From today’s perspective, Rancheros – and their El Camino counterparts – are just cool, funky, fun and desirable, thanks to their unique configuration as half passenger car, half truck. What else is needed? They long ago achieved cult status, and one can never go wrong showing up in one, regardless of whether that’s in Beverly Hills or Lubbock.
To try to understand why Ford decided to build the first Ranchero in 1957, we need to make a huge jump, culturally speaking. And it involves this: in 1957, trucks were madly uncool. Nobody ever took a girl out in a truck in 1957, period. They’d beg, steal or borrow anything else; whatever it took. Trucks were nasty, dirty and as un-sexy as it got; might as well take a tractor to the prom. Enter the Ranchero.
You probably can’t make out the text, but here’s the key lines from this ad:
Because Ranchero, with its crisp modern lines, has a wonderful way of saying nice things about your company. Nice things like “progressive”…”up-to-date”…”good to deal with”. That’s why the Ranchero is excellent for any business – large or small – where customer impressions count.
Does that implicate genuine trucks adequately enough?
As in, you’re going to be seen as a crude, dirty, untrustworthy hick if you show up to fix Mrs. Smiths’ sink in a Ford F-100. Like I said, 1957 was a long time ago, and America’s embrace of the truck as the family truckster was as unimaginable as gay marriage.
In that context, the Ranchero was as obvious as, and analogous to Ford’s 1958 Thunderbird: time to step up your game, dude!
Imagine driving around your suburban neighborhood, and not seeing a genuine pickup truck, anywhere. To the best of my memory, that was the case when I arrived in Iowa City in 1960, and I was pretty observant. The first one appeared in 1964, a big Dodge double cab with a giant cab-over camper; the forerunner of the RV. And then our neighbors bought a new 1965 Chevy C10, because they were building a house in the country to move to. And of course, those were strictly second vehicles. And of course, there were exceptions, somewhere.
Drive out of town, and every farm had a pickup. But there was always a sedan too. And you know which one got driven to church, the game or the the dance. All which explains the divergent evolution of automobilus ute; as in Australian ute, or utility coupe, from the American counterpart. Even the lowliest of American farmers could afford a sedan, even if it meant driving a ten year old pickup.
Not so in Australia. The ute was a necessary compromise of coupe and truck, because folks needed one vehicle to haul the barbed wire as well as to drive to church on Sunday. The Ranchero was never conceived of in the same vein, and American “utes” and Ozzie utes are as different in their genealogy as coyotes and kangaroos. They both have tails, but that’s about the extent of it.
Back in the US, the pickup had a somewhat different trajectory. The first actual factory-built pickup truck was built by the Ford Motor Company, in 1925, near the end of the Model T’s long run. And until the mid-late 1930’s, pickups used the same cab as passenger cars. But after that time, they got their own, and pickups became more obviously trucks.
Chevrolet made the first move to civilize the pickup, with their 1955 Camero carrier with flush box sides for the first time on a pickup. This was achieved by using fiberglass panels that fit over top the conventional steel box sides. The Cameo Carrier was designed to be a more upscale truck to appeal to non-traditional truck buyers, with a nicer interior and a very stylish exterior. It only sold in small numbers.
Ford then took the next step in 1957, offering all-steel wide beds on their pickups. These would soon become near-universal. But Ford clearly thought there was another niche.
For what it’s worth, the Ranchero was hardly a brilliant idea, or sales success. Until the mid-late sixties, when Chevy’s El Camino became cool, an individualistic alternative to a Malibu coupe, the category’s sales were somewhere between modest and mediocre. Not that it probably hurt Ford any; the Ranchero shared a whole lot of body parts with its aptly-named stable-mate, the two-door Ranch Wagon.
Even the tailgate was re-used. And presumably, Ford’s legendarily mediocre build quality for that year.
And of course the sedan delivery also shared much of that body. So the investment to create the Ranchero wasn’t really significant.
Our example has been “improved” a bit, but was a regular driver parked downtown on and off for a couple of years. I’m particularly fond of its caramel paint job. Yumm! Whether the machinery in the engine compartment has been improved is unknown. Ford’s 226 six and the 272 and 292 Y-blocks were the choices, then.
