Bob's Secret Toyota Stash: First-Gen 4Runners, a Triple-Locked 80 Series and a Trailhunter

Location Classified • Toyota People • Bob's Stash

Bob's SecretToyota Stash

This is Bob. Bob has Toyotas. More Toyotas than you think, parked somewhere I've been sworn never to reveal. And this isn't even all of them.

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First-Gen 4Runners — Triple Locked — Air Ride — Four Guys, Four Dirt Bikes — Trailhunter — Location Classified — Toyota People Are Weird — Never Lift — First-Gen 4Runners — Triple Locked —

Location: Classified

Let's establish the rules up front. I'm allowed to show you the trucks. I'm not allowed to tell you where they are. Not the town, not the road, not a vague hint about which way the fence faces. Bob's stash is a closely guarded secret, and I intend to keep getting invited back.

Here's what I can tell you: behind a wooden fence, in grass tall enough to lose a small dog in, sits a collection of old Toyotas that would make any first-gen fan quietly lose their mind. And Bob was very clear about one thing.

This isn't all of them.

Light blue, sun-baked and waiting. The grass is winning, but only barely.

The First-Gen 4Runner Row

The first-generation 4Runner is the reason a lot of us are like this. Built from 1984 to 1989, it was basically a Toyota pickup with a removable fiberglass top bolted over the bed, which is either genius or laziness, depending on how you feel about Toyota. The early ones rode on a solid front axle. Most of them ran the 22R four-cylinder, an engine famous for being slow, simple and apparently immortal.

Bob doesn't have one. Bob has a row. A white one with the stripe down the side. A light blue one. A gray one tucked in next to them. Some are projects, some are parts, and all of them are Bob's.

The white one, stripe intact. Somebody loved this truck, and Bob still does.

Gray on blue on grass. The first-gen 4Runner color palette.

Pickups, Too, Because Of Course

If you collect first-gen 4Runners, you eventually collect the pickups they were built from. That's just science. Bob has a two-tone blue-and-gold Xtracab-looking pickup parked against a stack of firewood, and a red one on the gravel that looks ready to start on the first try and complain about it later.

Neither one is shiny. Both of them are exactly right. These are trucks that were bought to work, used until they were tired, and are now getting a second life with a man who understands them.

Two-tone paint, firewood backdrop. Peak mid-eighties Toyota.

The red one. Faded, solid and staying exactly where it is.

A Lexus Sidebar

And then, out in the weeds, a plot twist: Lexus SC coupes. Toyota in a tuxedo, sitting in the grass next to the working trucks like they showed up to the wrong party. Nobody collects just one kind of Toyota. The disease spreads.

Toyota in a tuxedo, waiting out the weeds.

A Lexus and a Toyota, parked like old friends who stopped talking years ago.

Toyota people are weird. I'm Toyota people. We know.

The 80 Series: Four Guys, Four Dirt Bikes

This is where Bob stops being a collector and starts being an engineer. His 80 Series Land Cruiser project is triple locked, which means front, center and rear lockers, and the full ability to crawl up things that a sane person would walk around. It carries four guys. It also carries four dirt bikes. At the same time.

The tailgate still works. The rear hatch still works. And the whole thing rides on air suspension. Adjustable ride height on a triple-locked Land Cruiser is the kind of sentence that makes Toyota people sit down. Most people pick between hauling capacity, off-road ability and a working tailgate. Bob refused to pick.

As someone who owns an 80 Series-based Lexus, I'm legally required to say this: I am extremely jealous.

Rear hatch up, tailgate down, both working. The 80 Series, doing four jobs at once.

Then He Did It Again: The Tacoma Trailhunter

Most people would stop after building one do-everything Toyota. Bob bought a brand-new Tacoma Trailhunter, Toyota's factory overlanding trim with Old Man Emu suspension and the i-FORCE MAX hybrid, and built it to haul two dirt bikes. The setup is so clean it looks like it rolled out of the factory that way. It didn't. Bob just does it that well.

The factory built it for adventure. Bob built it for his adventure, which apparently involves more motorcycles than the factory planned for.

Brand-new Trailhunter, already hauling dirt bikes. Bob does not wait.

A two-bike bed setup so clean you'd swear Toyota built it.

The Trailhunter in its natural habitat: loaded, parked in the shade and ready to leave.

Verdict: This Isn't Even All of Them

Bob is the kind of Toyota person the rest of us aspire to be. He keeps the old ones alive, builds the new ones to do things they were never supposed to do, and doesn't tell anyone where he keeps any of it.

Toyota people are weird. We keep trucks nobody else wants, argue about axle swaps and generations, and guard our hiding spots like they're gold mines. I'm one of them. So is Bob. He's just better at it than the rest of us.

Thanks for the tour, Bob. I won't tell. Promise.

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