It’s 3:54 A.M. as I start writing this article. My son is sleeping in my room with me, and my wife is in a separate room recovering from COVID. My job was to look after him tonight; what actually happened is: He woke up, started crying, and two hours later I woke up to my wife soothing him wondering how the heck I sleep so soundly. It’s a gift and a curse. I’ll probably have to make it up to her.
Anyway, I relieved my wife of baby-Delmar-duties, and after an hour of feeding, rocking, and a bit of my go-to Elton John song, Delmar is asleep, and I just can’t seem to follow suit. I’m thinking about cars.
I’ve been thinking about cars at least half my waking hours for the last… probably 25 years or so. It’s objectively strange, but there’s just something captivating about them (as all of you, dear readers, know). For me, it’s a combination of factors that give a vehicle soul. Obviously, there’s styling and our innate tendency to assign a “face” to cars, almost as if to anthropomorphize them. Whether I know it or not, when I look at a Jeep XJ, I see a squared-off, lovable little billygoat. When I look at my BMW i3 I see a high-tech little EV underdog. When I see my Jeep J10 in the parking lot I see a brawny, tough old workhorse. But it’s not just the styling, it’s the engineering and the story behind the cars.
I love the unibody designs of my XJ and ZJ; I think their Quadra-Link/Quadra-Coil suspensions are the most amazing high-volume off-road suspensions ever devised, especially at the time. Their 4.0-liter straight sixes and their Japanese Aisin five-speed manual transmissions are a true match made in off-road heaven. I love the i3’s carbon fiber body and wacky rear range extender and skinny tires and eucalyptus wood dash.
But the stories, to me, are what give a vehicle soul. I love Jeep XJs and ZJs and YJs not just because they’re interestingly-styled, reliable off-road beasts, but because of plucky ol’ American Motors’ engineers somehow developing state-of-the-art machines on a shoestring budget, because of that Toledo assembly plant with a rich history dating back to WWII, because of now-car-industry-less Kenosha, Wisconsin and its four-liter engine plant. I love the i3 because it’s truly bonkers; it’s one of few times in auto history where a car company essentially told its best engineers: “Here’s a shit-ton of money. Go build the most cutting edge car you can think of.” And what they built, though a clear Noble Failure, drips with soul.
It’s that soul that keeps me thinking about cars, and though some of the soul comes from styling and for me lots of it comes from engineering, I think the majority comes from the people behind the machine. It’s their sweat-equity and their story that fuels my connection to these contraptions. It’s for this reason that I like to keep my vehicles stock or close-to-stock. “Stock is sacred,” I often say, as it’s the vehicle that rolled off the factory floor that represents the culmination of all that sweat equity; it is the final chapter of that vehicle program’s fascinating tale. (I realize that not everyone sees cars this way, with many folks heavily modifying their vehicles; for the record, I respect that element of car culture, too).
Anyway, it’s now 4:14, the same number of horsepower that the E9X BMW M3’s 4.0-liter V8 produced. I’m not sure why that number is stuck in my head forever. My brother owns an E93; I often wonder how those are still even remotely affordable given how incredible they are. I’m obviously rambling in this first and possibly final installation of DT Late-Night Baby Blogs, but here’s the current thought that has me staying up through this fatigue (and it’s one that I’ve mentioned before, but am struggling with): Does it make sense for a parent to keep a two-door car?
See, I own a 1985 Jeep J10, and though it’s not going to pass California emissions, there are other Jeep trucks out there that will. And they’re all two-door regular cabs. Notice how I didn’t say “but they’re all regular cabs,” I said “and.” Because regular cab trucks are the best in my view; they just look so perfect. The problem is, I have no idea if a truck like that fits into my future anymore.
What if I throw this into the ring? Does this change the calculus for anyone? (350 5spd extended cab). https://t.co/IQXYSri1TT pic.twitter.com/bw4uBUTXYK
— David Tracy (@davidntracy) September 6, 2025
Does it make sense for me to have a truck that I can’t drive my kids around in? Yes, the J10 is badass, and owning all the old cars I own is irrational, but at the very least I can drive my kid around in my old Mustang/Jeep XJ/ZJ/YJ, etc. The J10 has no rear seat, so it’d be just me.
