| Back in the Middle Malaise Era, most of the B-series Mazda pickups you saw in North America were badged as Ford Couriers, and of course we've found the occasional junkyard-dwelling Courier. Still, some Mazda-badged pickups were released into the wild, and the longbed version was known as the Sundowner. Here's a very-much-of-its-time Sundowner in yellow with beige-and-brown tape stripes and red-and-brown rust, spotted at a Colorado self-serve yard earlier this week.
Sakes alive, that's a cheap pickup! This one appears to have spent at least some part of its life in the Midwest, or maybe it just sat with a bed full of melting snow for a couple dozen Colorado winters. The interior isn't so bad, but the 5-digit odometer can't tell us whether it's an 84,942-mile truck or a 484,942-mile truck. Just 77 horsepower from the 1,970cc SOHC F engine. These trucks didn't have quite the rep for reliability earned by their Toyota Hilux competitors, but they were pretty solid machines for their era. The 26-year-old Colorado State Parks pass is a nice vintage touch. Tip: if you're swapping build tags, use rivets instead of screws. Oh, and mount the tag right-side-up.
from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com |
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