A Brief History of the Ute

I was pleased to hear that Holden is going to be exporting its Ute to America as the newest member of the Pontiac lineup. Here in Australia, we have enjoyed the benefits that Utes provide for a long time: put simply, they are powerful workhorses that still give you the creature comforts of a car. What many of you may not know is that the Ute in its current form, where the pick-up bed and side panels are produced as one piece to provide a seamless body molded tray, was in fact invented here in my Australian hometown, Geelong. In what must rate as one of the best customer-service responses of all time, Ford Australia designed and built the first Utility Coupe based on the request from a farmer’s wife in 1933. The long-suffering woman wrote a letter to Ford asking why they could not produce a vehicle that could both take them to church in comfort on Sundays and take their pigs to the market on Mondays. The request was passed on to a young designer by the name of Lewis Brandt, who designed what would turn out to be a real winner in the Australian car market for generations. GM and other manufacturers quickly followed suit, though the first actual Holden Ute, predecessor of the ones that’ll soon be rolling out of Pontiac showrooms in the US, didn’t appear until after WWII. Brandt’s original design for Ford produced a vehicle that had a wheel base of 112 inches, with a rear tray that was 5ft 5 inches long and had a load capacity of 1200 pounds. Sadly, Brandt died in a collision with a commercial truck in 1987, while driving a vintage Ford Ute that he had restored.