Car of the day-Isuzu VehiCROSS (1999-2001)

Okay, so all you common folk and Breaking Bad fanboys out there thought the Pontiac Aztek was a horrifically ugly truck? Well then you haven't heard of Isuzu's VehiCROSS (no, that isn't a typo, that's actually how you spell it).  Then again, I wouldn't blame you for not knowing about this truck.  Isuzu wasn't ever that well known to begin with.  They were always "the automaker that could...but chose not to."  First thing to know about Isuzu was that they sold mostly trucks and SUVs.  Isuzu did make small compact cars  but gave up on that in the early 90s when the SUV boom kicked into high gear.

Like the Aztec, no one knew why this truck existed.  Sure, it had four wheel drive and can seat four people.  But the look of it was just...yeah.  The way I look at it was that Isuzu created this car "just for the hell of it."  I often wonder how and who came up with the name "VehiCROSS."  One might think that with such an exotic name and exterior, the interior might be the same....NOPE!  The interior was literally torn out of a Trooper, another Isuzu product.  And you want to know the best part?  In 1999, the asking price for this hideous snake (btw, doesn't the grille look like the inside of a snake's mouth?) was $28,000!

The VehiCROSS lasted three years and about 4,000 trucks made before Isuzu pulled the plug and replaced it with another head-scratching truck, the Axiom (if you want to learn about that one, just watch Spy Kids 2...seriously, that movie was a two-hour ad for it.)

So just because I spent the last three paragraphs bashing this truck, doesn't mean I hate it.  In fact, the first time I saw it (I think I was six at the time) I thought it was the coolest thing ever!  And that opinion still stands today.  There was even a time when I was shopping for my first car, that I came across a few VehiCROSS's for sale.  Even ten years after Isuzu stopped making the VehiCROSS, these things are still commanding 8 to 10,000 dollars.  It's probably because of how few were sold (and how fewer still remain)  but I do see one every once and a while...but then again, thats probably because it's so odd that I can't help but stare.