Way back in 1980 I purchased my first “Adventure rig”. A showroom, zero miles Toyota 4×4 SR5 mini pickup in yellow from a Sacramento California dealer while I was managing two record shops in the area. I had the dealer install a color matched fiberglass top and put two bucket seats back there and some over-wheel-well storage bins and some carpet on the floor. While this image was found on the net it is a good representation of what I had. I was single when it was purchased and had many fun me-time trips to the California coast, Lake Tahoe…
and dry lake beds where I would sail My Manta Landsailer for hours and sometimes days if time away from work allowed…
In summer of 1982 I was offered a transfer to manage a record shop in Reno Nevada. I really put the mini truck through some crazy off road adventures in the Reno foothills and up into the Mount Rose and Lake Tahoe area. I met the girl that would become my wife and most of our time off was spent in the truck exploring the area. I also started a 4×4 mini pick up club with a neighbor called “Silver State Toyotas” SST was part of the logo. Quickly after that I was contacted by the president of the local Toyota Land Cruiser club and we merged the groups. There were about a dozen mini owners and two dozen FJ40 owners. Many fun outings too place over the next year. And by the next summer I was married and itching to get an FJ40…partly because I had done some to-extreme-for-mini crawling and put a bit of a bend in the frame!
This photo was found on the net and is a nice representation of our rig on the outside. We had several mods including the roll-cage to be envied in the club that my wife’s dad fabricated and installed. It was all bolted to frame rails and had a front hoop, two behind the driver/passenger seats, three front/back connecting members, and two down tubes to rear. By the next summer a chevy 327 had been dropped into the hood and all the under-hood-bling to go with.
Life in the Sierra Foothills with my new bride was full of great memories. Many mid-week evening runs from Reno into the surrounding hills taken with club members. The club was also active in maintaining a small stretch of the Rubicon Trail and annual attendees in Reno parades.
By spring of 1986 our first child was a few months old and I had another opportunity to advance with the record-shop company and moved the wife and little one to Portland Oregon to help run 4 shops in the local malls. Being locked in the confines of a big city and the FJ40 not really a “Family” vehicle I sold it to a drooling college student.
With the move from dry-desert to soggy-forest hitting us hard the first couple of camping attempts we shelved the idea for a couple years. . . and in 1988 purchased a nice used Westfalia van (representative pic found on net). Unfortunately we only had two trips with the van as there was a dealer-mechanic-at-fault engine fire and the van was a total loss. This brought an end to our camping except for a few trips in the family car to state parks and renting a Yurt. In hindsight we should have just pushed on and dealt with the soggy conditions, put on the goulashes and ponchos and had fun with the kids no matter the weather.
And so ends chapter 1 of evolution of an adventure rig. In the next chapter we begin anew with kids both off on their own, and my wife and I as empty nesters.
To be continued… in Chapter 2 of “Evolution of adventure rig“…