Rare Rides: A 1986 Izuzu P'up, Coming With Length and Turbodiesel

Corey Lewis
by Corey Lewis

Today’s Rare Ride is from the period in the Eighties when many compact pickup trucks were available to the North American consumer. While most of these vehicles were Japanese, some covered their origins with American badges. Others wore both Japanese and American branding, albeit at different dealerships.

Wouldn’t you LUV to check out this P’up? Ugh.

What North Americans called the P’up was called the Faster in its home market. Isuzu brought its first Faster compact truck to Japan in 1972. The new model was a replacement for the brand’s outgoing compact pickup, the Wasp. And like the sedan-based Wasp, the Faster was also based on a sedan: the Florian. The midsizer offered up its doors and front end for the Faster, which qualified as a compact under Japanese law (for lower taxation).

General Motors had a new 34 percent stake in Isuzu, so it ordered Chevrolet badges for the Faster, called it a LUV, and put it on sale immediately. Isuzu did not have a market presence in North America at the time.

A second generation of Isuzu’s successful Faster bowed for model year 1980. Through the generosity of General Motors, this generation spread to other brands and markets, and was badged as the Chevrolet Stallion, Holden Rodeo, Lincah, and Raider, and via Bedford as the KB. In North America it was still the LUV, but Isuzu dealers also sold the truck as the P’up. The move coincided with Isuzu’s entry into North America as a fully fledged brand.

Naturally with such a global product spread, there were many varieties of Faster. With two doors it was sold as a standard and extended cab pickup, and as a chassis with cab. It was available with three or five doors as an SUV, and also had a four-door crew cab option. Adding to the breadth of options, short- and long-wheelbases were available. The truck’s overall length in shorty guise was 174.2 inches, which grew to 191.3 inches in long format.

Engines ranged from 1.6- to 2.3-liters if burning gasoline, and were of 2.0- or 2.2-liters of displacement if diesel. In its first and second generation, gasoline power available to North American Isuzu truck customers remained the same: 1.8-liters, 75 horsepower. When the second gen arrived for model year 1981, it brought with it an optional turbodiesel motor, the 2.2-liter. An ample 58 horses were available. Four-wheel drive was optional on North American LUV/P’ups, but only on the short-wheelbase models.

1983 brought a change to the P’ups fate in North America, as General Motors introduced its new S-10 and S-15 trucks. The LUV disappeared, leaving the P’up to continue alone. The 2.2L turbodiesel engine from the P’up lived a second life though, as a seldom-selected engine offering in the S-10 and S-15 through 1985. The P’up was succeeded in 1988 by the Indiana-made “Pickup,” which continued on through 1996, whereupon it was replaced by the S-10 clone called Hombre.

Today’s Rare Ride is a stunningly well-kept blue/blue P’up from 1986. The hood scoop reminds you it has the D. And check that quality Caprice Classic steering wheel. Subject to a body-off restoration, the P’up asks an optimistic $11,500.

[Images: seller]

Corey Lewis
Corey Lewis

Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.

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  • April L Tutich April L Tutich on Sep 20, 2022

    We have one of these '86 diesel pups and looking for parts, specifically rocker arms right now. Any advice?

  • Robert Amee Robert Amee on Sep 05, 2023

    I was the owner of this truck in 2016. I sold it in 2017 for $7500. This is top model for this year. LS =AC, Ps, Cloth interior. And no there is no such thing as these are common in SoCal. I have 2 more I’ll be selling and they are the LS version Space Cab AC Ps Turbo. Every mint Jdm Truck in SoCAL are either exported or bought buy collector.

  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
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