Maybe that still works, as I could commute to work in it every now and again, and when I head to pick up big items for our house, I could just go alone? But wouldn’t I rather not go alone? I know my Chevy K1500 is old and unsafe, but if I’m doing a quick trash run or Home Depot run, wouldn’t I want to take my kid? And is the value of taking my kid more important than the fact that, yes, the Chevy is a bit boring compared to the J10? I’d think so, but I’ve only been a parent for 5 months, so what do I know?
It’s now 428, the displacement of Ford’s iconic Cobra Jet “FE” engine from the 60s, and I’ve got trucks on my mind. Should my beloved J10 go? Does it make sense to keep it when it’s just going to be me behind the wheel most of the time? And if the J10 doesn’t make sense because of SMOG issues, should I buy a different Jeep truck? Or is the Chevy — one of few cool extended-cab vehicles with a stickshift, even though I find it a bit boring compared to the Jeeps — the better move? Then again, I don’t really need a truck, so shouldn’t I keep the one I want? But then again, if it’d be just me driving it, and I’ve seen sooo many people chop up their old Jeep Gladiators/Comanches and turn them into extended cab trucks for their families — clearly they did that for a reason.
Anyway, I’m not sure if any of that was coherent. I’m tired. I should wait for someone on my team to make a good topshot for this story, but I’m just going to slap a picture of one of my trucks up there and hit publish. It’s 440, and I’ve got a Big Block of time I need to set aside for sleep, as it’s been a long night.
Duuuuuuuuuuude. You’ve said it before: the J10 has got to go. It can go to someone who’ll love it like you do, but it’s got to go.
Stop trying to undecide that!
I remember going to sleep on the back shelf behind the back seat of my parents 66 grand prix. I survived. Way before car seats. I survived. one of the reasons our new generations of people suck so bad is because they are so coddled and babied. Back in my youth, participation trophy’s didn’t exist. you won or lost. I hate how folks keep raising all of these cry babies. Please don’t do that and keep the single cab that makes you happy. You drive what makes you happy David. Your kid will be just fine.
Yeah, it’s gotten ridiculous. I loved riding in truck beds. My oldest brother pulled us siblings on a sled tied to the back of his Chevy Caprice station wagon when it snowed in the empty parking lot next to where we lived. Carefully, of course…so we wouldn’t slide underneath the car!
Sell everything and buy yourself a perfect 1973 Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser. Dump the Lexus for a cherry 1984 Dodge Caravan. I think those are proper family cars for the Autopian.
No.
Sell both. Rent a U-Haul or the Home Depot truck as needed.
Kids, plural? Is there a little Biscayne coming?
Why can’t you transport one kid in the passenger seat of a single-cab pickup?
You cannot put a carseat in the front seat of any car.
Ah, I didn’t know that. I thought that was only true of cars with airbags.
This is 100% false. A front facing seat can go in a front seat of any car. Rear facing needs no passenger airbag or airbag disabled.
I was pulled over in my Miata with my 18 month old in a rear facing car seat for speeding. CHP confirmed the air bag was off and wrote me a speeding ticket. No issues whatsoever with the car seat
I found this (or similar to it) in a lot of comments:
“It’s perfectly acceptable and legal to put a rear-facing baby seat on the front seat of a pickup truck. Especially that one, since there’s no airbag to worry about.”
It may depend on how many kids you plan to have. . .but that is discussion for only 2 people with no input from us.
For what is it worth, I have one kid and a crew cab half-ton. Where does my kid ride? Up front, in the middle. There he can work the radio. Right next to me, we can talk, jam out, and it is a good bonding experience as we run around. You are right there if he needs anything, too. So, yeah, I would say, at least with one kid, regular cab should work fine. My back seat is folded up 90% of the time. Especially, if you are not taking long trips. Long trips, he sits in back and watches movies most of the time.
