What the.. the truck I junked worth $18000
 

So the Hilux pickup truck my dad gave me-It was a nice, ca vehicle. I drove it until the transmission went out, could not find a replacement transmission so I took it to the dismantler as not worth repairing. A similar one just sold for $18750 on BAT. I would have never thought it was worth anything.

What the heck is a Hilux?

Classic Toyota Pickup
 

Well that's a shame, never trust a junkman to discern value .

There are parts out there .

I drove a Chevy pickup as a kid. Cheap, noisy, dangerous. No nostalgia. I completely fail to understand the fascination with old pickup trucks. I can appreciate the aesthetics of a Wllys Jeep, maybe an IH Scout, but a Bronco is death in a steel shoebox. I just don’t get it. Yet this junkyard stuff is in all the top ten lists.

Old Stuff
 

Exactly .

I understand why Geezers like me want to feel the same they did when driving that old jalopy 50 years ago but the kiddies these days making a big deal out of "patina" (means rust and bad condition) along with insisting on bias ply tires and generators, makes no sense at all .

The "good" thing about old pick-up trucks is that they made a **** load of them, and each body stayed in production a longer time than cars of those eras. So, scrap parts and new restoration parts are more available.

The original Bronco's attraction is the tall greenhouse. That's also was makes Range Rovers appealing. The IH Scout, Scout II, and Travel-All's failed in this regard.

Ford did screwed up the original Bronco design with the small rear wheel well opening that didn't match the front opening, and the "3 on the tree" manual transmission. They're actually making reproduction rear quarter panels now with front-matching, big openings now. You can also now build a original Bronco from parts catalogs.

An acquaintance worked for Ford back in the 1970's and had his friend "walk" his Bronco through final assembly, paying particular attention to blowing a lot of paint in to the inner cavities. He came to my mother's funeral in 2011, and the Bronco still had no rust, despite seeing a lot of use on the Outer Banks. He died a few years ago, and his only kid (now in his 50's) still has the Bronco, and will for as long as he's alive.

There's a car museum on I-10 just outside of Tallahassee. The people working there at the reception desk have a game where they ask patrons which car in the museum would they most like to have. The easy winner is their Ford Bronco (and it's a less popular pick-up truck model).

https://tacm.com/

https://www.instagram.com/p/B33bbj6l9oC/

At the time it was a old, odd, noisy, hot/cold, underpowered pickup and no one had any interest in it. People would laugh at me in it (good natured of course)It just didn't make sense to put money into it when the transmission blew up. It did not make good lawn art either. "Hilux" is not short for High Luxury. My head hit the roof a few times on bumps. Also I have owned/own several Toyota 4x4 vehicles over the years and they are all worth more than what I paid and sold them for. My present '03 Tacoma 4x4 Single cab SR5 with very low miles is still worth what I paid for it.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1969-toyota-hilux/? Mine was a '71 but the same truck except dark green.utm_source=transactionalemail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=bat_watched_listing_ended

I was buying early cars when a teenager. They were easy and cheap to aquire. The keeping up with the jones thing had started and a new car was a status symbol. Nobody wanted the really old stuff.

My dad said you should be keeping some of the cars. He thought someday they would be worth money. We lived in the city and proper long term storage was not reasonable financially. Remember that you could buy a really good low millage car for 100.00. I like some of my friends brought and sold then on a regular basis. There was always lots of them around. Sometimes we traded cars. We never thought of the changes to come.

The kid across the street started a company called sports cars unlimited. I drove some of his inventory occasionally. To think that 300.00 was a lot for some of them seems insane today. He also raced cars and built it into a giant business over the years.

Turned out dad was right though. Any one of them would have returned at least a hundred times their cost if they had been stored well today. Perhaps 200 times on some. The very last of them at the time was a mint 1950 mercury with very low millage in 196I. I purchased my first new car then. Almost 60 years ago. Nostalgia perhaps?

My dads suggestion was based on his 14 years of living in California. He said the heavy classics of the 1930s where sitting in the back row of the car lots cheap there. Cheap as nobody wanted them and the car collecting had really not started yet. So he possibly suspected the future perhaps.