The Isuzu VehiCROSS Is the Weirdest SUV You Forgot About

this is a 2001 Isuzu via cross most of you don't know about the via cross so let me sum it up for you really quickly it's weird this one is a little weirder than most of the other via crosses though because this is the very last via cross ever manufactured in the world today's video should be fun first a little overview now the via cross came from Isuzu best known in the United States for selling SUVs throughout the 1980s 1990s in the early 2000s and also for selling commercial vehicles and box trucks now most deserving models were all about practicality they have the trooper and the axiom when I was a kid growing up my mom's family car was an Isuzu Rodeo all that stuff had four doors it was very practical and then there was the via cross Isuzu initially started selling it in Japan in 1997 where it didn't really take off they thought it might do better in the North American market and well it didn't they sold it here from 1999 to 2001 and over those three model years they only ended up selling a little over 4,000 examples every V across had a 3.5 liter v6 with 215 horsepower which was a lot back then two doors an automatic transmission 4-wheel Drive and this weird styling for most people the via cross is an automotive afterthought for me I've always wanted to know more about it so I've come all the way to Southern California to check out this via cross today I'm gonna show you around it I'm going to show you all of its interesting quirks and we learn features there are many then I'm gonna get it out on the road and find out how it drives and then I'm gonna give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the via cross click the link below to visit autotrader.com slash oversteer when I've compiled a list of the other weirdest SUV is currently listed for sale on auto trader first off we got to talk styling this via cross is completely unmodified this is how they came from the factory with this weird curvy design and the enormous plastic cladding on the bottom and around back there's this weird tire covered thing I remember when I was a kid and these were new they were weird-looking then and they're still weird now and as OOOs who made a lot of them in yellow which only added to the weirdness now beyond the styling I want to talk about a quirk of this particular via crosstie I mentioned earlier and that is the fact that it's the last one ever made now when people in the car world tell you they have the last of something be sceptical usually they mean they have the last about certain transmission or a certain color or a certain option stuff that doesn't really matter to anybody but folks this is the barrett-jackson special this is the very last via cross and the owner of this car even has a copy of a letter from Isuzu with the VIN on it certifying it as such it also says that the V across was Isuzu halo product designed to show that they were a specialist in building sport utility vehicles now what exactly does having the last V across get you well the notoriety of course but also a special paint color as you can see this car is finished in this nice metallic pearl white color that was only painted on this via cross to commemorate the end of production it wasn't on any other model now something else before I dive into the interior and exterior quirks and features of this car one other thing the owner has he has the original window sticker of this car showing an MSRP of around $31,000 back in 2001 which translates to about forty four thousand dollars in today's money keep that in mind as I'm showing you around back at the time a 2001 Ford Explorer started around $28,000 with shipping a Jeep Wrangler started at $14,000 and the nicest model the Sahara was only 24,000 so 31,000 for this thing two doors from a weird brand that was a big ask back in 2001 now I'll begin the court some features on the outside on a start up front with the headlights not only did they have sort of a weird design but they have horns in them seriously look at them they have little horns now what those are when you turn on the headlights the headlights light up below the horns and the horns light up in orange is just sort of like a little running line or parking light but there they are they protrude from the headlights but I'm not really sure why they're not a turn signal they're just horns next time moving on to maybe the V across his most obviously unusual styling trait that would be the body cladding you take a walk with me around the V across you'll notice that the body cladding goes around the entirety of the vehicle and that there are rivets at various points to rivet the body cladding to the V across front sides rear there are rivets and cladding along the entire thing a nice little hallmark of the V across next up another interesting V across work on the outside that would be the wheels this thing has 18-inch wheels which is insane like 2012 AMG Mercedes has 18-inch wheels and so does a 17 year old Isuzu it's so crazy the early vision cross models had 16 inch wheels and I remember when I was a kid and they came out with the 2001 models that I the 18s I thought they were massive just I get it no one was doing 18-inch wheels and even today after all the wheel size escalation these wheels still look big another interesting styling detail on the outside of this car and that would be the giant C pillar now the a and B pillars are normal the C pillar this car is huge it's like two feet from back to front this is actually pretty common in two-door SUVs of the 90s and the 2000s they put these huge C pillars on and it greatly impeded visibility now as soon as you took this as an opportunity to advertise that you were looking at a V across with the cool little via cross logo interestingly that is the only place on the exterior of this car where the word via cross actually appears oh and by the way since we're talking about the word via cross one thing to notice the word via cross was a little different from a traditional word via was normal but then cross was supposed to be capitalized and his zoo did it this way and all of their marketing communications about this car wasn't just the via cross it was the via cross one other interesting item back here is the little Isuzu okay decal