- Owner: David Zipf
- Location: Lexington, Kentucky
- Found on: Craigslist
- Purchase Price: $4,500
- Years Owned: Four
My father always had weird cars. my Grandad liked weird cars, my great-grandad liked weird cars. It's in the genetic line. When the Vehicross came out in 1998, I was about ten years old and very impressionable. I used to drive it in the video game Test Drive: Offroad 3, and loved it.
Years later, when I started looking to replace my college car, I remembered the Vehicross. I was finally the age where I could afford one. I came across a few online. Some were low-mileage, well maintained, and expensive. Others were cheap, but beat down. This one was right in the middle, and nearby. I drove to it and immediately fell in love all over again. I bought it. It was exactly what I needed.
It's been a ton of fun, and really reliable. The only breakdown I've had is a tensioner pulley that seized up and threw the belt, but I fixed it the same day with parts from AutoZone. It looks weird, but the drivetrain, chassis, and suspension are taken from the Isuzu Trooper so all the important stuff is easy to get. That can’t be said for body panels, though.
I’ve put 50,000 miles on it. I drove it everyday for about two years. I’ve done some off-roading, and it goes through everything, deep mud, rocks, sand, no problem. It has a short wheel base, which makes it nimble. I used it to tow a car through the mountains, and got double digit gas mileage, which is incredible. But it's comfortable too. I’ve driven 600 miles in a day and felt fine.
I get a few reactions when people see it in the wild. Some go, “I remember those things, can’t believe you have one!" Other people say, “Oh wow, I didn’t know Isuzu was still making cars.” It's 18 years old, but the Vehicross was ahead of its time. A lot of today’s cars have taken styling cues from it. What was overdone 20 years ago is sedate these days.
The biggest thing I've realized is that it's probably the cheapest halo car you can buy. A halo car is the epitome of what that brand is or was. The Corvette, a Ford GT, or a Ferrari Enzo, that's the best the brand could do. Well, the Vehicross was the best Isuzu could do. They built it for rallying, they built it as a concept, and they built it to be really good on and off-roading. And it’s really good.
I don’t drive it as much now, and I don’t have the time to work on it. So, sadly, I’m going to have to sell it. I'd like to sell to someone who's going to continue to appreciate it and drive it and enjoy it. It's a car that's meant to be driven. I really don't want to sell it, so I'm hoping it goes out of state so I can’t try to buy it back.
A version of this story appears in the April 2019 issue.