Plus, I figure it is maybe a safe space in the middle, no air bag there, farther from impact in a crash. (Never really researched it, just my gut, but there maybe some study out there that says I am wrong)
You can take a kid in a car seat in a regular cab, it’s just hard to fit a second adult. I had a 93 Ranger and I could fit the huge Britax car seat, but had no room for my wife. It got easier when he could sit in a booster, but still mostly dad and lad. We sold the truck when our second kid was on the way.
A full size regular cab would have enough room for a car seat and Elise NHRN, although a column shif works better with 3 abreast. I think selling the J10 is a good move, its six cylinder engine and tall gearing compromise its utility. The GMT400 is fine, but you could sell that too for something more interesting. Being able to take a kid in a truck is fun, and helped make my son the gearhead he is. Then again his truck is a GMT400 Suburban.
Seems like this isn’t a kid problem… or even a single-cab problem. It’s a California problem.
The J10 just can’t live here. At least not as a streetable vehicle. Maybe a more pristine example could, but the same hurdles would largely remain.
It’s such dogmatic local wisdom that it hardly bears repeating, but Californians who like carbureted cars generally don’t regard anything with a model year past 1975 to be worth owning. Yes, there are workarounds: Some areas do allow registration without smog testing, the referee system has worked for a handful of people lucky enough to find helpful bureaucrats, and you could even try to get the J10 to pass emissions. You could also just roll the dice by riding dirty and infrequently, a recursive bit of logic that drives home the dubious logic of holding on to a utility vehicle you won’t use much.
The smog barrier is not the only one.
Will it really be worth it to keep the J10 in LA? It’s got to be thirstier than the Chevy, can’t be much easier to park, and probably isn’t any cheaper to register or insure. Using it for pickup stuff like hauling engines, appliances and furniture means ditching the camper shell… hopefully not in your backyard, which I think is the natural habitat of like half of all camper shells.
Then there’s the social element. The J10 is inarguably crusty. The Chevy might not irk the neighbors or scare the daycare moms, but the Jeep will absolutely make them give you the side-eye and hold their kids close.
I made a similar rural-to-urban move about a decade ago, and that involved selling my endearingly trashy ‘72 Blazer. I wasn’t happy about that at the time, but today I have so few regrets about it that I sometimes forget I owned the thing. It simply had no place in my new environment, and was eventually replaced by a Land Cruiser that’s a far more enjoyable way to fill the same niche.
Keeping the Jeep is really a question for Future David, not 4 a.m. David. Right now, the Chevy is a much better fit for your family. But time flies. In seven or eight years, Delmar (NHRN) probably won’t require a safety seat, but he’ll likely outgrow the Chevy’s back row soon after that. A sibling would obviate the question entirely. The “will it baby?” question is negligible. If you can hang on to the J10 in the interim, do it. Plenty of people stash cars away for a decade if it’s worthwhile to do so. I mean, you’ve already had it that long, right?
Honestly, though, I think you’ve already figured this one out. When you wrote “though it’s not going to pass California emissions, there are other Jeep trucks out there that will”, you effectively said that you want a J10 but not necessarily the one you have. Sounds like it’s time to move on.
DT you are a new dad and in the process a very good dad. But little Delmar is like any project at the beginning you are really into it at every moment of your life. As such you seem to think every vehicle needs to be everything to include little Delhi. ( A nickname for you to try out). But little guy will grow up quickly if you feed and water him and in a few years he won’t need the baby car seat. Some families have 1 car and it needs to be everything. Some families have 2 cars and can be divided by task. You have 10 cars not everyone needs to do everything. Think about don’t decide until you are fully rested, I’m guessing when Delhi is around 22 and decide then
Don’t you have a Jeep to assemble from scratch?
Mostly, I don’t understand your level of attachment to the J10. Aside from the road trip with friends from overseas, it seemingly has just been a burden. Vehicles don’t make memories rotting in a driveway. It hangs in legal limbo from a registration standpoint and is undesirable from a condition standpoint due to the rust.
Your XJ? I get that at least. Soul comes from the memories you create with a vehicle.
Get some sleep. Unload the J10. Build your Jeep-in-a-crate. Be a good dad and spouse.
Man you’ve got like 10 cars. They don’t all need to be equally practical.