I guess they put this on the factory in Japan to let you know that this one has been inspected and it's okay to go my mom's rodeo have the same decal of course if this window ever gets broken they replaced the window you won't have okay decal so then how are you supposed to know if you're buying a used one if it's okay the next interesting thing about the via cross would be the fuel door now like a lot of rugged SUVs it has this riveted fuel door to make it look tough but that isn't even close to the strangest thing about the field or the strangest thing is the fact that it is currently in its lock position if you won't unlock it you lift up this metal flap and it really is metal you can hear it when you lift it up and then you stick the key in and unlock it and only then can you access the field or there's no way to release it from the inside and you can't just walk up and open it you have to stick the key in in order to open the fuel door speaking of the fuel door check out this warning label right above it do not wipe the plastic panel when fuel spills out to avoid scratching it but of course you wouldn't want to damage your precious plastic cladding now moving on to the back of the vehicles they're art many weird things back here we will begin with the rear window now as you can see the tailgate has an odd shape to it on account of the tire which I'll get to in a minute but that means that the rear window also has the same odd shape it sort of arches upwards to go over the tire and that means that the rear defroster lines make the same arches sort of gradually lessening as you go up the window it certainly is one of the most bizarre rear window designs I've seen and it it doesn't exactly do wonders for rear visibility but it serves who knew that the rear visibility would be bad so they had a little trick up their sleeve this car was one of the very first vehicles ever commercially available with a factory backup camera when this car was introduced in Japan back in 1997 you could get it with a backup camera to adjust for the fact that it had this giant tire here and there wasn't much rear visibility the camera mounted right here above the word Isuzu on the tailgate and it gave you extra visibility when you were backing up unfortunately when they brought the V across to the United States in 1999 they ditched the camera so none of the US models have it but the owner told me that some V across enthusiasts actually have found the backup camera parts and the screen and have fitted a backup camera to their US model via cross nonetheless it had it just not in the US and I'm stealing back because there is still more to cover back here in fact the next quirk is one of my favorite vehicle poor except the across was a limited-production serve low-volume car made for only a few years so they didn't want to bother giving it its own key fob remote so it borrowed the one from the Isuzu Trooper it has two buttons on it locked unlocked and there's a button here for the hatch unfortunately the trooper had a hatch but the V across well it doesn't you press the hatch button and nothing happens it was a button that just did nothing it had no programming if you got a V across instead the V across has a tailgate and the only way to open it is stick the key in turn it and then it opens like a door so even though there is a hatch button on the key fob there is no hatch and if you press it nothing happens and then we move on to the spare tire now a lot of SUVs from this time period had two doors and their smaller size meant that it was hard to mount the spare tire under the car so a lot of Tudor recipes from this time period also had rear mounted spares the Suzuki sign cake the Jeep Wrangler might Land Rover Defender this thing also has a rear mounted spare as you can tell from the tailgate but the access isn't from the outside it's from the inside you get in here and you undo these things I've already done the ones over on that side and then this whole cover pops off and there is your spare tire now because this they had 18-inch wheels they can only really get a space saver tire in here they couldn't do a full giant thing but nonetheless you have a temporary tire on your vehicle now when you're sitting here from this angle you can really see just how odd that rear window was that it was sort of pinched in the middle in order to accommodate this tire and you can also see another interesting thing that happens as a result of the tire because the bumper is lower to also accommodate the tire it actually has sort of a nice low load floor almost like a car or a van so you can get stuff in here pretty easily or at least in the middle on the part where the tire is make stuff climbing inside the V across the first thing you notice when you get in one of these you can't help but notice that would be the interior colour it's insane I don't think isn't the money to really go as crazy with the interior as with the exterior so instead they were like let's just give it some crazy colours and so the door panels are bright red the seats are bright red they even integrated bright into the steering wheel none of this would have been that weird except for the fact that it didn't really matter what color the exterior of your vehicle is you just got a bright red interior one interesting item about those bright red states they aren't just any bright red seats they're Recaros like a sports car would have above the Recaro logo is printed the via cross logo that's the only place you'll find it on the inside of the car just like the c-pillar was the only place on the outside now once you get inside and get past the crazy interior color you'll notice there are a few other interesting quirks in here for example on the door panels there is this faux carbon fiber trim now carbon fiber wasn't particularly common back in 2001 even on sports cars but especially not on SUVs this wasn't intended to really be a sporty high-performance SUV so I don't really understand why it would have wanted to include fake carbon fiber on the door panels and yet they did another item where I'm not really sure why Isuzu decided to do it that way that would be the font on the gauges this is supposed to be a young hip sporty weird SUV and the gauge font is like the most traditional