Photo: jlord8
Try all you want, the only place you’re likely to presently find worthwhile utes is down in Australia. With some luck, you could find some over in the States as well, but only if you’re willing to settle for the old Rancheros and El Caminos, most of them not in all that great condition.
The origins of the term ute are generally attributed to Ford’s Australian division, which back in the early 1930s came up with the perfect blend between a car that can take people to church on Sunday, and a truck to be used to carry pigs around the country for the rest of the week.
Ute is supposed to be an abbreviation of the words utility or coupe utility, meaning a thing that looks like a regular car at the front, sits low enough to be one, but ends in a bed at the rear that effectively makes it a pickup.
There are a number of carmakers who have been involved with making such machines. The list includes Ford and Chevrolet, Toyota and Suzuki, and even Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, if you count their pickup trucks as utes.
But not Volvo. The Swedish carmaker has a long tradition of making heavy-duty trucks, but, except in its beginnings and some rumors about the future, it steered clear of making any kind of pickups, including utes.
That isn’t stopping digital designers to envision such things though, Volvo utes with a taste of retro. The latest such exercise comes from jlord8, and shows an actually-not-so-bad 850R with a chopped rear.
As a reminder, the 850 is a Volvo of the 1990s that marked several firsts for the Swedes, including the use of a transverse 5-cylinder engine spinning the front wheels, or a side-impact protection system. The wagon version on which this rendered ute came to be arrived in 1993, and the high-performance R variant a bit later.
For the task at hand, alongside with the rear end the car also lost its second set of doors and the rear seats, thus being turned into a much shorter version of its former self – the bed fitted at the back seems to be shorter than the body parts it replaced.
Now, there is of course no chance Volvo will ever make such a thing, but that doesn’t mean 850 owners still out there couldn’t go for such a build.
Ute is supposed to be an abbreviation of the words utility or coupe utility, meaning a thing that looks like a regular car at the front, sits low enough to be one, but ends in a bed at the rear that effectively makes it a pickup.
There are a number of carmakers who have been involved with making such machines. The list includes Ford and Chevrolet, Toyota and Suzuki, and even Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, if you count their pickup trucks as utes.
But not Volvo. The Swedish carmaker has a long tradition of making heavy-duty trucks, but, except in its beginnings and some rumors about the future, it steered clear of making any kind of pickups, including utes.
That isn’t stopping digital designers to envision such things though, Volvo utes with a taste of retro. The latest such exercise comes from jlord8, and shows an actually-not-so-bad 850R with a chopped rear.
As a reminder, the 850 is a Volvo of the 1990s that marked several firsts for the Swedes, including the use of a transverse 5-cylinder engine spinning the front wheels, or a side-impact protection system. The wagon version on which this rendered ute came to be arrived in 1993, and the high-performance R variant a bit later.
For the task at hand, alongside with the rear end the car also lost its second set of doors and the rear seats, thus being turned into a much shorter version of its former self – the bed fitted at the back seems to be shorter than the body parts it replaced.
Now, there is of course no chance Volvo will ever make such a thing, but that doesn’t mean 850 owners still out there couldn’t go for such a build.
Google News