WORDS: Christian Glazer IMAGES: Jon Morgan
hen you take a break from your day-to-day and flip on the TV, you’re met with a steady stream of aspirational truck and SUV ads. Beautiful people doing beautiful things, tearing through mud, fording streams, hauling lumber … often in ways that would void most factory warranties. You know the drill. They’re selling a lifestyle.
But sometimes that lifestyle is inspired by authenticity.
Take Erik Larsen. As an outdoorsman, rancher, and professional model who’s worked on everything from glossy print campaigns to Super Bowl® spots, he does look that good mending a fence. In October of 2024, Erik was cast in a shoot about the outdoors. For his audition, they asked him what he loved about life off the grid.
“I said I’ve got this little truck,” Erik recalls, “and I use it to hang with my family and kids. There’s a big meetup in Tennessee—just a bunch of like-minded guys, their trucks, and a campfire. All the things you’re supposed to do with a truck.”
What Erik didn’t know then was his “little truck”, a 1973 Scout II—was about to bring his life full circle.
"...I use it to hang with my family and kids. There’s a big meetup in Tennessee—just a bunch of like-minded guys, their trucks, and a campfire. All the things you’re supposed to do with a truck."
Erik first fell in love with the Scout® brand after seeing Salma Hayek drive one in the 1997 film Fools Rush In. He didn’t recognize the truck, only that it looked different from the typical vintage 4×4. Obviously that made him want one. After learning what it was, Erik became obsessed and began scouring the internet.
Being the early 2000s, online auctions provided some options, though most were cheap and rusted beyond hope. Eventually he found one in Lake Tahoe, California, and won the auction for $2,500. He then had to pay another $2,500 just to ship it back home to Florida. But it arrived solid and entirely his. He spray-painted it “Hot Rod Black” and added gray accents. It’s aged alongside him; he’s kept the patina, even the scratches, as part of its story—reminders of trail rides, adventures, and rebuilds.
Originally, the Scout II ran a 304 V8 with a three-speed manual. Erik drove it that way for fifteen years. It was slow, leaky, stubborn, but endearingly authentic. Eventually, he swapped in a 6.0-liter V8 engine, and he hasn’t looked back since. It starts every time, doesn’t leak, and drives like a dream. As for the purists? Erik couldn’t care less. For him, reliability beats originality—and the Scout truck, like its owner, just keeps getting better with time.
His “little truck” has been there through it all — from one of his first dates with his now-wife to a cameo in their wedding video. Years later, it’s been there for school pickups and ice cream runs, too. Erik’s daughters have never known life without it.
The details about Erik’s Scout truck never came up in his audition, but soon enough, he learned he had booked the project and that shooting would be in Franklin, Tennessee, for the launch of an unspecified EV. Erik’s Spidey sense was activated; he’s been a part of the Scout community for 20 years and was well-aware of the brand’s impending re-launch. “Then I get a call from the stylist and she’s telling me what to bring and she says, ‘You’re going to be this rancher dude.’ I was like, EV and rancher … it’s probably not going to be a rancher with, like, a Prius.” He asked her if she knew who the client was, but she couldn’t say.
His hopes and suspicions were confirmed the next day when he received the non-disclosure agreement to sign. “Right on top of the letterhead, it said ‘Scout Motors’,” Erik says. “I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me …”
When he arrived on set, Erik was wearing a shirt that had “Rallye” written across the front in a font that would be familiar to anyone who knows Scout trucks. “Just to see if people would recognize it,” Erik smiles. It didn’t take long before someone did. It was Jamie Vondruska, who manages the online community for Scout Motors. Coincidentally, they had met just a few months earlier when Erik was in the back of Jamie’s Scout truck, blasting down the trails near Crossville.
Knowing they had a true aficionado on set, the Scout team introduced Erik to Chris Benjamin, Chief Design Officer. “He’s like, what do you think?” Erik says. “It’s kind of like an artist asking you what you think of their work … you don’t want to say the wrong thing. But I was one of the first people outside the company to see it in person, and I told him exactly what I thought about it — that I loved it. And that I’ve done a lot of cool jobs in my life, but this, to me, was the coolest job I’ve ever done. I would have done it for free.”
Storytelling comes naturally to Erik. Understanding the story his clients are trying to tell — and the image they are trying to project — has contributed to his successful modeling career. With the Scout Motors re-launch in the rear-view mirror, he’s doubling down on his other passion project, the Heart and Horsepower YouTube® channel. As host, Erik tells the stories behind people and the machines they love, and to date the channel has featured a number of classic Scout vehicles, as well as other trucks, muscle cars and sports cars. He launched Heart and Horsepower with the story of his own Scout II, sharing the ups and downs of a 20-year ownership experience, including two disastrous experiences with shady mechanics and the pivotal role that his truck played in the courtship of his wife who now has a Scout truck of her own — a V8 engine-swapped 800A.
Erik is proof that, whether you are a real rancher or just play one on TV, what you drive serves as something much more than a mode of transportation. It may be a useful tool, but it also lives in our hearts and minds as a vehicle for our dreams and real-life adventures. And that’s the truth.
Special thanks to @jonmorganphotography and Leiper’s Fork Distillery.
Follow Erik Larsen on Instagram and watch Heart and Horsepower on YouTube.
Disclaimer: Scout Motors celebrates the legacy of Scout vehicles and the passionate community that keeps them alive. However, Scout Motors does not sell, restore, or provide parts or services for vintage Scout vehicles. Any modifications or restorations featured are the work of individual owners or third-party specialists.