old-school Buick looking thing you're ever gonna see it's a really strange decision especially for something you have to look at very often and speaking of the gauge cluster another interesting thing in there is the torque on-demand graphic now this thing was rear-wheel drive unless the car started to detect some slippage and then it would start sending power to the front Isuzu called this system torque on demand now when you turn on the car it lights up with just the rear wheels in green that's because it's in two-wheel drive but shift into four-wheel drive or get some slippage floor the accelerator for instance and it starts to send power to the front and the graphics light up in the front to show that power is going to the front wheels it doesn't really update in real time but it does update and this would have been pretty advanced for 2001 another interesting thing about this car the via cross has climate control vents in the normal place of course just like any other car and it also has bent down at your feet in case you want air to be blown down on your feet but it also has something interesting and that would be a vent right under the steering column blows air directly I guess between your legs which is sort of an interesting thing to see I've never really seen that before but I guess it can keep you cool in that region moving on to the middle of the via cross below the transmission lever and the four-wheel drive selector you will see one button marked winter and another one marked power would Terp our the winter button sort of limits your speeds that you can't go too fast and starts slipping the power button adds like an extra 800 rpm something you can have better acceleration your carbon fiber trimmed via cross next up moving over to the middle of the V across interior we must talk about the radio now the stereo on this thing is the factory stereo that came with it and just look at this thing the next time you complain about your infotainment system not being responsive enough to your touch just remember not too long ago we were using these things and the only screen was smaller than my thumb with that said the V across it does have a six disc CD changer mounted in - it's further down so you could listen to six different CDs and sort of cycle through them pretty good now below of the six CD changer something I really like about the V across and that would be the fact that when the dashboard and the gear selector area came together they didn't want to leave a blank space there they didn't really know what to do so they just stuck a piece of plastic in there with three nice contour lines so it looked like the whole thing sort of flowed into one that was interior design in the 1990s again speaking of those three lines across that little plastic piece how about another spot in the interior where there are three weird lines that would be the headliner I guess because they didn't want to make the headliner just a normal old regular one they stuck three little contour lines in the middle it's it's really strained but that's what they did also interesting in the headliner is the dome light unlike every other car dome light where you can turn it off or on or set to turn on when the doors are open this one is a little bit weirder instead you press basically the entire light to turn it on and then you press the entire light to turn it off again another interesting interior lighting detail in the V across there is no dome light in the front there's only that one the middle of the headliner in the back unless you look closely at the interior rear view mirror take a look at that and you will see two little switches mounted on the bottom of that mirror that say reading lamps push those switches and they turn on little lamps mounted on the bottom the mirror that you would never otherwise see it probably wouldn't know that they're there unless we know that they're there our final interior detail in front we must move on to the via cross and glove box the glove box is normal very utilitarian but it does contain the owner's manual and take a look at that pouch the owner's manual is in that was pretty nice in 2001 even has Isuzu go farther embroidered it's a very nice piece now inside the owner's manual there are a couple of interesting little tidbits one of which is on an early page there's a nice note - via cross owners that says in part just remember your Isuzu dealer knows best and they're interested in your complete satisfaction of course the zoo zoo hasn't been around for like a decade so I guess that just isn't true anymore frankly now next up moving on to the next page we find what may be my very favorite thing in the entire via cross owner's manual and that would be this little symbol it says this symbol means what may cause death or injuries to you or other people now putting aside the obvious grammar problems with that I like the fact that they introduced you to the death symbol early on on the owners manual just sort of let you know anytime you see this something that may kill you and the last interesting thing in the owners manual that would be these little business reply mail cards in the bank that you can send into a zoo zoos headquarters to let them know that the vehicle has changed hands in case I'm gonna send out a recall notice or maybe if the warranty is still active now I looked up the address on these things and it comes back to a law firm and an insurance agency maybe we should send one of these things in let them know oh hey you know if you ever if you ever get a door panel that isn't red we'd be interested okay so those are all the quirks in the front of the vehicle this vehicle also has back seats I say unfortunately because you always make me climb in the back seats of these cars with really tight rear seats and that is this now in order to get the seat forward remove it and then we pull it forward and that is just about the smallest area I have ever seen to climb in back nonetheless I will attempt it oh this is how I'm gonna die getting in the back of a vehicle II that small that doesn't really look like the problem it actually looks like there's a reasonable amount of legroom the problem is more that the front seat just doesn't come up far enough to allow me to get back in I don't think there's any