At least I think so. This was just a chance encounter on a quiet back street of inner Melbourne, not far from a 1962 Ford Falcon survivor that I posted a few months ago. I spotted the distinctive fins of a 1959 Chevrolet, which can’t be a common sight anywhere these days, and then soon realised it was even more unusual than that – an El Camino!
Responding to the 1957 Ford Ranchero, there were 22,246 El Caminos built for 1959, essentially by removing the roof from a 2-door station wagon. They weren’t imported into Australia though, nor were the Rancheros for that matter.
GM had however been building Chevrolet utes in Australia since the 1930s, until the Holden ute took over most of that market segment. Ford’s Mainline ute based on the 55-56 Ford was an option for people wanting more size and power, until 1959 at least.
A little-known fact is that because of the station wagon origins, the El Camino was actually the first Chevrolet pickup with a steel bed floor instead of timber!
I had to find another photo for the bed floor, because this one had a neat flat-top tarpaulin. The two-tone colour scheme is quite nicely done. The 1959 Chevrolet provided a very stark lesson that not everyone knows much about cars; a few years ago a work colleague was looking at the bat-wings of a 1959 sedan and asked “what car is that?” Now you couldn’t really get a more distinctive car, at least I would have thought so. No-one is born knowing these things though!
Here is a shot of the cabin, with a full right-hand drive conversion. This is the key sign that this ute has been in the country long-term, because for the last 10-15 years the requirement to convert a LHD classic car over 30 years old has been removed, and subsequently not many get converted now. The registration sticker on the vent window is a few years old; they were abolished because everything is on-line now! The ability to determine if a car’s registration is current at a glance hasn’t been replaced though…
The “been here a while” of the headline refers to how long this El Camino has been in the country; the current registration was fairly new, so it may have changed homes recently. I don’t think I’ve been down this particular street before (or since) to know if it is a long-term resident.
The front of the El Camino is less distinctive than the rear, both in terms of being more conventionally styled, and sharing the same sheetmetal as every other ’59. Does the ‘V’ badge above the Chevrolet script indicate this has a V8 engine? I would have thought that anyone importing an El Camino would opt for the 283 rather than the 235 ci inline six.
The El Camino shared the same 119″ wheelbase as other Chevrolets, and thanks to the flamboyant sheetmetal only had room for a 76″ long cargo bed. Depending on whether you had 8.00-14 or 8.50-14, payload rating was either 650 or 1,150 lb (300-520kg).
By comparison the 1959 Holden ute’s payload was 900 lb which probably would have been expressed as 8 cwt back then; and in UK-influenced Australia a hundredweight was 112 pounds (not 100) just to make things easier! That also carried through to tons – there are ‘short’ tons of 2000 lb used in the US and ‘long’ tons of 2240 lb in the UK. Just one reason why the decimal system is easier…
But the real point of the ’59 El Camino today is the style, whether you prefer the factory look…
… or something a little more radical.
These appeal strongly to my Australian ute gene and I could probably find space for one in my 100-car MM garage, but otherwise it certainly makes a nice addition to the streetscape.
Further Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1959 Chevy El Camino- Unrestrained Exuberance
Curbside Classic: 1959 Chevrolet El Camino – I Have Seen Many Strange And Amazing Things In America
Yes, the V on the hood indicated a V-8, probably a 283. I think the 348 added crossed flags above the V.
Many, many moons ago (when these cars were young) I thought they looked kind of snazzy; now I think they look just odd. I think the El Camino as resurrected on the Chevelle platform as looking much cleaner and less compromised by its station wagon origins. I see wild late 1950s flamboyance now as looking quite out-of-control, and I think how mid-century modernism matured during the 1960s before becoming, by 1970 or so, a bloated caricature of itself.
Thanks, I had ruled out the 348.
The wild late 1950s flamboyance is probably why people have imported them to Australia, by comparison I would guess I have seen fewer of the Chevelle based Elkys. Practical was available here, these would mostly be owned by the nostalgia and rockabilly crowds I think.
I’ll be the contrarian, I thought these were horrible when they were much more common, and I think they’re pretty snazzy now. 1959 or 1960.
Never really cared for the ’59-’60 El Caminos (or any model ’59 Chevy for that matter). With those big fins it looks like something is missing. The ’60 El Camino is an improvement over the ’59 because the front end is cleaner and the space under the fins has been partially filled in.
