The International Harvester Scout was an off-road SUV ahead of its time. Before it’s reborn, I take a journey exploring what it used to be.
In the next few months, America will once again hear and see the “Scout” name on a pair of brand-new vehicles, as a new company aims to resurrect an icon. But before that, Scout Motors invited TFL out to its original birthplace of Fort Wayne, Indiana to learn more about its history, before we ultimately see its fully electric truck and SUV successor, some 44 years after the last Scout rolled off the line in 1980. (The door above is the very one from which finished Scouts would roll out from production).
Over the past few days, I’ve been fortunate this week to meet, hear from and chat with some of the most knowledgeable folks around in the Scout world, and learn what it was like to experience these SUVs like it was the ’60s and ’70s again.
The experience would see our group of five Scouts across 800 miles and five states over a three-day span. Each example ran the gamut from fully stock to a heavy restomod, and having never properly driven International’s iconic SUV, I relished the opportunity to do that on this trip (I’ll get more detail on that in my next update).
International Harvester mainly built farm equipment and trucks, but its SUV has a devoted community that lives on today.
Our first stop on an epic rally was the very buildings where the Scout was originally developed. The former Truck Development and Technology Center (eventually Navistar’s Truck Development and Technology Center until it closed in 2012) contains a comprehensive cross-section of the brand’s manufacturing history, from the 1907 Auto Buggy shown below to the last-generation Scout II built between 1971 and 1980 and far more. For decades, International Harvester employees developed every truck the company put on the road inside this building and throughout the 140-acre complex.
The work here contributed to IH’s reputation in the truck market throughout the 20th century, and output from its Fort Wayne production plants amounted to more than 1.5 million heavy-duty trucks and more than 500,000 Scout SUVs, earning the nickname “the Heavy-Duty Truck Capitol of the World”.
Today, a group of dedicated enthusiasts and former Intertional Harvester and Navistar employees work to keep all that history alive. One such devotee is Ryan DuVall, CEO of a 501(c)(3) organization Harvester Homecoming, Inc., who arranged with the site’s owner to house 65 trucks in the engineering building. Beyond that, the group established an annual festival at the site to preserve the brand’s history. Over the past four years, the festival has grown to emcompass several hundred International Harvester vehicles and thousands of spectators.
While Harvester Homecoming is working to make the facility a permanent museum site, the future of IH’s heart of innovation in the truck market is uncertain: The Allen County Commissioners seeks to build a new jail on a parcel of land including the engineering building.
While we will have to keep tabs on Harvester Homecoming’s efforts to preserve IH’s heritage for posterity, there was another crucial reason for our stop at the automaker’s former engineering building. You see, this trip is not just about learning the company’s past extending far beyond the Scouts we’re driving. There’s a new entity, Scout Motors, which aims to launch a new vehicle in 2026 and reimagine the iconic model for a new generation. When there is a rich history embedded in that name, though, it’s foolhardy to completely forget about the past, the innovative spirit and the concerted effort of IH’s workers and how Fort Wayne become a crucial piece of America’s truck industry.
To help ensure that at least a small piece of that history is carried forward, former IH employees joined our group on the tour and presented the new Scout Motors team with bricks from the Fort Wayne plant to incorporate into the operations of the new facility, located in Blythewood, South Carolina. A piece our team would carry as we trekked across several states over the coming days.
Heading out of Fort Wayne, the next section of our trip brought us to another holy grail of International Harvester history: Super Scout Specialists in Enon, Ohio. The company began with the mission of preserving the Scout SUV and International Harvester’s light-duty trucks, and is another extensive collection of the model’s 19-year history. The 46,000-square-foot complex encompasses every conceivable element of the icon’s heritage, including the very first production Scout to roll off the Fort Wayne line in 1961, restored by a five-person team including none other than Ryan DuVall.
Super Scout Specialists is owned and operated by John Glancy and his team, who have helped owners restore their Scouts and keep them on the road since 1991.
A background on the International Harvester Scout
Following its launch of the truck-based SUV called the Travelall in 1953, International Harvester debuted the Scout as a rival to the Jeep CJ in late 1960. Back then, the market for a recreational 4×4 was a bit of a gamble, since even other models that have come to represent the segment (including what we now know as the Wrangler as well as the Ford Bronco, among so many others) wouldn’t exist for several more years.
The original Scout, known as the 80, came with a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine with around 93 horsepower and 135 lb-ft of torque. Two-wheel drive versions actually came with a different set of tires from front to rear from the factory, while the model’s other hallmarks include a removable top, the mesh grille, circular headlights and the prominent IH badge up front. Four-wheel drive was available as an option, naturally.
In the mid-1960s, International Harvester developed some updates to the model, with the Scout 800 replacing the 80 in 1965, and running through 1968. Those updates included bucket seats, an updated dashboard with better instrumentation, optional rear seats, and eventually the inclusion of several new powertrains. The four-cylinder “Comanche” inline-four remained, and you could even get a turbocharged option (the 152-T), while International Harvester also introduced a 232-cubic-inch (3.8-liter) inline-six and a 266-cubic-inch (4.4-liter) V8. Later 800 models could also get a stronger Dana 44 axle, while 1968 and later models came with four-wheel drive as standard.
In April 1971, International Harvester began producing a second-generation Scout, aptly named the Scout II. While it briefly sold alongside its predecessor, it’s a far more modern rig than IH’s first foray into the off-road SUV competition. It’s not only physically larger than the first-generation Scout, but it sports major changes to its design language, including the two-slot horizontal grille, the broader shoulders and the upward kink in the rear greenhouse.
Not only did the Scout II get an updated design, but it also brought in beefier engines over its production run. A 3.2-liter inline-four became standard fare, while other engine options included two inline-sixes (from Jeep builder AMC, no less) and two in-house V8s.
During the rally from Indiana to South Carolina, I ultimately drove two Scout IIs: a restomod featuring an more modern, GM-sourced Vortec V8, and a largely original 1979 model with a V8 engine that served as a workhorse and brush truck for the Fort Wayne plant, clearing the (now demolished) proving ground and test track on the site. (My experience in those trucks are coming up in another post).
Ultimately, International Harvester Scout II production ended in 1980, after a United Auto Workers strike walloped the company’s bottom line and production capacity. For that final year, IH did manage a final round of updates including Nissan turbodiesel engine options, rectangular headlights and better rustproofing. The company also experimented with composite materials for parts of the exterior design in preparation for a Scout III model it was going to introduce in 1981.
Even 40-plus years after its demise, the Scout name is hugely impactful.
We haven’t seen a “new” Scout since the last second-generation truck rolled off the Fort Wayne line almost 44 years ago. Nevertheless, we received no shortage of approving honks, thumbs up and excited onlookers as we drove through the Ohio countryside and into Kentucky.
Along the way, I couldn’t help but wonder how the landscape would look today if International Harvester, and later Navistar, kept its first and only foray into the off-road SUV market alive. While Ford kept the Bronco alive for another 16 years after the Scout’s demise (and brought it back for 2021) and Jeep has kept its icon alive through decades of change from AMC to Chrysler and now Stellantis, what would the landscape look like if the Scout never let up in its effort to conquer the world of dirt-worthy lifestyle SUVs?
Today’s Scout Motors will soon reveal its interpretation of the old-school Scout for the modern era. From the time I landed in Indiana and saw so many folks fawning over the five classic SUVs parked at the hotel, though, one point rang intensely clear: Whatever the modern team has in store, they have to get it right, in the spirit of such an iconic car.
