Junkyard Find: 1975 Jeep J10 Pickup

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

This being Colorado, I see many old Jeeps in my local self-service wrecking yards. Just about all of them are Cherokees and Wagoneers, so this four-wheel-drive pickup caught my attention earlier this week.

There must be somebody looking for a rugged AMC 360 V8 for a project car or truck. Right?

And a factory 4-on-the-floor manual transmission!

The J10 name wasn’t as cool as the Gladiator name that went on big Jeep pickups until 1970, but it was less import-sounding than the J2000 name used in the early 1970s.

Here’s a fine example of industrial-grade vehicle upholstery. Sweaty, sticky vinyl.

Here’s a dealer training film for the ’73 version of this truck. Note the driver smoking a pipe while off-roading with a load of hay.









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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  • Ciddyguy Ciddyguy on Jul 13, 2012

    A very nice find there MM. Love this color as I have a thing for this greenish yellow, generically called Chartreuse. Looking at the photos you took, either there is something behind the seat back in this one pushing the seatback forward a bit, it looks mighty uncomfortable due to the overly upright seatback. Looks to be a reasonably decent shape for the most part, even the interior looks to be intact and I love the old Audiovox cassette deck that has FF/Eject only, and no station presets on a sliding dial tuner. How quaint...

  • Wagoneer Wagoneer on Jul 14, 2012

    I daily drive an '89 Grand Wagoneer that I would love to see in the condition that this much older J10 looks like it is still in. That said, I would love to get my mitts on that hood and (still salvageable) grille...

  • THX1136 Always liked the Mustang though I've never owned one. I remember my 13 yo self grabbing some Ford literature that Oct which included the brochure for the Mustang. Using my youthful imagination I traced the 'centerfold' photo of the car AND extending the roof line back to turn it into a small wagon version. At the time I thought it would be a cool variant to offer. What was I thinking?!
  • GregLocock That's a bodge, not a solution. Your diff now has bits of broken off metal floating around in it.
  • The Oracle Well, we’re 3-4 years in with the Telluride and right around the time the long term durability issues start to really take hold. This is sad.
  • CoastieLenn No idea why, but nothing about a 4Runner excites me post-2004. To me, they're peak "try-hard", even above the Wrangler and Gladiator.
  • AZFelix A well earned anniversary.Can they also attend to the Mach-E?
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