There's a meaty master's thesis in the rise and fall of Isuzu in the United States, dealing with how a promising, moderately vital brand was botched to the point where, in less than a year, Isuzu will be gone from these shores.

Isuzu — Japanese for ''50 bells pealing in harmony and celebration'' — built Japan's first truck in 1918, and four years later, began building cars. Isuzu's core business became medium-duty trucks, and that's still true. In 1971, though, a marketing agreement with General Motors caused the little manufacturer to venture outside Japan, and Isuzu began building the compact LUV pickup truck for Chevrolet, and the Opel for Buick. Both models, well ahead of their time, offered diesel engines, as Isuzu was and is Japan's diesel expert.

In 1981, Isuzu began marketing and selling vehicles under its own name in the United States. The company never quite got the handle on cars, though the original Isuzu Impulse was an entirely competent sports coupe, and the I-Mark, offered with Lotus-tuned suspension, Recaro seats and a 1.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine, was as good as any comparable car sold at the time.

Isuzu had better luck on the truck side. Its extended-cab pickup was among the first offered to have actual people-size room in the rear, but it was the Trooper and Rodeo that really put Isuzu on the map. By 1992, the company had stopped building cars for the United States, even though General Motors had sold a lot of Isuzu-made Geo Storms; Isuzu figured its future lay in trucks. Isuzu even supplied a rebadged Rodeo to Honda to sell as the Passport, and a rebadged Trooper to sell as the Acura SLX. In return, Honda provided rebadged Odyssey minivans for Isuzu to sell as the Oasis.

Though Isuzu could never match Honda or Toyota in the minds of the U.S. consumers, it benefited from some innovative marketing, particularly commercials starring actor David Leisure (the Empty Nest television show) as pathological liar Joe Isuzu, proclaiming, for instance, that the Trooper could ''carry an entire symphony orchestra!'' A series of the commercials aired to considerable acclaim during Super Bowl XXI in January 1987.

By the mid-1990s, it was clear that trouble was on the horizon. Isuzu was still selling moderately well, but the company wasn't investing in new product. The Rodeo received too-minor updates to keep it fresh, and was confoundingly similar to the original 1991 model when it finally departed in 2004. The Trooper fell afoul of Consumer Reports magazine, which proclaimed it to be too tipsy.

Other Isuzu products, ranging from the odd Vehicross to the little Hombre, never caught on. Nor did its last major original product, the 2002 Axiom, a much better SUV than sales reflected. But this was a time when consumers were turning to car-based SUV ''crossovers,'' and Isuzu had no cars on which to base an SUV.

The failure of the Axiom was effectively the end of Isuzu here. As the Axiom, Trooper and Rodeo disappeared, Isuzu dealers were left only with rebadged Chevrolet trucks to sell.

Really, the big question is why Isuzu waited this long to pull the plug. The company barely sold 7,000 vehicles in the United States last year; that's an average of about two per month, per dealer.

So on Jan. 31, 2009, the brand will officially die, though the company is hoping at least some dealers will stay on as service centers.