2001 Isuzu Rodeo LS

The 2001 model year debuted the facelift for the second generation Isuzu Rodeo on the US market, with a better blended grille and bumpers. The two door version, formerly sold as the Amigo, was now the Rodeo Sport. Cars for sale on our shores were built at the Subaru plant just up the road from me in Lafayette, Indiana.

Like the first generation Isuzus, these were body-on-frame vehicles, rather than of unibody construction.

While the base Rodeo S came with a standard Holden-sourced 2.2L DOHC inline four making 130 horsepower, the more upscale Rodeo LS had a 3.2L DOHC 24-valve V-6 rated at a respectable-for-the-era 205 ponies. Both could be had in RWD or 4WD form.

Base price for this Garden Green 2001 Rodeo LS would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of $24,000, or about $45,400 in current dollars in RWD format. This one was photographed in November of 2025 using a Sony a77 and a 16-50mm f/2.8 zoom lens.

2001 Aston Martin Vanquish

Launched in the early Nineties when FoMoCo owned both Jaguar and Aston Martin, the DB7 actually began life as a replacement for the Jag XJS.

Canceled, then revived as an Aston, the big 2+2 grand tourer actually rode on a chassis derived from the one that underpinned the the V-12 coupe from Coventry. The first ones to hit dealerships for the 1994 model year were powered by a supercharged version of Jaguar's AJ6 3.2L inline six, rated at 335 SAE net horsepower.

For 1999, the coupe got its styling zhuzhed up a bit, the Vantage tag appended to its name, and a honking big 5.9L DOHC 48-valve Aston Martin V-12 shoehorned into the engine bay. This motor belted out 420 horsepower and made the DB7 Vantage a seriously fast car, even if its two-ton curb weight kept it from being blindingly quick.

In 2001, Aston launched its new halo car, the Vanquish, which looked for all the world like a steroid-enhanced DB7 V12 Vantage, distinguished externally mostly by the bulging haunches needed to enclose the monstrous 285/40 ZR 19 rear tires, but under the skin had a completely unique aluminum chassis with a central carbon fiber backbone, developed with input from Lotus.

Intended to go head-to-head against the Ferrari 550 Maranello, the Vanquish was a limited production (300 cars/yr) vehicle with an astronomical price tag and performance to match.

The V12 in the Vanquish was bumped up to 460bhp and zero-to-sixty times were in the mid fours with an honest 180mph top speed.

New, that Bowland Black coupe in the photo would have set the buyer back an eye-watering $235,600, or more than four hundred long in today's coinage. It was photographed with an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and an M. Zuiko Digital 12-200mm f/3.5-6.3 zoom lens in October of 2024.

2001 Jaguar S-Type 3.0

Reaction to the FoMoCo era at Jaguar sure seems to be mixed among enthusiasts. On the one hand, it's undeniable that the infusion of cash in tooling and engineering plus the pooling of engineering know-how with Ford resulted in some much-needed updating of powerplants and reliability at the old British marque.

On the other, the addition of some lower-tier cars to the Jag lineup, ones which shared mechanical underpinnings with lesser FoMoCo products at that, does cause serious Jaaaag fans to cock a serious snook.

Still, sales of cars like the Carnival Red S-Type in the photo above helped pad profits and finance the halo cars farther up the Coventry hierarchy.

The S-type rode on Ford's rear wheel drive DEW98 platform, which also formed the basis for the Lincoln LS and the reborn eleventh generation Ford Thunderbird.

For the S-type in the U.S. market, available powerplants were the Jaguar AJ 4.2L DOHC V-8, one of the last in-house Jag motor designs prior to the purchase by Ford. Most, however, seem to have the base motor, which is the 240 horsepower AJ30 3.0L V-6, Jaguar's name for the Ford Duratec six.

This one was photographed in August of 2024, using an Olympus OM-D E-M1X and a Panasonic 12-60mm f/2.8-4 zoom lens.