“I’ve got your next feature truck right over here,” Mike Ismail declared. Mike sounded enthused and confident as he approached our Source Interlink Media booth at the Tierra Del Sol Desert Safari.

Even people who don’t know much about SUVs, 4x4s, or International Harvester remember the Travelall. If not by name, then by the ’50s sense of all being good in the world—even if it isn’t. The IH ...