Holden Ute Reviewed in California by Doug DeMuro: Yes, It's as Cool as You Think

While the Commodore SS-based pickup "truck" is not that rare in Australia, you can't find one in America because LHD models were never built and they didn't export to the States anyway. So a company called Left Hand Utes takes the Ute and matches it to the interior of a Pontiac G8 GT to make a street legal US vehicle.

Doug DeMuro recently had the pleasure of driving one, and his review starts off on a beach in California, which makes a car like this even more appealing. Not only do you look cool carrying items like surfboards, but the load capacity is 1,000 pounds, all of which can be kept safe and dry under a lockable cover. With a big V8 engine pushing only 360 horsepower, it's not going to blow your socks off, but there are plenty of superchargers that can fix that and the six-speed manual keeps things nice and honest.

As far as the money is concerned, this ain't cheap. One of these pickups will set you back a cool $60,000. That kind of money gets you a brand new BMW M3 or something along those lines, but everybody else and their grandma has a performance sedan, whereas this is a two-door sports car that can carry a lot of gear and draws attention wherever it goes. Still, it's expensive enough to make you go "boy, I wish I could afford one of those."

As time goes by, cars like this one are going to become even more expensive. The Ford Falcon Ute went out of production last October while Holden is also saying goodbye to the entire Commodore range soon, replacing it with the rebadged Insignia.

Of course, there's also a controversial part of this review, which is the short history lesson at the beginning. Doug says that America came up with the idea and dropped it. However, we know that Australians have been making and buying Utes since 1932. Even though Ford made something in the 1920's, it was never a big part of the industry.

As usual, there are plenty of quirky bits to this car that Doug is only too happy to point out. These include three interior components that didn't come out correctly during the LHD conversion. But we'll let you discover those.