8/26/2023 0 Comments El camino new modelIt was Earl, Jordan says, who suggested, "taking the Chevrolet passenger-car sedan and making a deluxe pickup out of it."īut Jordan says that his 1952 drawing had no direct connection to the original El Camino he had already been named chief designer in the Cadillac studio by the time the 1959 Chevrolet styling program got under way. Jordan recalls that the design sketch resulted from a discussion with GM's legendary design chief, Harley Earl. One of Jordan's early renderings for GM showed a 1952 Chevrolet passenger car with an integrated pickup box. "Chuck" Jordan, and he was destined to retire from GM in 1992 as its fourth vice president of design. The Cameo Carrier's genesis can be found in design exercises executed in the early 1950s by a talented and enthusiastic young stylist in the GM truck design group. Two-tone paint, smooth V-8 power, an automatic transmission, a relatively luxurious interior, power assists, and more were among its attractions. Although a truck in every sense, the Cameo offered an unprecedented array of car-like features. (GM's export organization offered a Chevrolet utility as late as 1952, and GM's Australian Holden model line continues to feature a distinctly El Camino-like "ute.")Ĭhevrolet's truly stylish Cameo Carrier pickup, introduced in mid 1955, also helped pave the way for the El Camino. These Aussie "utes" typically combined the styling of a five-window coupe body with an integrated pickup box. GM, Ford, and other automakers manufactured and marketed "utility" coupe-pickup models in Australia as early as the mid 1930s. There are antecedents to the Ranchero and El Camino, however. The 1937-1939 Studebaker Coupe-Express and Hudson pickups of the 1930s and 1940s are also excluded, due to their distinctly separate cargo boxes. Nor do coupe models equipped with a pickup box in the deck opening, such as Chevrolet's own 1936-1942 Coupe-Pickup. Thus, early pickups based on passenger-car chassis don't qualify. There's plenty of time for that to change, though, as bidding doesn't wrap up until next Tuesday, July 13.Before delving into origins, though, we need to address the question just what is a sedan pickup? For purposes of this article, consider it to be a utility vehicle built on a passenger-car chassis, with passenger-car frontal and cabin styling, and - this is key - a cargo box seamlessly integrated into the passenger-car design elements. The odometer stands at 68,000 miles, and unsurprisingly it has been driven a mere 300 miles in the past three years.Īt time of writing the bidding stands at $5,000, a fraction of what the build must have cost in sweat equity. The seller bought the Charger in 2018, and the conversion was completed in 2020. This Ranchargero (Chargero?) has a 5.7-liter Hemi, of course, and some nice 20-inch Hellcat wheels. Smyth's kit fashions a bed out of aluminum it gives off a Tesla Cybertruck / metal-shop-class vibe that's at odds with the exterior. The listing says the back glass is from a Chevy Colorado and also mentions "several structural reinforcements" - which surely were necessary given how much structure was taken away. The truck appears to have Dodge Caravan taillights from the late 2000s, and the tailgate's possibly from a Dakota. The little quarter-window looks only partially trimmed out in some photos but fine in others. It's a vast transformation, turning a 2006 Charger sedan into a unibody truck, but this hides its surgical scars well considering the black paint. The parts run about $3 grand, but the labor, that's on you. You can buy and build one yourself, but if you want to skip to the owning and driving stage, there's this one for sale at Cars & Bids.įor those compelled to craft a pickup where there was none before, Smyth offers kits to convert a variety of vehicles - New Beetle, Jetta, Audi A4, Jeep Grand Cherokee, Subaru WRX. Smyth Performance stepped in to fill that gap a number of years ago with its pickup truck conversion for the Dodge Charger, which we'd like to call a Dodge Ranchargero. Dodge had the little Rampage mini truck and also the Magnum wagon, but never anything quite like El Camino.
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