The coupé utility automobile body style, also known colloquially as the ute in Australia and New Zealand, combines a two-door "coupé" cabin with an integral cargo bed behind the cabin—using a light-duty passenger vehicle-derived platform.
A coupé utility has a body style with coupé lines, but like a truck, it has an integral open cargo area at the rear. While most modern day coupé utilities are built using a monocoque constitution, historical models typically used a light-duty body-on-frame construction, like the heavy-duty body-on-frame construction used by pickup trucks. As light-duty body-on-frame coupé utilities are automobile-based, they can thus be differentiated from their heavy-duty (pickup truck) counterparts.
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Ford Australia was the first company to produce a coupe utility.[1] This was the result of a 1932 letter from the wife of a farmer in Victoria, Australia asking for “a vehicle to go to church in on a Sunday and which can carry our pigs to market on Mondays”.[1] Ford designer Lew Bandt developed a suitable solution and the first coupe utility model was released in 1934.[1] Bandt went on to manage Ford’s Advanced Design Department, being responsible for the body engineering of the XP, XT, XW and XA series Ford Falcon utilities. General Motors’ Australian subsidiary Holden also produced a Chevrolet coupe utility in 1934 but the body style did not appear on the American market until the release of the 1957 Ford Ranchero.
Both the coupé utility and the similar open topped roadster utility continued in production but the improving economy of the mid to late 1930s and the desire for improved comfort saw coupe utility sales climb at the expense of the roadster utility until, by 1939, the latter was all but a fading memory.
By the 1980s in North America, the coupé utility began to fall out of favor again with the demise of the Ranchero after 1979, the Volkswagen Caddy, Dodge Rampage/Plymouth Scamp and of the Chevrolet El Camino by 1987.
Subaru offered the Brat in the early 1980s, and the Baja from 2003-2006. General Motors considered bringing a rebadged Holden Ute to the United States in the form of the Pontiac G8 ST in 2009, but the global recession (and GM's ultimate bankruptcy) caused them to cancel it.
The pickup truck, on the other hand, started its life a little earlier and is defined by its separate, removable, well-type 'pickup bed'. This pickup bed does not contact the cabin part of the vehicle, while the ute bed is an integral part of the whole body. Both the coupé utility and closed cab pickup designs migrated to light truck chassis & these are correctly known respectively as Utility trucks & Pickup trucks. Eventually the pickup design found a natural home on the smaller truck chassis while the ute became entrenched as a passenger car derivative, although exceptions do apply.
Australians define a "ute" as any commercial vehicle that has an open cargo carrying space, but requires only a passenger car license to drive. This includes coupé utilities, pickup trucks and traybacks (flatbed pickup trucks). An example of the broadness of this definition is that anything from a Ford F250 XL to a Proton Jumbuck can be called a ute.
In North America, the major automobile and truck manufacturers built them from the 1930s to the 1980s. They were very popular in the early years with florists as a way to transport flowers and potted plants. Examples include the Studebaker Coupe Express, or the 1941 Chevrolet Coupe Pickup. A variation of the coupe pickup became the very specialized flower car that was used by funeral homes as an attendant vehicle to the hearse as part of funeral processions. Flower cars were custom-manufactured by several aftermarket coachbuilders by modifying a standard-production sedan, station wagon, or carryall (aka "suburban") in the same manner that ambulances, hearses, crummies, fire command cars, and fire apparatus were/are manufactured.
The Ford Ranchero was produced between 1957 and 1979 based on full-size, compact and intermediate automobiles by the Ford Motor Company for the North American market. Variations based on the original 1960 US Falcon for home markets in Argentina and South Africa were produced through the late 1980s. Though Ford car/truck combinations had been around since 1934 when Ford Australia's lone designer Lew Bandt penned the world's first coupe utility, thereby spawning the popularity of the so-called "ute" in that country, the Ranchero was the first postwar American vehicle of its type from the factory.
The Chevrolet El Camino was produced by the Chevrolet division of General Motors from 1959 through 1960, with production resuming in 1964 and continuing through 1987. El Camino was produced in response to the success of rival Ford's Ranchero. It had a variant called the GMC Sprint and later named the GMC Caballero from 1978-1987. In Mexico, it was also sold as the Chevrolet Conquistador.
Dodge produced the Rampage from 1982 to 1984, based on the front wheel drive L-body Dodge Charger. Plymouth also had a variation called the Scamp.
Since readers in many parts of the world may be unfamiliar with the formal term "Coupé Utility", here follows some examples of vehicles using this body style.
Modern vehicles of the Coupe utility style include, among others:
The following vehicles share qualities of both small pickups and coupe utilities. Some have bodies like a pickup, but are built on a car chassis and/or based on an existing passenger car. Others look like coupe utilities, but are actually based on truck chassis. They are considered coupe utilities by some, and not by others. They are listed here along with a brief explanation of their respected disputes.