Dear old Dad had a Chevy Tracker, which is yet another name for Suzuki Vitara. He loved that thing and drove it almost a half million kilometers. Then he traded it on a Subaru that was basically done for in 240,000 km.
I used to have this truck. It was a 1989 C1500. It was a single cab, long bed truck which is the best configuration. Under the hood was a 5.7 liter V8 with very primitive fuel injection, and that was hooked up to a 5-speed manual transmission.
It wasn’t the fastest, most powerful truck I’ve ever had, but it had tons of personality and wouldn’t die. It was really fun to drive with the torquey engine and the stick shift which was the exact opposite of a short-throw shifter.
It’s even worse for me. I can leave the snacks at the store all I want, but I can’t escape because I can bake. If I get bored I’ll end up making cookies.
I like motorcycles. All motorcycles. Small, large, any brand from Aprilia to Zero. I like the way they sound, whether it’s a little two stroke Vespa or a ratty old Shovelhead or a six-cylinder Goldwing. They’re just so cool. And there are so many different engine configurations. Singles, parallel twins with 360, 270, or 180 degree cranks, V-Twins in several different angles and different crank splits, three bangers, four cylinders, even some with inline six or flat six engines. Just an entire mechanical symphony.
I like quiet bikes. I like loud bikes. I like electric bikes. Quiet ADV bikes, thundering cruisers, thumpy dual sports, screamy sport bikes, they’re all so cool.
Fun fact, my wife found out I liked it. And she ssid “I bet I could do that”. She didn’t get it quite right the first time, but she nailed it the second time. Which just flipped those switches even harder.
It was half the price of the next cheapest truck on the lot, and the next cheapest truck had twice the miles. But the next cheapest truck had all the whiz-bang fancy electronics, instead of being four wheels and a truck bed.
The Suzuki Carry is the one I really wanted. I’ve a soft spot for tiny suzuki vehicles.
Every time I mention not being able to find one in early 2022, people come along to show me where I can get one now. The issue was, I couldn’t find one when I needed it.
When my little 4-cylinder truck wore out in 2021, I looked so hard for one of the little kei trucks. But all of the ones I could find were $20k, or they were $15k and needed a lot of work to be driveable. And none of them were within 200 miles of my location.
I ended up with a used base-model F150 which only cost me $12k. It had 81k miles on it. As near as I can figure out, it started life as a rental truck for a hardware store called “Menards”. It has an 8ft bed, no carpet, no power locks, no power windows, no back seat, no touchscreen, and no color LCD screen in the gauge cluster. I use this truck for a small farm that my wife and I run, so it doesn’t get driven every day.
Karlach, all the way. And not just because she’s a 7ft tall beast of a woman with a machine for a heart who “Winks at her foes as she slays them”, but because her personality is very close to my wife’s.
Also, there is a specific scream that Karlach does when enraged that flips all my switches.