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Old thread!
Ward,
I first went down to Colombia in early 2004 with the idea and intention of bringing back trucks. I think a thread or two I did about this very thing is still here on Mud. Between 04-09 I went back two more times looking into the same venture. I would go down for 2-4 weeks and check out a lot of trucks, go to 4wd club events and also go to 4wd shops. I have a friend in Bogota who is a Colombian, great guy. Thing was, at the time I was into Nissan Patrols heavily, dazed and confused perhaps! Haha! Not to down play Patrols, they are awesome trucks but there is not much if any market for them in the USA. I looked at a lot of Cruisers and even a few Rovers too. I am into the trucks myself though, not just some guy doing flips. I am like Joe, I work on my junk and usually don't make a lot of money on a flip. To my own fault I have lost some money on Cruisers before and I am sure I am not the only one.
Colombia does have some good trucks, I have seen many of them first hand, crawled over and under them and driven them as well. I even looked at starting a shop down there to at the very least baseline the trucks before export. My Colombian friend was going to possibly partner up with me on all this as well. Part of what killed it for me was the exchange rate. When I first went down it was nearly 4,000:1 and by 2009 had dropped to almost 2000:1. As seems to be known around here cheap good Colombian trucks are unicorns. You expect to pay $8k to high teens for a good trucks. Good trucks are inland and require inland shipping just to export. Since they must be shipped, unlike driven down from Canada that adds cost as well. All of them or 90% or more are gassers which at the time was only desirable to me if it was rare models like FJ43's and FJ45 Troopies. In the end what killed it was $$$ into an import and return on that. I didn't think people would be paying $40k or more for Colombian trucks. Guess I was wrong!!
I will let the cat out of the bag a bit here in Charlie's thread, he and I spoke a lot when he first started up because I know Colombia and know Patrols and he found me via a Patrol forum, or maybe I found him, I forgot. I did mention this on my FB page recently so it is not really a secret. I been on the road here in Latin America for four months, drove down in my 100 I built all by myself. Third time driving down here to Panama from the USA for me. From that and my trips to Colombia I have seen and learned a lot. I know Joe will disagree with me, he has his thing going, I am going to do mine. No offense meant to Charlie, he is a nice guy but guys like him don't turn a wrench and like to argue about the quality of work they have done and always seem like they are trying to prove something. It is one thing to me to toot your horn, it is another thing to me to toot your horn and never turn a wrench. I have built a lot of trucks over the years and the trucks spoke for themselves, I do the work with my own two hands and I like to do it, like many Cruiserheads it is part of the passion for me. There are good trucks here in Central America but they are few and far between. A few people have brought in trucks from CA a few times, some a few more times. I have not been impressed by the trucks I have seen them bring in other than a few. The work performed down here is not the best, unless it is done by the guys in the 4wd clubs. Here in Panama for example is a great shop in the city that knows how to build trucks and build them right, many years of experience doing this under their belt. These kinds of shops are rare in CA. Any ways, back to spilling the beans. I am going to start importing trucks from CA, Land Cruisers. I am going to focus on J4x-series and J7x-series. I have just about made up my mind I am going to start a workshop down here too. This way I can, all by myself or maybe with a helper, bring the trucks up to my standards. I am also going to drive the majority of the trucks up to the USA, this way they are tested, road worthy-ready and not just off the farm and shipped to your door. If I drive a truck from CA to the states a buyer can be confident it is not a s*** box! I am probably also going to only do a few trucks the first year, four I would think would be a lot. Good ones like I say are hard to find at a reasonable price, that takes time driving around and searching. Thing is as each year goes by new trucks come available. I know where to find many good J7x-series pickups with the 1HZ. 90% or more of all Cruisers in Latin America are work trucks and have been working all these years. Some harder than others. But that doesn't mean they are all worn out beyond return. I learned a long time ago, like 15yrs ago when I imported a Nissan Patrol from a New Zealand farm that farmers tend to keep them in decent mechanical condition and often do the work themselves. Sometimes the old farmer has used these trucks for their DD which doesn't always mean for work besides going to the hardware store or grain supply house or drive around the farm. I am getting an eye these days for farm trucks treated good and ones used hard. Axle rebuilds, steering rebuilds, brakes and fixing some oil leaks with the occasional trans or t-case rebuild will take care of any issues. I have already been looking at a lot of trucks on the streets, for sale or otherwise and most need these basic things done to them. And once in awhile a truck comes along that was not worked hard all these years.
I came down here with a totally different idea and plan. For a new life and for work. After working hard on that for three months it just wasn't happening. And then it hit me, Land Cruisers dude! You know them, love them and man you see a lot of them down here daily. Right now I am sitting here next to the sea in a house I have rented from a friend. It is a very good place to get my head straight and play a bit on the internet, work on some other projects I have going like video productions and a website or two. I didn't have much time for Mud or much of an internet connection the first three months of this trip. I am on my laptop not my phone, I am kind of old and much prefer to use my laptop for the internet so ya I didn't type all this on my phone, that would suck! So I guess I decided this evening to post a long blah on here in Charlie's thread after doing a lot of reading this last week in the 70-series sections.
Cheers to you Cruiserheads up north, down here the beer is cheap and the diesel Cruisers are everywhere!
