first car was a 500 that handled sweetly and could fly.
second car was a 600 of which a few are still left in the fleet. Both had power steering.
pretty sure i had those in the mid 80's certainly no later then 87. Sober don't BS if you don't know.
Well I'm "pretty sure" you are remembering incorrectly.
I am in the Oregon district. UPS has all of its new package cars for the western half of the US delivered here because we have no sales tax and vehicle registrations are 1/4 or less the cost of those in other states.
We have always gotten the new vehicles and run them for a year or so to let them depreciate in value before sending them off to other regions. We got a whole bunch of brand shiny new P-500's, both GMC and Ford, back in 1990. They did NOT have power steering. Same deal with the P-800's and P-1000's of that era. P-600's have not been made since 1977, none of them were ever equipped with power steering and there are no longer any still in use. UPS has always placed a 30-year time limit on keeping a vehicle operational, once it turns 30 they ADA it.
The first power-steering vehicles in the UPS fleet came out in 1992 and they were the International diesel P-1000's of the 113,xxx number series.
I once looked at a "catalogue" of the different types of vehicles in the UPS fleet that belonged to a mechanic in our Automotive dept. It clearly showed that none of the package cars made prior to '92 had power steering.