My transportation choices are contrarian at best, and sometimes ridiculous. I often fall in love with a concept, notion, romantic vision or even a passionate expert who is as crazy about the “thing” as I am.

This is how I found the Jeep Grand Wagoneer. Norbert of grandwagoneers.com was the catalyst that pushed me over the edge on my 1989 Jeep Grand Wagoneer, that had just gone through a complete body off restoration by Norbert of Grand Wagoneer.com.

I’ve always been smitten by the late model, end of the era Grand Wagoneers. These were the first SUV’s and at the time (late 80’s through 1992) were the most expensive domestic cars available to US buyers. According to the maestro, Norbert, mine had a window sticker north of $32K when new. No matter where in the country you were from, everyone from my era, had a buddy or buddies, whose family ride included a Grand Wagoneer. Although generally associated with East Coast preppies, they were just as plentiful in SoCal as surf families found them as practical for ski trips to Mammoth Mountain as they did for trips to San Onofre.

My example is factory grey metallic over burgundy leather. It’s a color combination that I have loved from early 60’s Porsche 356’s to the 1972 Mercedes 280 SE, 3.5-my latest infatuation.

I was willing to pay new Range Rover money for my Wagoneer three years ago because of the work that Norbert had done on the car. It looks as good as new, if not better and with still so many rough Grand Wagoneers around, mine gets a lot of attention and a lot of those same little notes under the wiper blades that I get on my Defender 90.

The GW is a cruiser. While torquey, it’s under powered. But, excellent tuning of the carbureted V8 has been handled by Reid at Dick Wagoner Dyno Service.