I try to avoid lobbing clichés like “holy grail” and “ultimate barn find” around too often, but we’ve got a freaking 1983 Toyota four-wheel drive manual transmission single cab pickup truck with less than 8,000 miles on our hands here, people. It’s time to freak out.
A reader sent this GovDeals.com auction listing to me the other day with a note “figured you would enjoy that.” Yes. Yes I do. Any red-blooded individual who holds pickup trucks sacred would be liable to lose their shit at the sight of this thing. Which is probably why it’s already commanding an asking price of over $10,000.
For a vehicle as primitive as this, that’s objectively way too much money. But this also happens to be an extremely well preserved piece of history and speaking of clichés... “they don’t make ’em like they used to.”
“They” make pickup trucks much safer and faster now. Who cares, though. This old ’Yota embodies exactly what the essence of a pickup truck is. Pure utility on wheels. Small lights on a square body, like I always say, the way the good lord intended trucks to look. Or “clear headlights, full cargo beds, can’t lose” I think another saying goes.
The auction listing explains that this 2.4-liter four cylinder long bed Toyota “was used as brush truck since new. It was taken out of service April 2018. Truck runs and drives fine. The truck has a few dings and scratches but nothing major. There are holes in the truck where equipment was removed.”
Come on. I can’t imagine a more perfect pedigree to have on a cool old pickup than that.
The ultimate fantasy for cool car finding usually sounds something like “owned by a little old lady, only driven to church on Sundays.” But “owned by a town in Ohio, only used for hauling brush” is pretty close.
If I were a millionaire, straight up, there is no way I would not be owning this. Sadly it’s already out of my price range, so I can only hope it will go to someone else who will appreciate it and allow it to continue its life of gentle but earnest use.
Part of me feels bad for blowing this listing up. The auction ends July 9 and there are only three bids as I write this. But I have a feeling at least one or two of our readers will get as revved up over this thing as I am, and a bit of a bidding war might end up going down. This thing was too cool not to share, though. And part of me just thrilled at the fact that things like this still exist at all.
Long live legit trucks. And keep looking! There must be more out there somewhere.
Hat tip to Jason!