3 ms·

Must be a pure US thing. I had never heard of 'Scout' as a car brand.

timetopay 3y ago
Neither has anyone in the US - they're relatively niche pre-cursors to the SUV, sold a respectable yet tiny amount (500,000), and haven't shipped a product since 1980.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
hilux 3y ago
Neither have I. From the title, I thought they were going to revive Studebaker or something.
- CRConrad 3y ago
  I thought Detroit Electric. (Possibly = the old "granny" car in Cars -- unless she's a Stanley Steamer or something?) But then again, Detroit Electric is perhaps nowadays owned by that same Lebanese / Egyptian / "Canadian" scammer who either bought or is buying the remnants of SAAB? Sigh.
inferiorhuman 3y ago
I think it's mostly that HN is a tech site and the HN audience is only into cars insofar as they intersect with gadgets (thus the fascination with Tesla and Lucid). Step into a group of car geeks and you're sure to find folks who know about International Harvester. Case in point, on my way to Woolworths in Sydney a few years back I saw a pickup of all things. Utes are all the rage over there, pickups not so much, so it really stood out even though it was parked innocently on the street. Upon closer inspection it was an IH pickup, but it didn't look like any I'd seen in America. On my way out I ran into the guy that owned it and we had a long chat. The truck itself was an Australian market vehicle, largely similar to the American ones mechanically but with a different front clip. He was a huge fan and desperately wanted to import an American one.
_yb2s 3y ago
HN is a uniquely weird bubble of urban tech people that wouldn’t know what a Scout is. The Scout is well known and revered among people that are into off roading, or live in rural farming areas. It was built by International Harvester- a major and well respected tractor and heavy industrial equipment brand (now known as Case IH), and marketed to farmers and rural people. The Scouts build quality and offroad capabilities are legendary… it also came with some distinctly tractor like features such as a PTO (power take off), which could directly power farm equipment like pump, winches, plows, mowers, and augers from the vehicles engine. I grew up in a rural area in the USA in the 90s and we had a scout, and so did many of our friends and neighbors. I don't offhand know if the Scout was sold outside of the USA or not.
- _yb2s 3y ago
  From looking up old ads, I can see it actually was sold all over the world. I think this old Scout ad sums up who it was marketed to well. A handy new workhorse for your farm: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/153403931038864688/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/153403931038864688/
hakfoo 3y ago
When I graduated high school in 1999, it was a reasonably prosperous upper-middle-class campus, so a lot of kids had cars. It was a couple years too early for the Koreans to have a serious market presence, and a couple years too late for Geo and really cheap Japanese cars. As I recall the default new cars there were either Chevrolet Cavaliers or the old Mitsubishi Mirages (the ones also sold as Dodge Colts) for the kids whose parents were subsidizing stuff. Of course there were also plenty of random hand-me-down 80s and 90s stuff that was clearly "all I could get for $2000." But there were quite a few 'car kids' who had obviously either taken their parents' projects or started their own, so you'd see one or two IH Scouts in the parking lot on any given day. They were bigger and bulkier than anything else around at the time. So these kids are now mid-40s, and saying "we did the minivan phase, I want something cooler." Will they remember the kid with his restored Scout in the parking lot?

Neither has anyone in the US - they're relatively niche pre-cursors to the SUV, sold a respectable yet tiny amount (500,000), and haven't shipped a product since 1980.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

hilux 3y ago

Neither have I. From the title, I thought they were going to revive Studebaker or something.

CRConrad 3y ago
I thought Detroit Electric. (Possibly = the old "granny" car in Cars -- unless she's a Stanley Steamer or something?) But then again, Detroit Electric is perhaps nowadays owned by that same Lebanese / Egyptian / "Canadian" scammer who either bought or is buying the remnants of SAAB? Sigh.

inferiorhuman 3y ago

I think it's mostly that HN is a tech site and the HN audience is only into cars insofar as they intersect with gadgets (thus the fascination with Tesla and Lucid). Step into a group of car geeks and you're sure to find folks who know about International Harvester. Case in point, on my way to Woolworths in Sydney a few years back I saw a pickup of all things. Utes are all the rage over there, pickups not so much, so it really stood out even though it was parked innocently on the street. Upon closer inspection it was an IH pickup, but it didn't look like any I'd seen in America. On my way out I ran into the guy that owned it and we had a long chat. The truck itself was an Australian market vehicle, largely similar to the American ones mechanically but with a different front clip. He was a huge fan and desperately wanted to import an American one.

_yb2s 3y ago

HN is a uniquely weird bubble of urban tech people that wouldn’t know what a Scout is. The Scout is well known and revered among people that are into off roading, or live in rural farming areas. It was built by International Harvester- a major and well respected tractor and heavy industrial equipment brand (now known as Case IH), and marketed to farmers and rural people. The Scouts build quality and offroad capabilities are legendary… it also came with some distinctly tractor like features such as a PTO (power take off), which could directly power farm equipment like pump, winches, plows, mowers, and augers from the vehicles engine. I grew up in a rural area in the USA in the 90s and we had a scout, and so did many of our friends and neighbors. I don't offhand know if the Scout was sold outside of the USA or not.

_yb2s 3y ago
From looking up old ads, I can see it actually was sold all over the world. I think this old Scout ad sums up who it was marketed to well. A handy new workhorse for your farm: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/153403931038864688/ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/153403931038864688/

hakfoo 3y ago

When I graduated high school in 1999, it was a reasonably prosperous upper-middle-class campus, so a lot of kids had cars. It was a couple years too early for the Koreans to have a serious market presence, and a couple years too late for Geo and really cheap Japanese cars. As I recall the default new cars there were either Chevrolet Cavaliers or the old Mitsubishi Mirages (the ones also sold as Dodge Colts) for the kids whose parents were subsidizing stuff. Of course there were also plenty of random hand-me-down 80s and 90s stuff that was clearly "all I could get for $2000." But there were quite a few 'car kids' who had obviously either taken their parents' projects or started their own, so you'd see one or two IH Scouts in the parking lot on any given day. They were bigger and bulkier than anything else around at the time. So these kids are now mid-40s, and saying "we did the minivan phase, I want something cooler." Will they remember the kid with his restored Scout in the parking lot?