clutch and done the seals in the injector pump due to the crap diesel we get now {low sulfur}..

[Duanob]

Do you guys get the Japanese lite pickups.?  I have a 1994 Isuzu 2.8 turbo diesel twin cab 4X4 that you couldn't kill with a nuclear bomb, great truck, good on fuel , excellent engine and goes anywhere.....

NO! I've seen some damn cool cars in other countries that we can't get here in America. When we were in Costa Rica we rented a Hundyai Galloper turbo diesel 4 cyl SUV. That thing was built like a brick shyte house and fit 9 people in it. Nothing like the cheap SUVs we get here from Korea. There were also Nissan patrol and toyota landcruiser pick up trucks with TD as well.

I had a 94 Trooper gas powered and on second thought I would recommend that in a heart beat even over a subaru. Not great mileage but definitely go anywhere with the right tires and cheap to buy. I always thought a turbo diesel would've made that the perfect car.

Subarus have a following not unlike Honda SOHCs that bring the prices up to more than they are actually worth in some areas like the PNW.

[Retro Rocket]

We have all those models here in Aus and a lot more too, turbo diesels are very popular here....

This is my Daughters car, its an Isuzu MU 3.1 turbo diesel and its built like a tank...

[Gordon]

Gasoline prices have always been much lower in the U.S. compared to many other parts of the world so Diesel engines for cars and small trucks never really caught on.  Now that prices are getting higher we're seeing a few more Diesel options, mainly from VW from what I've seen, but hybrid cars are more popular, so that's where all the money and marketing is going. 

We do have a serious lack of compact trucks now.  Unfortunately it seems the trend is to make the smallest trucks in the mid-size range rather than compact, and many of them are hard to distinguish from a full size truck unless they're sitting right next to one. 

[Retro Rocket]

Up until relatively recent times we had cheap gas as well but we have always had the diesel models, The diesel Toyota land cruisers have been here since the 1960's are were, and still are very popular.  i think it has had more to do with the power your auto manufacturers have over the governments because all the excellent diesel models are Japanese, not American.  Tariffs, tariffs and more tariffs, same for the motorcycle industry....

[Gordon]

Up until relatively recent times we had cheap gas as well but we have always had the diesel models, The diesel Toyota land cruisers have been here since the 1960's are were, and still are very popular.  i think it has had more to do with the power your auto manufacturers have over the governments because all the excellent diesel models are Japanese, not American.  Tariffs, tariffs and more tariffs, same for the motorcycle industry....

Good point, but I bet the choice of cars and trucks in Australia has been heavily influenced by those available in GB, so even though your gas prices were lower than theirs, you still got a similar selection of vehicles.

[BeSeeingYou]

Diesel is significantly more expensive than gasoline here in the U.S. and has been for some time but it was cheaper at one time.  Plus GM made some very bad diesel vehicles a while back that hurt the reputation of diesels in general at least in non commercial vehicles.  They had a lot of trouble here in our extreme winter climate.

[Retro Rocket]

Up until relatively recent times we had cheap gas as well but we have always had the diesel models, The diesel Toyota land cruisers have been here since the 1960's are were, and still are very popular.  i think it has had more to do with the power your auto manufacturers have over the governments because all the excellent diesel models are Japanese, not American.  Tariffs, tariffs and more tariffs, same for the motorcycle industry....

Good point, but I bet the choice of cars and trucks in Australia has been heavily influenced by those available in GB, so even though your gas prices were lower than theirs, you still got a similar selection of vehicles.

Actually quite the opposite, we have had our own manufacturers here since the 1940's, We've manufactured Ford GM and Chrysler cars here since the, well 40's for GM, 50's for the other 2.  remember we invented the ute by modifying model A Ford.s, google it....   NZ had a heavy GB influence and we had some here but it wasn't that significant and it was a long time ago. We have had Japanese cars here since the 50's as well and they have always enjoyed a significant place in the market here. Most of our trucks have always been American, there were smaller Bedford and Austin trucks but for heavy haulage, American.....  NZ has more diesel cars than we do.... Diesel is more expensive here as well but offers up to 30% better fuel economy over Petrol {gas}  Some of the newer Japanese diesel family cars are getting 700 miles a tank of diesel{1000+kilometers}. so it has some significant advantages, engines last longer as well with the same regular maintenance as a gas engine...

[Grnrngr]

A while back, I had an 83 Nissan Maxima with a non-turbo 6cyl diesel. Gotta be one of my favorite cars, 30-35 mpg around town, 40-50 on roadtrips, had close to 270,000 miles when the body started falling apart, but that engine just kept going. I was thinking of pulling it out to put in a boat, but I had no room for a project like that at the time. Wasn't good in slippery situations tho, if the road was slick, it had a tendency to spin if you took your foot off the accelerator suddenly.