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Coupe Utility

The Coupe Utility car body style has a passenger-car derived cabin of "coupe" style but with an integral cargo bed behind the cabin. An example of this is the 1957 Ford Ranchero. The vehicle that uses this style is significantly different than a pickup truck, which has a cargo area separate from the cab.

Features

A Coupe Utility style has these features:

• Body style with coupé lines, especially using a fixed roof, but like a truck it has an integral open cargo area at rear
• Like a passenger car, it can be built as a unibody, or as a separate body (body-on-chassis construction)
• Derived from existing passenger car in most cases and not from a truck

Origins

Holden coach works of Australia was the first to integrate a cargo area with the bodywork of a passenger vehicle. Starting in 1924 Holden produced these bodies for Chevrolet and Dodge cars (Holden later became a subsidiary of General Motors). These "roadster utilities" were essentially an extention of the open top roadster design, but with a 'well' type cargo area instead of the roadster turtledeck. These were known as roadster utilities. Barsby and other coach builders also built roadster utilities^[1]. Later, in 1934^[2], as the result of a request from a Victorian farmer's wife, Ford Australia combined the cab of its newly released Ford Coupe body with the well-type load area of their roadster utility, producing the first 'Coupe Utilities'^[3]. Holden also claims to have built the first production-based Coupe Utility in 1934^[4]. Both types of vehicles were called "utilities" or "utes" for short. This basic design quickly gained in popularity & became available as either a standard offering, or special order body from a number of car makers in Australia by 1929.

Both the Coupe Utility and the Roadster Utility continued in production, but the improving economy of the mid to late '30s and the desire for a little comfort saw coupe utility sales climb at the expense of the roadster ute until by 1939, the roadster ute was all but a fading memory. No car maker offered a roadster ute when car production restarted after World War II.

The pickup truck, on the other hand, started its life a little earlier and is defined by its separate, removeable, well-type 'pickup bed'. This pickup bed does not contact the cabin part of the vehicle, while the ute bed is an integral part of the whole body. Both the Coupe Utility and Closed Cab pickup designs migrated to light truck chassis & these are correctly known respectively as Utility trucks & Pickup trucks. Eventually the pickup design found a natural home on the smaller truck chassis while the ute became entrenched as a passenger car derivitave, so that no modern manufacturer today offers a pickup derived from a a passenger car, nor a Coupe Utility derived from a truck model.

The Term "Ute"

The original makers of roadster utilities and coupe utilities called these vehicles "utilities". As Australians are wont to do, the term was quickly shorted to "ute".

Today some Australians define a "ute" as any commercial vehicle that has an open cargo carying space, but requires only a passenger car licence to drive. This includes both coupe utilities, pickup trucks and traybacks (flatbed pickup trucks). In popular usage "ute" in Australia has been further genericized to refer to any light commercial vehicle.

Vehicles of This Style

1969 Chevrolet El Camino, next to the Chevelle coupe from which it was derived

Since readers in many parts of the world may be unfamilar with the formal term 'Coupe Utility', here follows some examples of vehicles using this body style.

Modern Coupe Utilities

Modern vehicles of the Coupe Utilty style include, among others:

• 2006 Subaru Baja
• 2006 Ford Bantam
• 2006 Nissan 1400 LDV

Famous Coupe Utilities of the Past

• 1956 Ford V8 Mainline Star (Ford of Australia)
• 1957 Ford Ranchero
• 1959 Chevrolet El Camino (General Motors)

References

• According to a Holden press release in 2001.^[5], the coupe utility "is based on a sedan equivalent and has a load bed integral with the cabin"
• Car Exchange magazine article 'Ford V8 Mainline Star', June 1981 pp 76-77
• ABC Austrialia interview with automotive historian Adrian Ryan^[6]
• The Good Ole Aussie Ute, Larry O'Toole, ISBN 0949398268
• Ford R5 press release^[7]

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