I have no solid information to offer you. All I know is that this half Dakota/half …60-ish D100 streaked past me on Cave Creek road today and I hardly had time to get a good look at it. The blurry photo pretty much accurately represents the the impression the truck made on my in person as well. If you are the owner of this truck, or know anything about it, feel free to fill us in on the details.
I get the same depressed feeling from this truck that I get when I go to a casino and witness the miserable, chain smoking old people camping out at the slot machines. Their eyes tell the whole story:
There is a basic principle of engineering that affects all cars: in order to make an engine produce more power, you need to add more fuel and more air. Adding more fuel is the easy part, but adding more air can be challenging. That’s why automakers use turbochargers to boost the incoming air, which in turn boosts the power output of an engine. This is particularly effective on smaller engines.
Turbochargers have been standard fare on Saabs, Volvos, and high-end Nissans for decades. One car manufacturer that has kept their distance from forced induction is Honda. However, they did experiment with it during the “turbo craze” of the 1980s.
One phrase that I often overhear at car shows is: “They sure don’t make ’em like that anymore.” In the case of the Buick Century Caballero Estate Wagon, they didn’t make ’em like that then, either!
The Caballero Estate Wagon was produced for two years only in 1957 and 1958. This ultra-rare car features a pillarless 4-door design and was GM’s only hardtop wagon. According to HowStuffWorks, Buick produced 10,186 Caballero Estate Wagons in 1957 and just 4,456 in 1958.
[printprofilepic]
I always thought International Harvester was a really interesting company. They made such a wide range of products, from farm equipment, to military vehicles, to refrigerators and air conditioners. Somewhere in the midst of all the weird shit they were doing, they managed to pump out a few really cool light duty trucks as well. And I do mean only a few. Although they were in the light truck business from 1907 to 1975, when’s the last time you saw an IH driving around?
As you may or may not have noticed in the last video I posted about my Mark VII, I’ve got a little bit of an issue with wheel hop under certain conditions. Well, we thought it would be cool to take an up close and personal look at what is really going on back there.
Before we have a look at the video though, I’d like to quickly go over exactly what wheel hop really is.
