#PickupTrucks

Today's UCOTD is bound to upset those who still don't quite understand this feature. I promise I am not doing that intentionally -- I am not that mean (usually). No, I really do believe that the right person could take this project 1989 Dodge Dakota Sport Convertible and make it a fun project truck.

If they have the time, patience, and money.

Today we bring you a 1988 Isuzu 4x4 that will let you go camping.

We took a look at a Mitsubishi small pickup with Dodge badges last month, and now it's the turn of a Mazda small pickup with Ford badges. I spotted this Courier at a self-service boneyard in Carson City, Nevada, last month.

Today we have an oddity -- a 1989 Isuzu Space Cab.

As I search for interesting pieces of automotive history in the car graveyards of the land, I look for odometers showing impressively high final readings. My definition of "impressive" varies by manufacturer, so Honda and Toyota products now need at least 400,000 miles to meet that threshold.

As a junkyard historian, I find the era of Detroit's transition from selling rebadged Japanese small pickups to selling their own homegrown versions especially interesting. The problem is that the Chevrolet S-10 was the first of those all-American 1980s minitrucks, and discarded early-production examples are damnably hard to find today.