Furthermore, Chevrolet's efforts on the truck front "were focused on releasing smooth-sided "Fleetside" pickups as more-practical midseason successors to the Cameo. It would still have been impractical to engineer a response to the relatively low-volume Ranchero, which Ford simply facelifted for 1958. Chevrolet had a one-year body design for its 1958 passenger cars.The timing was right for them, but not for Chevy. Ford, though, had a totally new chassis and body that year. Chevrolet was locked into the third and final edition of its 1955 chassis/body program for 1957.As a result, Ford had a head start on the manufacturing and cost aspects of a sedan pickup. Chevrolet didn't even offer a two-door wagon until 1955. With the Australian market in mind, Ford had planned a coupe-pickup utility derivation of its innovative 1952 all-steel two-door Ranch Wagon right from the start.In the next section, learn how - and when - Chevrolet countered its rival's "surprise." But Ford had another surprise in store for the competition in 1957. The Cameo no doubt inspired Dodge, International, and Ford to offer flush-side cargo boxes on some of their 1957 pickups. (The drawing was, however, the first in a chain of luxury pickup explorations that led up to Jordan's design for the Cameo Carrier.) Jordan also recalls there was a later sketch done of a passenger-car pickup based on the 1955 Chevrolet design. It 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. 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.
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