Minneapolis Street Sighting: Isuzu VehiCROSS 4WD

I love Japanese vehicles, and I tend to make that known here on The Automotive Way; unfortunately, around Minneapolis, most of the Japanese vehicles I see are of the garden variety-- typical Honda Civics, Toyota Camrys, and the occasional Suzuki Swift, and for light trucks, the standard of my sightings is the typical Toyota Tacoma or Nissan Frontier that has somehow escaped being hacked into a minitruck.

As a young child, I was fascinated by oddball Japanese makes, and I still am. Isuzu is a make I have always wondered about, because when I was growing up, I noticed that a vast majority of their products had been rebadged for other brands--or were in-fact cheaply badge-engineered versions of vehicles sold by other makes. Case in point, the Isuzu Trooper and Acura SLX, and the Chevrolet S10/GMC Sonoma and Isuzu Hombre. But what happens when Isuzu churns out a vehicle nothing like anything else available? The result is this--the VehiCROSS.  Although the mechanicals are pure Trooper, the styling is all its own. And it looks--well, see for yourself. I like these, but many potential customers found the styling quite polarizing; as a result, production was extremely limited, and the VehiCROSS is a scarce find today.

I have seen a scant ten or fifteen throughout my life, and most of the ones I've seen have been silver like this one; they also came in black, white and yellow, with green and red being even more rare than the normal colors.

I adore this example; yes, its quite dusty, and yes it could use a good wash, but I applaud the owner for not letting it rust. All the appropriate trim and badges are in place, including the much-gone 4WD badge on the tailgate. I am sad that this example suffers from suburbanitis and it will never see a dirt road in its life. Then again, I haven't seen this one since I shot it nearly three years ago, so I don't really know what became of it.

I like these, and because they're quite scarce, I'm glad I shot this. I haven't seen it since, and I haven't seen another VehiCROSS since. I would love to find another one someday, and do a better shoot of it.