The J10 is cool but you have no real ties to it other than owning it 10 years. Will this be the 1st vehicle you may have some regret selling? Maybe! But prior to this time in your life you wouldn’t have had to get rid of it, or really any of the cars you had, except when the town was forcing you to because of blight laws, which is pretty far to get deep into car hoarding.
You had 14 cars 3 years ago, to me that’s crazy Jay Leno territory, regardless of the shape of the cars, just keeping them all insured and registered is a lot. But you had 14 cars because you could, now you can’t.
Also don’t you have a deposit on a Scout Terra? That’s the real gem, ditch the J10, hang on to the Sierra a couple more years, get the Scout Terra and there ya go.
I’m misunderstanding why you can’t take your kid in the Jeep? It’s perfectly acceptable and legal to put a rear-facing baby seat on the front seat of a pickup truck. Especially that one, since there’s no airbag to worry about.
When my daughter was younger I had a ’97 S10. Yes it was an extended cab but that part in the back wasn’t suited to a car seat, so up front she went. It had advanced airbags so they would turn off with the seat in place. In fact, that’s kind of the point of advanced airbags.
It’s also perfectly legal and acceptable to install a car seat in a Corvette, or a Bugatti. As long as the car has advanced airbags as required by law, the child is in no danger from a dashboard airbag.
What’s nice about the child being upfront, is you can see them, and talk to them and stuff. My daughter and I loved that.
I think some of the fearmongering over being a dad now, relative to your car hobby, is overblown. If there’s not an economic hurdle here I don’t see what the issue is, quite frankly. Don’t let people pressure you on this. When you look back and he’s out of car seats, you’ll realize how short this time was and you might wish you still had that J10.
The safest car is the Volvo XC90. Everything else is dangerous by comparison.
I’m not going to give Car Advice. I’m going to give family advice.
If you keep the cars and wrench on them all the time, and your kid gets into it with you, that’s a win. It is also, IMO, pretty unlikely.
If you keep the cars and wrench on them all the time, and your kid doesn’t get into it with you, one, or more, of these will transpire:
1) The kid, or your partner, may come to resent your “obsession” – or worse, you – because it will absolutely interfere with regular life
2) You will start to resent others for resenting your obsessions
3) You will start to resent your cars for interfering with your relationships
Honestly man – pick one that you can wrench on because it’s fun and you can make progress and it’s NOT critical to your life. Keep the i3 because it’s amazing. Pick one other fun car because you’re David MF Tracy, so you’ve earned at least that. But a “fleet” is maybe something you want to grow into once you get your family settled.
You’re going to have a sense of loss here, regardless of what you choose or the resulting fallout. But some losses are WAY easier to handle than others.
Next week on Married With Cars DT has to decide if he can take little Delhi to Home Depot against Elyse’s NHRN wishes or stay home and bathe the cats. Tune in for more carcat fun you won’t believe what Davis Trosky gets himself into.
It’s your own weird hang-up about the Chevy that keeps you from seeing its soul. I assure you, it’s there in great measure.
But I’m going to tell you a dad secret. The memories you will make with little Delmar taking him to Home Depot, or the auto parts store, or the Ace Hardware that has popcorn on the weekends, they’ll imbue that Chevy with more soul and personal meaning than any factory can stamp into some sheet metal.
Does my silver ’06 Sierra crew cab have innate “soul?” I don’t know. But the memories I’ve made with my kids in it, blow anything else away. I’ll never sell it.
6-year old me cried my eyes out when my dad sold his ’79 K10. But the ’88 K1500 that replaced it, we made countless memories in that truck. Do you have any idea how many memories came flooding back, when I saw a picture of those cool weird gauges on your ’88?
You’re asking the wrong question. Keep the one you can share with your son. Ice cream never tastes better, than when you’re eating it on the tailgate with your kid.
Trust me on this. You won’t regret it.
It’s not a hang-up, it’s just a difference in taste. I think it has soul, for sure, I just like Jeep trucks more. Are they objectively worse than the Chevy? Definitely. But lots of my old car are worse than a competitor.
I will say I’ve been impressed with the K1500. Far better than I expected.
I get it. You’re a Jeep guy.
