In one advertisement, the voice hawking the International Harvester line of light-duty trucks notes that they are competing against two big companies. Um…small correction: they were competing against four companies. GM and Ford were the obvious call-outs, but Dodge and AMC/Jeep both had irons in the fire during the 1970s. The truck hadn’t gone fully mainstream yet, but the first inroads were certainly being made. The utility (read: Jeep CJ, IH Scout, early Ford Bronco) and the Sport-Utility (Blazer, Jimmy, Ramcharger/TrailDuster) were feeding into the craze, and the Chevrolet/GMC Suburban and the IH Travelall were nosing around at a market that would explode in a decade or two: the four-door, four-wheel-drive full-size SUV market.
For anybody under the age of 40, seeing International pickup trucks tends to be more of a surprise than anything else. Medium-duty trucks, semi trucks, farm tractors, school buses, sure. But an IH pickup? Yeah, they were built, until 1980 when IH decided to leave light-duty automobiles and focus instead on building medium and heavy-duty rigs. Financially, it was probably for the best. But ignoring the XT line from the mid-2000s, what would an updated International be like? They really had a pretty good spread going that was ahead of their time.
