Unibody construction and 4 wheel drive make it far ahead of its time, but Russian build quality, a questionable repaint, and an apparently collapsed front suspension make it a CP. That kind of money will get you an excellent CJ-7 from the same period with money left over for gas and insurance.

Yeah

I like that body style, it’s the best looking of the 4-door models. I used to have one.

My 1987 4Runner. Mechanically it’s sound, yet it’s in desperate need of a repaint. There’s almost no paint left on the roof of the cab. I’m currently saving up for a nice paint job, instead of a quick $600 at Maaco.

Reading about the way dealers operate in Japan, it sounds like a much more friendly, human relationship between salesman and customer that involves the transaction of a large sum of money. It says a lot about how different Japanese and American culture are. I’m the kind of person who keeps a car until it has more than…

If you get a truck with a manual transmission, nobody will ask to borrow it for their move. They might still ask for your help moving though. I would go for a four cylinder, with a short bed: decent gas mileage and easy to park.

While it’s admirable that Toyota is pursuing alternative fuel technology such as hydrogen, I’m looking forward to the day when those cars are not overstyled abominations.

I dropped the transmission pan on my 4Runner to change fluid and filter once, it was the middle of winter with slush falling down me from the underside of my running boards as I worked. I get the filter changed and tighten all the pan bolts up with no leaks, but it’s a sealed transmission with no dipstick. The…

I’ve always wanted to cut open a used filter after doing an oil change. Never really got around to it though, it’s kinda questionable using an angle grinder to do that and I’m too lazy to use a hack saw. I guess tin snips would work though.

I had a friend who worked for Gold Coast Bentley in Chicago, and he told me customers rarely financed cars and often paid in cash. I suspect there wasn’t a lot of haggling for price either. It’s like the old saying goes, if you need to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it.

Using dyno test results as “bragging rights” on the internet, when there are so many variables that could affect performance, basically amounts to a big dick measuring contest.

I wonder how 1980s Toyota 4WD vans would do on these tests. Some of them came with low range gears and a transfer case. My dad once drove our 1994 AWD Previa on a logging road without getting stuck like that, and this was before the introduction of traction control and torque vectoring all-wheel-drive systems.

Yes this is exactly right. Once my sister was rear ended in traffic, we went through our insurance, our insurance payed to fix the car and went after the at-fault driver’s insurance company to get reimbursed. Often times at fault drivers have budget insurance, which is only cheap because they refuse to pay without…

I haven’t seen this show, because I don’t have cable, but the part of the show where they go over the parts budget with no mention of the cost of the labor hours required is disingenuous. Anyone can turn a profit on the restoration of a car if you discount the labor costs of a master mechanic.

Cars like this are marketed to the “more money than brains” crowd. Think wealthy Chinese industrialists and Saudi princes. It’s made basically to look cool in the mall parking lot, and perform well on the occasional high speed run in the dunes. Being based on a Wrangler, customization will be much like playing with…

Torque is a measurement of rotational force, force applied tangentially about a rotational axis at a fixed distance, i.e. Newton meters or pound feet. Horsepower is an arbitrary measurement of work done per unit time.

I’m optimistic about the impending death of the Internal Combustion Engine, which is basically a dinosaur. In the same way that cars were the savior of horses in the early 20th century, and now horse racing has become a hobby and pastime of the wealthy. If it weren’t for cars places like Manhattan would be covered in…

Skilled trades work and large scale agriculture pay a lot better than most people might think. Also, 84-month financing terms.

$1750. It was on the high end of the 40 or so winning bids for the rest of the cars in the auction that day.

Fun story: I was at a Goodwill auto auction last month and I had to pass on bidding on a rust free 2000 Cherokee XJ from Kentucky, because I already have 3 vehicles and I can’t afford the insurance premiums for a 4th. Actually, now that I think of it, that’s not a fun story. It’s a painful memory.