way I mean my shoe barely fits past it it's just not gonna happen only kids can get back there so unfortunately we do not have a via crosstie ex seat demonstration I can tell you just from observing them though that there are a couple of quarks back there one is the fact that they too are red and also the fact that even on the side of the back seats there are little fake carbon fiber pieces just like on the front door panel so those are the quirks and the odd features of the via cross and now it's time to get it out on the road where I will for a brief moment be one of the stranger vehicles driving in Southern California alright I'm driving the me across my first impression is that this steering wheel is slippery the material they made for the steering wheel I don't know if it's leather if it's supposed to be leather first driving impression the via cross has sort of a feeling of being like a like a truck kind of SUV I'm actually kind of surprised I would saw these things and thought oh what a cute little weird vehicle but actually it feels pretty substantially this certainly feels more substantial and robust than a Wrangler for better or worse I mean Wranglers feel like possible in light you can just kind of do whatever I mean the engine has some sound to it and the body is it doesn't shake or anything but it has that truck feel the rear visibility on account of that ridiculous rear tailgate thing the rear visibility is just atrocious kid you can't see anything you can see back above so like I can see pretty well behind me sort of like things that are high up but I can't see the road back there if there was someone directly behind me I would really have no idea that that japanese-market backup camera would have been pretty be nice let me tell you yeah I'm surprised at just how robust it feels I've always kind of I've always kind of dismissed these things as being started a little cute little cute weirdly styled almost almost gimmicky like oh they're just trying to get people to buy them because it's weird looking at the owner of this car told me he off-roads it like crazy he goes with G people he's able to hang with a lot of Jeeps it does have good ground clearance good approach and departure angles and of course the four-wheel drive system was sort of a a pretty cool thing it was a reasonably high amount of road noise I'm sure that the the off there's are 40 tires on it I'm sure that they give off some very crash heat but almost in a good way like it makes you feel like you're really driving a vehicle that you know it's like ready let's go over another bump let's go over a curb next come on in terms of driving experience I wouldn't necessarily say it's like fun to drive like a sports car or anything like that but it's not not fun to drive I mean it sure has that old-school truck feel definitely sort of the era before crossovers and that kind of thing right I'm on the straightaway here I'm going 30 I'm gonna floor it well you know it doesn't speak I mean it's not it's not really slow but it's slow it's this isn't fast it's actually kind of funny because this engine this engine at the time it was I remember when this thing was out it was like I can't believe they put that much power in a car that small cuz you gotta remember the Wrangler had like 190 horsepower maximum most of them were four cylinders one heard forty or hundred fifty horsepower even my defender which came out just a couple years before this with a big v8 had only 180 horsepower and the Ford Explorer had 160 from a v6 this thing at 215 was a monster but in the early 2000s horsepower exploded and the azusa v across it was left in the dust just like all cars from this era and so that's the 2001 Isuzu V across the final V across ever made the last specimen out of the laboratory the V across was too expensive it was weird-looking it was largely impractical thanks to only two doors and it's been generally forgotten by most members of the car community assuming they ever knew about it in the first place but I've never forgotten about it and I'm happy that I finally got to be up close with the weird quirky Isuzu that I've always wondered about and now it's time for the Doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the V across is interesting is sure but no one would consider it beautiful and most would consider it the exact opposite and it gets a 3 out of 10 acceleration is pretty slow and gets a 1 out of 10 handling is fine relatively secure but it's not quick or precise and it gets a 3 out of 10 cool factor is debatable but I always turn my head when I see one of these go by and at this point I'd find it more interesting and curious than a standard Porsche 911 it gets a 6 out of 10 importance however is minimal this particular via crosstie across world but the via cross wasn't very important to the automotive world it gets a 4 out of 10 bringing the total weekend score to just 17 out of 50 which makes sense in a scale designed for sports cars next up for the daily categories starting with features the via cross has a lot of the essentials but nothing more and it gets a 3 out of 10 next up is comfort the via cross is reasonably roomy but the crash II ride knocks it down to a 4 out of 10 as for quality the via cross seems reliable but the interior isn't exactly gorgeous it gets a six out of ten practicality is next and the via cross has just over 50 cubic feet of cargo space with the rear seats down that should give it an 8 but truly inaccessible rear seats effectively makes this thing a two-seater knocking it down to just a 5 out of 10 finally there's value and the via cross does well you can pick up a nice one for well under 10 grand and their fun interesting vehicles that are a cool weird departure from the typical jeeps you always see on the trails I'm giving it a 7 out of 10 bringing the total daily score to 25 out of 50 add it all up and the total dug score is 42 out of 100 which is fine the via cross is an older SUV and it was never gonna score very well I do think this may highlight a flaw in the dug score though I mean in a separate category for fun factor that goes beyond handling in performance as the V across is a fun car even though it isn't a fast or thrilling one [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 2,455,394

