For the first time in 17 years, I don't own a V8, or anything with a carburetor that doesn't have handlebars, spinning blades, or a pull cord. Of the five horribly impractical pieces of machinery clogging my driveway and garage at the moment, only one of them hails from the last century, and I've already yanked out its Precambrian guts with the intention of replacing them with post-Y2k innards.

This doesn't feel like me. I've spent more than half my life staring down a spread bore.

I sold the last of the old guard a week before my daughter was born. I'd owned my 1978 International Scout Terra for almost a decade after trading the owner a couple of days worth of labor and plucking it from a field. A long line of people had given up on that truck before I came along, but I was too stupid, or bored, or optimistic to do the same. Maybe all three.

I found myself driving home in a hammered Cummins that needed nearly everything a truck could need.

The Scout followed me from job to job, state to state. I asked my wife to marry me on the tailgate. When it came time to renovate our first house, I built a rack for the bed and used it to haul the old bones away and bring the new pieces home. It was doggedly reliable, but compromised in that way that all old machines are. The old IH 304 V8 in the nose drank fuel with a purpose, but produced less power than a Camry. It was hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and as drafty as a hay barn all year around.

2003 Dodge Ram 2500 Zach Bowman

It was also woefully dangerous. After years of poking, prodding, and improving, it was as close to mechanically perfect as it could be, but it also had the crash structure of an apple crate. I'll gladly throw a leg over a motorcycle with one brake and a stuck throttle. The Scout was just as much of a gamble, but the thought of putting my pregnant wife in the passenger seat wore at the back of my mind. I flat out refused to put my daughter in the Scout. I wasn't worried about the truck. I was worried about the army of smart-phone addicted drones on the road around us.

So I sold it.

The plan was to replace it with something anonymous. Worthless. Something I didn't have to worry about leaving to rot outside in the rain. Something with ready parts availability. A Chevrolet. One with a stubborn gas motor and a back seat. I was willing to pay out the nose for a truck that didn't look like it had been flung into a quarry at some point. If it was reasonably sorted, all the better.

2003 Dodge Ram 2500 Zach Bowman

This meant accepting certain sacrifices. The Scout was a four-speed manual. Throwing that long lever from gear to gear felt like engaging some piece of ancient, and unknowable machinery. It clicked into place with a musical precision that was both addictive and satisfying. And it had all of the civility of a deep-sea trawler. The heavy, cast-iron V8 in the nose was beautifully industrial. International threw them in everything from dump trucks to construction cranes, generators to well pumps. The fact that it saw duty in a road-going passenger vehicle was both hilarious and fantastic. It was also why the truck had survived 37 years of abuse and neglect.

The Scout followed me from job to job, state to state. I asked my wife to marry me on the tailgate.

Opting for a modern truck seemingly meant accepting an automatic transmission and a consumer-grade engine. It meant wading into a pool of cheap plastic and power windows. It felt like the Wal-Mart age had finally caught me, and there wasn't shit I could do about it.

After driving a handful 6.0-liter V8s with blown head gaskets, missing exhaust manifold studs, and price tags on the far side of sane, I took a flier on something completely different: a 2003 Dodge with 281,000 miles on the clock. I didn't want a Dodge, a diesel, or a truck that needed anything beyond a quick hose-down and a trip to the fuel station. Instead, I found myself driving home in a hammered Cummins that needed nearly everything a truck could need: tires, wheel bearings, ball joints, u-joints, shocks, brakes, a windshield, and HVAC work. About the only thing that didn't need immediate attention was the drivetrain.

2003 Dodge Ram 2500 Zach Bowman

But oh, that drivetrain. The 5.9-liter, turbo-diesel inline six is a mule – a clamoring pile of pistons and torque. It's loud and uncivil. It feels like it got lost on the way to the tractor plant and wound up in a pickup instead. I love it. I want to put one in my vacuum cleaner. The fact that it puts out 555 lb-ft of torque in factory tune doesn't hurt; neither does the fact that it's bolted to a six-speed manual transmission. There's a floor-shift transfer case, too, and it puts power to two massive stick axles.

With its fully-boxed frame, this is as close to a modern take on the Scout as I can come. Not in dimensions or philosophy, but the feel of the thing. It's an honest truck built with no regard for concepts like "commuting," "connectivity," or "turning radius." It's a tool, not an accessory, and that makes me grin like a fool every time I hear it clatter to life in defiance of its odometer.

2003 Dodge Ram 2500 Zach Bowman

I miss my carburetors and dim-witted big blocks, but not enough to go back. The Dodge is a clear reminder that there's still space for good mules in a world full of show ponies and mortgage-rivaling MSRPs. You may just have to split a few knuckles to keep them kicking.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io