Name That Shifter, No. 135: 1978 Steyr-Daimler-Puch Pinzgauer

On Monday, we presented this week’s shifter and asked you to identify the make and model of the vehicle whence it came. While we enjoyed multiple commenters’ guesses that this week’s shifter was a UFO or shiny bigfoot snapshot, it in fact is the five-speed manual from the 1978 Pinzgauer off-road vehicle.

We had the good fortune of taking the Steyr-Daimler-Puch behemoth into its element off the beaten path for our July 1978 issue. The burly box featured four-wheel drive with a low-range transfer case that, combined with its geared portal axles that afforded it even more ground clearance, made the thing darn near unstoppable off road. Fittingly, we point out in our original review that the name “Pinzgauer” is derived from “a much-loved Austrian farmhorse.”