PEACE CORP TROOPY
’85 LAND CRUISER TROOPY
This beautiful ’85 Land Cruiser Troopy has lived a hard life, but has been given a new lease through Martin Reginato’s passion for well-sorted overland vehicles. Debuting at the 2019 SEMA Show, Reginato turned heads with this eye-catching rig in the iKamper booth. It goes to show how a passion for building off-road vehicles shines through in impressive work over the years, as Reginato has exemplified.
Reginato runs a property management company—a family endeavor—and a 3-D mapping and drone photography business in Salt Lake City. He says that he does “lots of off-road adventures alone, and with my kids, so I look for vehicles that are unique and super capable to take me to impossible places and be able to bring me back home safely.”
Passion for Adventure
Reginato developed a passion for remote off-road adventures as a teenager growing up in the mountain town of San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina. This lakeside mountain town in the middle of Patagonia is full of
Land Rover Defenders, Mitsubishi Monteros, and Toyota Land Cruisers. Those pinnacle vehicles were out of reach of Reginato’s budget growing up, but that didn’t slow him down.
“WITH ONLY 10 DAYS TO GET IT TO THE SHOW, REGINATO'S FRIENDS AND FAMILY RALLIED TO GET THE TROOPY
WORTHY OF BEING DISPLAYED.”
His first adventuremobile was a Citroen Furgoneta 3CV. This little front-wheel-drive car that was used like a truck by most, was designed and built after World War II in Germany. It was rugged, easy to fix, and dependable. Reginato says that it was able to take him to the tops of mountains and cross 4-foot-deep rivers. His passion for off-road vehicles was truly solidified by his “beloved Citroneta.”
Reginato has owned a wide range of offroad machinery since then, including several Toyotas. One of the most memorable is a Bandeirante OJ55 that he imported from Brazil into the U.S. after moving here in 1998. The Bandeirante OJ55 is essentially a Toyota Land Cruiser 40 series single-cab pickup made in Brazil for the South American market. He fixed it up and gave that old pickup his personal touch.
“THIS BEAUTIFUL ’85 LAND CRUISER TROOPY HAS LIVED A HARD LIFE, BUT HAS BEEN GIVEN A NEW LEASE THROUGH MARTIN REGINATO’S PASSION FOR WELLSORTED OVERLAND VEHICLES.”