PennSilverTaco's non-Toyota Japanese (and Korean) vehicle Rant/Rave MegaThread!

Is it a driving school, kinda like a rally version of Skip Barber?

 

I had a 87 Mazda B2200 SE-5 that I absolutely loved and drive it up to 2002. I bought it new and except for exhausts being expensive to fix that truck was phenomenal. Mine was light blue. Ohio winters pretty much destroyed the body but at 190000 miles the motor finally started to go bad. It wouldn't pass our e check for emissions anymore and I had to sell it to my coworker who lived just outside the e check area. He drove it for another year. I remember wiring the front end together with a coat hanger when a tie rod rusted out and driving it 6 miles home and it made it. I also remember having to fix the gas tank when it rusted out on top and not having to remove it because the bed floor was rotted out to. In 1993 we planned to sell it when I bought a new 93 Ranger but the Ranger just sat until I got rid of it. I couldn't part with the Mazda. When I finally let it go I bought a new 2002 Chevrolet S10 LS which was a piece of crap and blew up with 22000 miles on it. Until I got my 2017 Tacoma I have never had another truck that I really felt attached to. I still miss that little Mazda. I wish I could find another one worth restoring.

 

Are all of their cars manual? I don't get to practice the art of the third pedal as often as I would like!

 

My dad a 1986 B2000 and a 1990 B2600i 4x4. He bought the B2000 as a repaired salvage title wreck from my uncle who bought it from an insurance auction in 1990 and fixed it; It had super low miles and ran great, and just needed front end work if I recall...

My dad bought it for like two grand cash in 1990 and drove it until early summer 1992. The 1986 B2000 did not have A/C and my dad was quoted like a thousand bucks to install it; He sold the Mazda and bought a brand new 1992 Dodge Dakota that did have A/C. The 1990 was purchased used in September 1998 as a commuter beater, and that not only had A/C but it worked great; Pictures of me with the 1990 B2600i, circa 2000, can be seen in this thread!

 

I hear you about being attached to your Tacoma; Mine was a present from my parents when I got my learner's permit more than ten years ago!

 

Oh damn

 

Yoooooo, where did you see that? Yes

 

I found it online...

 

One of the things I distinctly remember about my dad's 1990 Mazda B2600i LE-5 4x4 is that while the factory 4-speaker AM/FM cassette stereo was good for what it was (a factory sound system in a truck that was nearly a decade old when my dad bought it), it showed it's limits during certain songs; My dad got me into Roy Orbison at a young age, and he had a tape with all of his greatest hits that he ended up giving me (most of his tapes by the late nineties were recordings of CDs that he'd made on his boombox). The quality of the boombox recordings damn good, but not the same as the original album.

It's a good thing I didn't really get into Meat Loaf until more than two years after we sold the Mazda, otherwise the speakers in that truck would have been destroyed by the end of the summer of 1999! When my dad was driving my Grandma's 1987 Mercedes 300E, I'm pretty sure I blew a factory speaker in that car by blasting Bat Out of Hell one too many times!

Going back to the Mazda, the front speakers would crackle during certain parts of certain songs (Like Roy Orbison's "In Dreams") In 1999, I was still obsessed with The Jungle Book, and my old soundtrack tape from that movie got plenty of "airtime" in the Mazda during the time we owned it. My favorite song was "Bare Necessities".

 

As I've said before (in this thread), my dad's first Mazda pickup was a 1986 B2000 short bed 2WD; He loved that truck! My uncle (same one who owns the wheel refinishing business in Myrtle Beach) bought the truck with damage to the front end at some sort of auction; This was thirty years ago, and my dad and uncle cannot remember with any certainty if the '86 B2000 had a rebuilt/salvage title. The actual damage to the truck was relatively minor and there was no frame damage or any kind of structural damage; My uncle had to put a new fender on it and do some paintwork, and then he sold it to my dad for two grand! Keep in mind that this truck was only four years old and had less than 40K miles! It had no power steering, no power brakes, a 5-speed handshaker, and a carbureted engine that probably made no more than 100hp; It also did not have air-conditioning, which is why dad ultimately sold it after owning it for less than two years. The truck was black, and DID NOT have A/C; This was a terrible combination during the Mid-Atlantic summers! That truck may have had no radio at all when my dad bought it, and if it did it was just a basic AM/FM radio; My dad says he got tape deck installed at Circuit City shortly after buying it. I was a baby when my dad bought that truck and barely past three years old when he sold it; pretty sure I wasn't even potty-trained yet to give you an idea of how young I was!

Even though I was no more than three, I have very clear memories of riding in that truck in my carseat, with both mom and dad driving. My mom actually took me to Toys "R" Us in about 1991, in that truck, and bought me this plastic toy police car (a 1987-1990 Caprice 9C1) that ended up being one of my favorite toys for most of the early nineties; I even took that Caprice to bed with me!

As stated above, the B2000's lack of air-conditioning was the primary reason my dad sold it;; He was quoted something like a thousand bucks to install A/C, chose to sell the Mazda, and bought a brand new 1992 Dodge Dakota LE that did have A/C as its replacement (the only Mopar product my dad has ever owned since I was born).

 

Here was my B3000 it was a 99 had her for 8 years 2wd in NJ weather lol. She never left me stranded and ran amazing for a 20 year old truck!

 

love the mower in the back!