Car makers can spend untold thousands of dollars on market research to come up with the right name for their cars. One old trick to avoid this is to have a competition to see if someone can come up with an exciting name for a new release. Take Alden Giberson; working as a car designer back in 1954, he won a competition to name a new Ford product, and so the Thunderbird was born. Not bad, but the fact that all he won was a suit and a pair of pants kind of sucks–you think they’d at least have given him a car for his efforts! Nearly 60 years later, Pontiac is doing the same thing with their G8 Sport Truck. Come up with the right name and you could win a new Ute when it hits the streets in 2009. Car makers should do this more often–after all, why spend a fortune on market research to wind up calling your latest model the Mazda Bongo (pictured) or the Daihatsu Naked, when the public could probably come up with something better. Personal names for cars are an entirely different matter: I’ve heard of a guy who has called every car he ever owned "The Beast." I have never given my cars names, however if I do christen the Plymouth it will be "Honey Rider." What do you call your car?

Earlier this week, Ron filled us in on the history of the Ute, which began with Ford in the 30′s. But of course Holden has its own take on evol-Ute-tion, and they’ve put it together as a very slick commercial that’s airing on TV in the land down under. Check out all the vintage Utes!

Via CarScoop

Ok, so maybe its not actually called the El Camino yet. In fact, Pontiac doesn’t really know what the hell to call it, so they’re having contest to figure it out. One thing they do know is that they’re building it—and it’ll be here by the end of this year. The new El Camino (yeah, baby!) is actually a Pontiac G8 with the tush cut off and replaced by a pick-up bed. These babies are huge in the land down under, where they’re simply known as Utes. Power will be the same as the G8 GT, meaning it will get the same 361hp/385lbs-ft mill. This is good news because aside from hauling whatever you can fill the bed with it will surely haul some serious ass as well. Check out the rest of the pics after the jump.

And remember, people: "Business in the front and PARTY IN THE BACK!!" Long live the mullet.

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.

It seems as if the Pontiac G8 sport truck, announced over the weekend and scheduled for its debut at this week’s New York International Auto Show, came straight out of the blue. Sure, we knew Australian buyers could choose a GM-built, Holden-badged ute for decades now, but we had little idea, save for a few hints here and there over the last few months, that GM had thought of bringing a sedan-pickup back to the United States.  But it appears somebody in GM yearned for the return of the El Camino SS more than a decade ago. On the same trip to the GM Heritage Center where I spotted the awesomest Aztek I’ve ever seen, I grabbed a couple snaps of this 1994-1996 Impala SS-based El Camino SS. At first glance it appeared to have used a slightly modified body from a Caprice station wagon with a Plexiglas-type rear window.
The concept seems to have debuted in 1995 and, according to what I could glean, could have entered production, but the increasing popularity of GM’s SUVs during the mid-1990s sidelined the El Camino.
It’s only now that gas has become so expensive and SUV and big truck buyers started looking for more wallet-friendly options has the sedan-pickup idea has turned into a reality. Funny how things work out that way.

…and the latest is this custom Mini Cooper pickup that Pioneer is building for its booth at the Paris Tuning Show. The Mini-ute is lowered, body-kitted, and rolling on 18-inch wheels. It’s sure to be packing a heck of a lot of car audio, along with on-board nav. But you’d better learn how to rip it up on a shortboard, because your 9’0" just wouldn’t look right on that roof. See more pics after the jump.

Via CarScoop

Continue reading "Everybody Wants a Little Ute" »

Take a close look at this photo–do you notice anything odd? Yep, it’s a four-door ute, but Ford sure didn’t make them like this at the factory. My father built this car himself. It started life as a standard Ford XY station wagon till he decided to convert it to a ute. It was a great car: it had three-speed stick shift with the big six-cylinder motor, though it ran cheaply on LPG (Propane). I always hoped someday to get ahold of it and bring it up to Aussie GT specs, but unfortunately, my dad had to sell it in a hurry so he could buy an ambulance. (Never let it be said that the Honig men don’t have interesting cars in their garages!) While he certainly wasn’t the first person to do this particular conversion, what amazes me is how long it can take the car-makers to cotton onto a good idea. Take the four-door Holden Crewman, the modern rendition of my dad’s home-made ute, which didn’t hit the Australian market until very recently. It kind of makes you wonder, what else are they missing?  Do you have or know of any innovative car ideas that the automakers should pick up on? 

If you’ve been following the Retro Rides Camaro build you may have clicked through to check out Jeff’s other ride, an Aussie Valiant Ute. Well, Jeff decided to put the Ute on eBay, where it got noticed by the guys at Jalopnik, who are pitting it against a hacked-up Demon in one of their daily polls. Funny stuff.

By Jen

Editor

For quite some time now, you guys have been screamin’ for the Holden Ute to come to the US. Well, guess what: it has. Or at least, it’s come to the SEMA show anyway, which we feel is a big step in the right direction. Disc Brakes Australia has one on display, and yes, it’s the SS, with the 5.7L LS2 and 6-speed manual. And the left-hand-drive conversion means that some lucky bastard will be able to legally register and drive it in the States!

The Ute absolutely murdered the JT in our recent match up. Oh well. And yes, Veronica, I saw that Motor Trend article. That’s old news! The most up to date info can be found at insideboblutzsbrain.com.