Max.Powerzz
Cruisers and Art!
I've been dreaming about this for years and have finally taken the plunge. The 1988 fj62 is going under the knife and getting a kidney transplant (it's not a heart transplant, you'd have to tear all of the Toyota out of it to do that). Bear with me if I get a little nostalgic.
It all began back in 1997 when my wife and I were in college flipping through the thrifty nickel. We were driving a classy 1985 Honda Accord (it had power windows and a luggage rack, swanky) and wanted to upgrade. We came across an old fj40 and my wife actually suggested we go check it out! How could I resist, I had a model Land Rover as a kid and had a thing for classic 4x4s. My grandpa was a cowboy and I had the bug in my genes. We were art history majors and loved the looks of the cruisers but more importantly the innards that backed them up. In art lingo we call that "aesthetically pleasing with a compelling relationship between form and function."
It was for sale at a dealership in UT and they said it was a barn-find from TX. It was a 3 on the tree and absolutely un-fun to drive, it was a rat's nest under the hood and in really rough shape. I was hooked. Only $5k and it could be ours. Well, we didn't go that route, but we did start looking at Cruisers. Fast forward a couple of months and my wife actually spotted an fj55 on the side of State Street near the Purple Turtle. It was greenish, the rear window didn't roll up, and it had a hard time shifting into 1st. We loved it but he wanted $3k for it and it was pretty steep for poor college students. I decided to have it checked out at a local auto shop. The seller never showed, but while I was waiting I once again picked up my trusty Thrifty Nickel. Lo and behold a 1973 fj55 was listed for $1,700 down in Spanish Fork, a rural community south of us. We headed down in the Accord and pulled into this old-timer's yard, he had a bunch of rusted hulks out back: a Bronco, an old Wagoneer that had the special spy feature of shooting purple smoke out the back (I believe dealer installed), and a primered fj55. It had a hole the size of a frisbee in the front quarter panel but it started up and ran. It had been sitting in someone's yard in Wyoming for a decade and had relatively little rust, just a few gaping holes. There was a massive PTO winch next to it, he wanted another $300 for it and I didn't know what it was and said no thanks (now kicking myself). We drove the 55 around the block. When we got back to his house a guy checking out the Bronco said he was interested in the 55 and would the old timer consider $1200. Well, the pressure was on so we offered $1300 and it was ours. We painted it, changed the oil, and had fun. My wife got me a hi lift jack for Christmas and jack bumper mounts for my birthday, I thought I was super cool. My professor used to make me sit in the back of the class because, as he said, "I smelled like poison" when I drove to campus (read: holes in the exhaust, floor boards, and who knows where else). Many adventures later and a trip to Moab where we caught on fire, we graduated school and were on our way to DC to look for jobs in our field (no thanks to the effect of exhaust leaks on my budding brain, but I finally graduated). We were leaving the mountains and red rock of Utah for a 17 story high rise in DC, and there was no room for the Cruiser. We listed it for sale, I cried, no one was interested, someone low-balled us for $800, I wimpered some more. We needed a deposit for our 400 square foot studio apartment which cost us five times more in rent than our house we were renting in college, so we took it. We were on our way.
Tiny scans from the days before digital cameras when hard drives were measured in megs, not gigs. Meet Natasha:
It all began back in 1997 when my wife and I were in college flipping through the thrifty nickel. We were driving a classy 1985 Honda Accord (it had power windows and a luggage rack, swanky) and wanted to upgrade. We came across an old fj40 and my wife actually suggested we go check it out! How could I resist, I had a model Land Rover as a kid and had a thing for classic 4x4s. My grandpa was a cowboy and I had the bug in my genes. We were art history majors and loved the looks of the cruisers but more importantly the innards that backed them up. In art lingo we call that "aesthetically pleasing with a compelling relationship between form and function."
It was for sale at a dealership in UT and they said it was a barn-find from TX. It was a 3 on the tree and absolutely un-fun to drive, it was a rat's nest under the hood and in really rough shape. I was hooked. Only $5k and it could be ours. Well, we didn't go that route, but we did start looking at Cruisers. Fast forward a couple of months and my wife actually spotted an fj55 on the side of State Street near the Purple Turtle. It was greenish, the rear window didn't roll up, and it had a hard time shifting into 1st. We loved it but he wanted $3k for it and it was pretty steep for poor college students. I decided to have it checked out at a local auto shop. The seller never showed, but while I was waiting I once again picked up my trusty Thrifty Nickel. Lo and behold a 1973 fj55 was listed for $1,700 down in Spanish Fork, a rural community south of us. We headed down in the Accord and pulled into this old-timer's yard, he had a bunch of rusted hulks out back: a Bronco, an old Wagoneer that had the special spy feature of shooting purple smoke out the back (I believe dealer installed), and a primered fj55. It had a hole the size of a frisbee in the front quarter panel but it started up and ran. It had been sitting in someone's yard in Wyoming for a decade and had relatively little rust, just a few gaping holes. There was a massive PTO winch next to it, he wanted another $300 for it and I didn't know what it was and said no thanks (now kicking myself). We drove the 55 around the block. When we got back to his house a guy checking out the Bronco said he was interested in the 55 and would the old timer consider $1200. Well, the pressure was on so we offered $1300 and it was ours. We painted it, changed the oil, and had fun. My wife got me a hi lift jack for Christmas and jack bumper mounts for my birthday, I thought I was super cool. My professor used to make me sit in the back of the class because, as he said, "I smelled like poison" when I drove to campus (read: holes in the exhaust, floor boards, and who knows where else). Many adventures later and a trip to Moab where we caught on fire, we graduated school and were on our way to DC to look for jobs in our field (no thanks to the effect of exhaust leaks on my budding brain, but I finally graduated). We were leaving the mountains and red rock of Utah for a 17 story high rise in DC, and there was no room for the Cruiser. We listed it for sale, I cried, no one was interested, someone low-balled us for $800, I wimpered some more. We needed a deposit for our 400 square foot studio apartment which cost us five times more in rent than our house we were renting in college, so we took it. We were on our way.
Tiny scans from the days before digital cameras when hard drives were measured in megs, not gigs. Meet Natasha:
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