X2 an old jeep screams for an analogue gauge and preferably one made by Stewart Warner.

It isn’t just you, in the last generation or two most CUVs have let go of any attempts at portraying “off-road” ability (with the exception of Jeep and some Subarus). And most have little if any more ground clearance than a car. For example a current generation RAV4 has 6.1” of ground clearance, a Camry has 5.7” of…

“Rust sometimes makes a car look just a tad better.”

True, though being southern California there is a good chance they are 2WD.

Just make sure to either get one with a manual transmission or budget for rebuilding the auto as the GM 4L30E auto in these is under-built for the ~4,300lb. Trooper (the 4L30E was designed for an approx 3k lb. vehicle) and it is almost guaranteed to fail in the 90k-130k mi range (and possibly earlier if it was use for…

Just pick up a universal POS rotbox repair kit:

That vintage of XJ with the Nippon-Denso alternators do have the voltage regulator in the ECU so a bad ECU is a good bet (and they are known for failing due to bad capacitors among other things), some people in the jeep forums have reported success wiring in an external voltage regulator and bypassing the one in the…

If the station doesn’t have locking pumps or the locking mechanism is broken, you can just jam the gas cap (or any other convenient object that will fit) in the pump handle and it will accomplish the same thing.

A bit of a death trap (at least for a fairly “modern” car) in a crash though:

3rd/4th gen (late 60s/early 70s) Buick Electra, sometimes its nice to have a good land yacht.

1998 Isuzu Trooper

While replacing the thermostat in my XJ Cherokee the upper bolt snapped off, so I grabbed a drill and ez-out about 1/2 an hour later I had drilled the center of the bolt and started turning it when then the ez-out snapped off in the bolt, it took about 4 hours and 3 cobalt drill bits to get through the hardened steel…

Ah Lincoln Towing so bad there’s actually a song about them:

I hate stop start with a passion and refuse to buy any vehicle that has it unless it can be permanently disabled.

Looks like someone watched the Blues Brothers too many times:

yep

Essentially that is what the CB500F is, albeit with more modern styling.

Probably a combination of the fact that most cars these days are FWD/AWD (so many people never learn how to drive a RWD “Properly”) and that even entry-level V6s today have more power than most of the V8s of the 1980s.

I see this in your future (though likely not for doing 78mph, I doubt the Jeep can get there):

Of course a Forenza isn’t a “real” Suzuki, but a Daewoo Lacetti badged as a Suzuki from when GM had ownership stakes in both companies. The true Suzuki cars weren’t that bad (not necessarily spectacular, but far from terrible), but they sold a lot of rebadged Daewoo junk in the late 90s and 00s.