Junkyard Find: 1972 International Harvester Scout II

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

Here in Colorado, Scouts are all over the place, which means that Denver-area wrecking yards get a steady stream of worn-out or abandoned examples. So far in this series, we’ve seen this ’70, this ’71, this ’73, and this ’74, and I’ve skipped over a bunch of totally-stripped Scouts that weren’t worth photographing. Today’s find has donated a lot of parts to the local Scout ecosystem, but still intact enough to be of interest.

The IHC V8 was a heavy, farm-equipment-grade brute. There’s probably some easy way to tell a 304 from a 345 at a glance, but I don’t know what it is.

The smog sticker says it’s a 345, but owners of these trucks have always been notorious engine-swappers. Hey, why is there a California catalyst sticker on a ’72? This junkyard goes by VIN records when determining model year, so I suspect that some VIN-swapping magic was performed by a previous owner and we’re really looking at a late-70s Scout.

IHC made a Rallye version of the Scout II, but this looks like a homegrown decal job.

It’s not incredibly rusty, but there’s no reason to restore a truck like this when you can buy nicer runners for reasonable prices in Colorado.


Does everything a compact, big sedan, or station wagon can do!






Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • Krhodes1 Krhodes1 on Jul 10, 2014

    My crazy recluse great uncle has an '80 Scout that he bought brand new. It was his daily driver until it rotted out, then he spent a not-so-small fortune on a frame-off restoration of it. I saw it a couple of years ago, and it was probably nicer than any of them ever were new. He only drives it in the summer now. My great uncle lives in an "off grid" cabin up in Western Maine, with a TON of guns including some kind of WWII towed machine gun that he had to get a special permit for. I fully expect to hear of a massacre at the local town hall someday with all his neighbors saying on the news "he was a quiet man who kept to himself"... He's probably pushing 75 now.

  • -Nate -Nate on Jul 11, 2014

    The tin worm gets 'em all in the end.... A sad thing , this one looks restorable to me . FWIW , NO ONE actually wants rust free old Scout (or anything else) bodies ~ I grew up Down East and so know rusty vehicles very well , when I moved to So. Cal. , I decided to try selling old rust free if raggedy collector vehicles and wasn't even able to GIVE THEM AWAY ! current tags & titles even . I parted out most of them and so didn't loose my @$$ but it was a real eye opener as I'm always building up some old nail or another and the body & rust are the primary lookouts to me . -Nate

  • ToolGuy North America is already the greatest country on the planet, and I have learned to be careful about what I wish for in terms of making changes. I mean, if Greenland wants to buy JDM vehicles, isn't that for the Danes to decide?
  • ToolGuy Once again my home did not catch on fire and my fire extinguisher(s) stayed in the closet, unused. I guess I threw my money away on fire extinguishers.(And by fire extinguishers I mean nuclear missiles.)
  • Carson D The UAW has succeeded in organizing a US VW plant before. There's a reason they don't teach history in the schools any longer. People wouldn't make the same mistakes.
  • B-BodyBuick84 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport of course, a 7 seater, 2.4 turbo-diesel I4 BOF SUV with Super-Select 4WD, centre and rear locking diffs standard of course.
  • Corey Lewis Think how dated this 80s design was by 1995!
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