Isuzu Trooper
Isuzu
MarqueIsuzu
Production1981–2002
EnginePetrol: / 1949 cc List of Isuzu engines#G200 / G200Z Straight-four engine / I4 (UBS13) / 2255 cc List of Isuzu engines#4ZD1 / 4ZD1 I4 (UBS16) / 2559 cc List of Isuzu
Isuzu
The Isuzu Trooper is a full-size SUV manufactured and marketed by Isuzu between September 1981 and September 2002 over two generations, the first, produced between 1981 and 1991; and the second (UBS) produced between 1991 and 2002, the latter with a mid-cycle refresh in 1998. In its earliest iterations, the Trooper was based on the company's first generation Isuzu Faster/Chevrolet LUV pickup. Marketed in the Japanese domestic market, as the Isuzu Bighorn (Japanese: いすゞ・ビッグホーン, Hepburn: Isuzu Bigguhōn), Isuzu marketed it internationally primarily as the Trooper, and in other markets as the Acura SLX (USA), Chevrolet Trooper, Subaru Bighorn, SsangYong Korando Family, Honda Horizon, Opel Monterey, Vauxhall Monterey, Holden Jackaroo, and Holden Monterey. In the United States, for the first generation, which was initially solely offered with two doors, Isuzu was required to comply with the 25% U.S.
Chicken Tax on two-door trucks. Prior to its formal introduction Paul Geiger, product-development manager at American Isuzu Motors, noted the Roman numeral "II" designated the truck version (with the rear seat as a mandatory $300 option) and "I" indicating the passenger version with a rear seat included along with certain other features. Isuzu thus marketed the first generation two-door as the Trooper II, and when introducing the four-door retained the Trooper II nameplate. Isuzu never formally marketed a Trooper I, and Car & Driver later inferred the company had changed their mind about the suffix before the SUV went on sale. Isuzu offered the Trooper initially with four-cylinder mot
From the Wikipedia article Isuzu Trooper, CC BY-SA.
This is the catalogue record of the Isuzu Trooper, one of 36 models Isuzu has placed in the historical record and one of more than seventeen thousand cars the MotorJury library tracks. The record places its introduction in 1981. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.
To read the Isuzu Trooper properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1980s were the decade of turbocharging, electronic fuel injection and the first mass digital engine management — Group B rallying and hot hatches defined its performance culture. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Mitsubishi Mitsubishi Pajero, the DeLorean Motor Company DeLorean DMC-12, the Nissan Nissan Micra — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.
On paper, the Isuzu Trooper reads like this: the record lists its engine as Petrol: / 1949 cc List of Isuzu engines#G200 / G200Z Straight-four engine / I4 (UBS13) / 2255 cc List of Isuzu engines#4ZD1 / 4ZD1 I4 (UBS16) / 2559 cc List of Isuzu; drive goes through 4-speed Isuzu MSG manual / 5-speed Isuzu MSG manual / 5-speed Isuzu MUA5C manual / 4-speed Aisin Warner automatic / 4-speed GM 4L30-E transmission automatic; the layout is Front-engine, four-wheel-drive / Front-engine, rear-wheel-drive. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.
Within Isuzu's own catalogue the Isuzu Trooper sits alongside the Isuzu Gemini (1974), the Geo Storm, the ISUZU SUPERMEDIC, the Isuzu 117 Coupé. It was succeeded by the Isuzu Ascender / Isuzu Axiom / Chevrolet Captiva / Chevrolet/Holden Captiva (Chevrolet Trooper/Holden Jackaroo/Monterey) / Holden Colorado 7 (Australia) / SsangYong Rexton (SsangYo. Assembly is recorded at Japan: Fujisawa, Kanagawa (Fujisawa Plant).
This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.
Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.
The catalogue records what the Isuzu Trooper was; the ownership database records what it is like to own. MotorJury computes a verdict for every model year the United States federal record covers — complaints, recalls, real economy — refreshed nightly, with no opinions involved. If this car reached the American market, its verdicts are in there.
Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.
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Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.
Contemporaries from other marques, introduced within three years of this car.