Beautiful find. Very unique and uncommon!
Was there ever a corporate/divisional styling theme that came and went faster than the intake vents in the leading edge of the hood over the headlights & grille? By the time the 1960 trucks came out with its variation on the family look, the look had disappeared from the cars. It was a few years before it went away on the trucks too.
Nissan brought back hood intake vents on the mid-1980s “Hardbody” pickups.
I wonder if it was the only real time post-war that car styling features were used on trucks? Not counting the Studebaker Champ of course!
Well, you do have all the other car-based pickups, including later El Caminos that share their front end with the other related G-bodies, and other ones like the Rabbit-based VW pickup.
Plus the Ford Rancheros, in all their iterations.
Yeah that is obvious, and not what I meant. I wouldn’t call car-based utes/pickups ‘trucks’.
Unfortunately, the State of California does. Extra “commercial” weight fees every year prove it.
JPC, was there ever a corporate/divisional styling theme that NEEDED to be gone faster than it?
“New Chevrolet Frankenbrow. It breathes through it’s forehead.”
Shudder. Hideous.
Easy to convert using local assembly Chev dash and steering parts, Australian Chevrolets didnt get a V8 engine until the 60 model, 56 for GMNZ assembly cars saw V8s as an option, Ford Australia was still building the 55/6 Ford Mainline ute untill 59 using the Canadian Meteor grille called the Star model Fords, confusingly NZ got Aussie star model utes and correct for year 57&58 Ford sedans and wagons.
Fins mounted sideways were a GM and Rootes group idea it lasted untill 66 on Rootes cars not quite so long at GM.
Yes there should be no need to do some of the dodgy bicycle chain under the dash to LHD steering box here!
You are referring to the Sunbeam Rapier hey? They are angled and curve over a bit but I haven’t thought of them before as sideways.
Just the Minx like mine and the Super Minx, the fins stuck out not up.
Nice vehicle, but it needs to lose the skirts, imo.
Is it a LHD conversion? Or did the factory build them? I can’t imagine how you could reverse that elaborate dash from RHD to LHD.
They’d have used factory RHD sedan parts for the conversion. We did get ’59 Chevs here, but only as 4 door sedans in one trim level, and only with the six cylinder engine with three speed manual.
My late father had a black ’59 with a 348 V8 and three-on-the-tree back in the mid-60s. That car could scoot!
It can’t have been here too long – it doesn’t have the amber rear indicators.
That’s a great point, conversions done when they were new often had tacked on amber turn signals – even factory conversions!
Another (less likely) possibility is that they have been removed or otherwise converted back.
I wonder what’s under the hood of that 59 Holden ute. It doesn’t look like the stock grey motor to me.
My guess is the 3.8 “Holden” supercharged V6 from the VT Commodore (the all-iron Buick V6 as was). If so, it’d make the old FB a flier. The only supercharged VT I ever drove felt much faster than the V8, and it weighed all but double what that FB would.
I don’t think it was supercharged, but a later type V6 than you usually see swapped.
Love the side-on shot, john. The El Camino is longer than the house is wide, and the house is probably only about three El Camino’s long anyway. But then, 3 of those utes as perfect as this one wouldn’t even amount to a deposit needed for the $1.5+ million needed for that little house. (For CC-ers, know that Melbourne house prices are just ridiculous).
Personally, I wouldn’t spend anything like what the owner would likely have for that car, rarity aside. Too ugly to be late ’50’s outre attractive.
I didn’t really notice the house until reading this comment, but on second look it is almost as hideous as the El Camino. A two-tone roof? Eek!
That is because you are looking at two houses, mirror-images of each other.
Can confirm. Lots of my schoolfriends lived in these. Sort of like a terrace of two. They used to be called maisonettes, and were cheap to rent – there were (are?) whole streets of these where I grew up. Being in the inner suburbs they’re trendy now, and certainly not cheap housing any more! Obviously the owners of this pair couldn’t agree on a roof colour, or didn’t care.
This place is about 3.5 miles from the city centre – so yes very $$$! Also not being a continuous row of terrace houses is a big benefit – lots more light available.
It’s funny, the additional cost of Colorbond roof sheets for the front face of the right-hand house would only cost a few hundred dollars more at the most and it looks a lot better. I’d be 99% sure the different owners re-roofed the houses at different times.