Ute (vehicle)

Ute (short for utility vehicle ) is the Australian ( and also spread in New Zealand) term for a particular type of pickup.

The peculiarity of the Ute is that it is based on a car chassis and thus is not a truck, but a car with open cargo space.

The roots of the Australian Ute date back to the 1920s, when the first Roadster appeared with attached open cargo space. The first Ute was mass-produced from 1934 Ford Coupe Utility. The most important (and now only) Australian Ute models are based on the Holden Commodore (referred to as Holden Ute ) and the Ford Falcon; were introduced both at the beginning of the 1960s.

In the U.S., there was such a car with open cargo space, namely from 1957 to 1979 built Ford Ranchero and the Chevrolet El Camino, which there was in the Model 1959 /60 and 1963 to 1987 ( from 1971 to 1987 as identical GMC Caballero ). There, however, the genus is named after pickup, just like the much larger building on top of truck models with load surfaces (Ford F- Series, Chevrolet Silverado, etc.). The trade press spoke in connection with the pickups on car base also popular with carucks ( composition of car = car and truck = lorry ).

In Europe, these vehicles also were offered, although these are more the exception on the road. From the Ford Sierra, there was the P100, which is strongly reminiscent because of the shape of the Utes of Australia, there was the VW Caddy on the basis of Golf 1 and Škoda models based on the favorite and Felicia.