A Scout vendor sent an email last week featuring a new product offering: a cupholder designed for the Scout II. It’s built from 18 gauge stainless and looks primarily brake-bent with no welds I can see. It attaches to the truck using the bottom two screws on the trans tunnel, which is pretty clever. As a longtime proponent of the Tuffy console with built-in cupholder, I can already see two issues with their design: bent 18 ga. stainless steel is nice but I could see that getting beat up pretty quickly. It’s finished pretty well but I think I’d like to see it finished a bit more. And stainless means you can’t paint it to your liking, which is either a feature or a bug depending on your POV.
The second is that any drink you put in there will be sitting directly on the trans tunnel, which tends to be one of the hottest places on the truck. My Tuffy cupholder suspends drinks about 3″ over the cover but it still cooks a chilled drink fast enough to be warm within 20 minutes. A few years ago I cut and installed a square of insulating foam under my cupholder to try to stave off some of that heat.
Finally, they’re selling theirs for $50. They’ve got the reach, so it makes sense that they can pre-produce something like 50 of them to lower the unit cost and know they’ll probably sell them. If I do my C-series cupholders, I’d probably make 10 and hope I could sell them, and I’d increase the price a little bit. I do think I could assembly-line the construction and speed that process up.
Food for thought, at least.