I know a lot of people are saying just put the kid in the Jeep. My dad’s ’79 and ’88 were both regular cab trucks. But times change, standards change, and everybody’s willingness to assume risk is different.
I’m just saying from one dad to another, if you would be willing to put your son in the Chevy and go places and make memories with him, but you would not put him in the J10, then keep the Chevy. I guarantee you that the memories you make will more than make up for stylistic preferences.
Those little kid trips to the hardware/parts store, the local car show, or the ice cream shop are PRICELESS. That’s some core memory stuff.
Maybe take the one that is easier to clean. Popcorn, ICE Cream, kiddy trail mix think about it
Ok, how bout this. Replace both trucks with a modernish Grand Cherokee. Good safety for the little one, good tow capacity, decent offroad, so you can take the kiddo off roading in comfort, seats lay down so you can load it with crap. Get a good trailer too. Bimmer for fuel economy. And you won’t hate it.
borrrinnnggggg
I had a work buddy a few years ago whose dad was a dentist. Said dad had a 911 when my buddy and his sister were kids.
Said dad bought a four-door M5 after both kids were old enough to drive themselves around.
Said dad is no longer married.
Delmar isn’t gonna be a baby forever.
This question has caused you so much angst since the birth of your child. How much angst are you willing to suffer, and for how long? You can’t (legitimately) drive this truck in California, ever. Someone in a non-smog state/county wants this truck, just sell it.
No.
But vehicles don’t have to make sense.
It’s fine to have a vehicle that’s not practical for your whole family, a vehicle that’s just for you. It’s why 2-seat convertibles exist. Or motorcycles.
We want / love / need / buy vehicles based on emotion as much as logic. And that’s just fine. Especially when it’s your nth vehicle in addition to your existing vehicles that can hold the family (Elise’s (not her real name) Lexus, your i3)
You’re going to do it anyway, so it’s a moot point.
I think this existential crisis you seem to be in is very normal currently for many reasons. There are people who are minimalist who will say why do you even need a truck. There are people that see the value of something and might have hording tendencies that will say keep everything forever.
I have found you have to float the middle somewhere. And that annoying saying you the gaggle of church ladies repeat on an endless loop there are “seasons of life” sometimes makes more sense then it should.
Maybe you should look into some cheap land in New Mexico or Arizona where they don’t care what you do and you can put all the cars you want to keep that don’t make sense to keep at your current domicile. Too many car guys look with regret when they say they had something but they sold it because they were either scared of it or had to for some reason.
The thing I’ve come to realize is your kid will probably be like you in more ways then you want to admit. Maybe they will take an interest in cars maybe some other technical interest that may overlap with cars. Many of car guys will tell their kids oh had this or that car and now it’s worth more then I would ever pay or maybe could pay. The kid almost always ask why they got rid of it. Everytime I’ve witnessed it the look ok their face is the same they are thinking back thinking why did I get rid of it other then I was scared to drive it with a baby when a baby is only a baby for a short amount of time. If you feel you can part with something and you won’t miss it then let it go. If you feel like you would then maybe think again about your options.
Regular cabs are called regular for a reason they used to be standard. Generations of kids grew up in the passenger seat of a regular cab with their parents driving them somewhere special just them. Sometimes those are the fondest memories. So while you might have all sorts of screaming banshees telling you it’s not safe for a baby think about if you were a kid or teenager would you think it was neat to be in older regular cab truck with your dad instead of whatever the current vehicle of the day is.
My dad got along fine with a std cab for family duty. My oldest memory was the truck stuck mid river too given the whole family was there
Car seats will fit in a regular cab truck. I did do that for a while after my first was borne, in a Ranger no less.
However you don’t need a toy truck you need a work truck that you can let sit for a month or two and still start on the first crank, one that any parts needs that may come up are on the shelf at the local parts store or junk yard. So yes for the umpteenth time keep the Chevy as it is far superior for what you need from a pickup at this point in your life.
Get the extended cab, the little one will be much safer in the back.
What are the pickups with just some extra room behind the seats called? Get one of those and a barrel behind the seats lined like it’s going over Niagra Falls. Safe and old school.