The other night I was examining the fabric of my life and found that, while it seemed on the surface I was spread thin, there was actually an area that could be worked to give a little more bandwidth if you will.  This examination followed closely on the realizations that I needed to not be dicing with modern traffic daily in my Sprint, that hauling greasy Alfa and Glas lumps around in the back of my wife’s 6 month old Jetta was almost as dicey as a panic stop behind a new German car with ABS while in the Sprint, especially should some gear oil find it’s way into the carcinogenic ‘new car smell’ emitting carpets, and, most subtle of all, there was this old itch that could use a little scratching- you see, back when I was doing 20 unit semesters of engineering course work there was this particularly weird/cool white Toyota pick-up I used to spot on my route to school.

I bought a 1966 Toyota Stout!  It’s cousin Norm’s fault.  (Australian readers are nodding knowingly -these are tough neat trucks).

The good: it’s got a rebuilt engine with very close to zero miles that runs good; there is not much rust -just the similar-to-an-Alfa rust that happens when dirt is trapped behind the front wheels; the interior is pretty good; to Stout owners chagrin the world over -a perfect windshield (there was one offered on eBay recently for $2000!!!!!!).  The bad: the horrible 80′s wheels, the rattle can primer coating, the seat covering, the dark tinted windows and the impossibly funky carb throttle linkages.

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