The Australian ute began with a farm wife's letter about church and pigs
In 1932 a farmer's wife wrote to Ford Australia asking for a vehicle she could drive to church on Sunday and use to take the pigs to market on Monday. The designer Lew Bandt answered with a two-door car body with a cargo tray built in behind. The coupe utility, or ute, went on sale in 1934.
Bandt built his design on the American Ford Model A chassis, and when the car was shown in the United States, Henry Ford reportedly dubbed it the Kangaroo Chaser. The idea of a car with a tray was not entirely new, since American roadster pickups with soft tops had appeared in the 1920s, but the Australian version with a fixed steel roof and integrated tray became a national institution. Holden joined in 1951 with a utility based on its sedan, and the two rivals kept making car-based utes for decades.
Ford's Falcon ute ran from 1961 to 2016. For its first 38 years the tray was part of the body; from 1999 the bed was separated from the cabin so the same vehicle could be sold in different styles. Performance versions grew outrageous: the 2017 HSV GTSR Maloo used a supercharged 6.2 litre V8 producing 435 kilowatts. There is even a racing series for lightly modified Holden and Ford utes.
Utes carry real cultural weight, especially in the bush. Owners deck them out with bullbars, spotlights, big mudflaps and radio aerials, and ute musters draw crowds; the one in Deniliquin, held since 1999, has become a major attraction for the town.
The word has since stretched to cover any vehicle with an open cargo area, which the rest of the world would call a pickup. Big American trucks from Ford, Ram and Chevrolet are now converted to right-hand drive for Australian buyers, sometimes rated down so a standard car licence covers them. That trend has drawn criticism over road safety, parking space and weaker emissions rules for heavy vehicles.
Source: Ute (vehicle)