Rating: 4.8224611 out of 5

Keywords: isuzu vehicross, vehicross, weird suv, weird cars, isuzu vx, isuzu vcross, isuzu, weird isuzu, 2-door suv, weird old suv, doug demuro, demuro

Id: ZOszin9227Q

Length: 23min 28sec (1408 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Kreiger0]

https://i.imgur.com/NFPxWbG.jpg

[u/flyingnipple]

I love that Doug remembered his mom's Rodeo had the same window sticker. Little Doug was looking for quirks too.

[u/LegoGuy23]

I'm being REALLY pedantic here, but those don't appear to be rivets, but rather Torx screws.

Cool video, and even cooler car!

[u/-Cizin-]

I have no idea how this dude manages to get me to watch videos about some old SUV and it’s gas cap that are 20 minutes long. But I do every time.

[u/Doug-DeMuro]

Hehehehe. It's VehiCROSS day everyone! Stop what you're doing and celebrate!

[u/blue_bomber697]

That is pretty cool to have a unique vehicle like that. The very last one to be produced ever, and getting a unique paint color to commemorate that. Cool of the manufacturer to do that for the last one. What an odd vehicle though, love these quirky ones you find that I have never heard of!

[u/deplorablecalifornia]

The “Testicle Cooling” is my favorite feature of this car

[u/ForbiddenWonder8]

This is humanity's peak.

[u/LVProfessor]

About 6 years ago there was a woman who owned a store next to my old job who owned one of these. I'd never seen one before and couldn't figure out why she had it. Then I met her friend who owned TWO of them in different colors. Id be willing to bet they both still have them. The people that own these things LOVE them and refuse to let them go.