Even though Ford may not have made a lot of hay with the early Rancheros, it was another example of their willingness to blaze new market niches. That would serve Ford well, mostly. It may not have turned out to be another T-Bird, but it wasn’t an Edsel either. Development costs were undoubtedly peanuts, and the tooling didn’t take much to pay off. A risk worth taking, even if earlier attempts at a similar concept, like the Hudson car-based pickups a decade earlier flopped.
The Ranchero cost a not-insubstantial amount more than a dirty F-100, which undoubtedly held back its appeal. But someone has to be the trailblazer, and the Ranchero paved the way for a raft of smaller and more civilized trucks of all sorts. Before we knew it, trucks became respectable; maybe too much so.
Automotive History: 1960-66 Chevrolet Pickup Trucks – The First Modern Pickup by VinceC
My last year of engineering school, I was in a small seminar group of students that worked together on various projects. One of the other guys was the son of farmers from the Central Valley, the first in his family to go to college. He drove a new Torino-based Ranchero (1973 or ‘74) which his parents had given him as a high school graduation gift. I’m pretty sure he was the the only person I’ve known with a Ranchero or El Camino. All in all, we had a pretty eclectic group,of cars: the Ranchero, my Vega, a Corvair, a BMW 2002 and a ‘65 Chevy.
I grew up in the suburbs of NYC, which was more cosmopolitan that Iowa City, and I almost never saw a pickup as a kid. Tradespeople drove vans, landscapers had pickup-based stakebed trucks, and service stations owned pickup-based wreckers, but there was hardly a “regular” pickup to be seen.
I would say that regular pickups didn’t become “daily driver” type vehicles until the mid-1970s, and most of the ones I saw were imports or captive imports, not full-sizers.
Instead of buying a Corolla, Civic, or Monza, a lot of young men made their first “cars” a Courier, or LUV, or Datsun.
Many pickups, and some car-based pickups, have been popularized on TV and in movies, since the ’50’s. But I always maintained a special affection for the long bed 1929 Ford Model AA, used by John Walton, in the ’70’s program, The Waltons. Great sound, nice stance, excellent look, humble purpose.
I agree that trucks were uncool in 1957. Why else would Don McLean have outfitted his lonely teenage protagonist “with a pink carnation and a pickup truck” (in American Pie).
On the flipside, for a straight-up truck, I always thought the 1957 Studebaker Transtar looked pretty cool.
No fan of the ‘lowered look”. Here, it’s pulled off reasonably well. The color choice is awesome.
I remember my uncle saying how heavy the tailgates were on these.
A friend of his had one for a fair # of years.
Nice ute, Ford stopped building those down here at the 56 model, and carried the Zephyr ute on until the Falcon stumbled in and those were not as good.
Bryce 1956 is incorrect; Ford AU were still building Mainline Utes in 1959.
Paul did these early Rancheros use the reinforced convertible chassis, like our 1949~59 Ford ‘farmer’s friend’ predecessor? Btw the “Not so in Australia” link is dead.
As an aside for shared interest to the forum, the 1929 Pontiac Express Delivery (pic below) was conceived and built by Holden and, as far as I know, unique to Oz? Variants included this shown bed-extending ‘flare board’ version, or without.
Boldly claiming something to being the first of anything is always fraught with peril, but I reckon these local Pontiacs would have to go close to being the first factory-constructed “Coupe Utility”, at least by the Australian definition.
For shared interest to the forum, here’s a pic from one of my old Restored Cars Australia periodicals. For me, this vehicle ticks pretty much all the boxes.
It’s not a Pickup. Because in said definition it’s clearly based on an existing passenger car, not a Truck. It’s presented in coupe format. And, crucially, notice its cabin is fully integrated into the rear bodywork – a one-piece body with no seam a’tween.
An original advertisement for the 1929 Pontiac Express Delivery:
Never knew of this one, Tim. I know such things are fraught with potential errors, but 280Pounds is, at a quick glance, a great deal more than the annual average wage at the time, so I wonder if the Ponty was aimed at the squattocracy?* Most cockies** wouldn’t spend an extra penny even if they were busting!***
*For US readers, read “rich, establishment country landholders”.
**farmers
***”spend a penny” means using the toilet, from the old days in cities when you might sometimes have to pay to do so.
The Ford Ranchero, and the Chevy El Camino, were the type of trucks “the Boss” drove, instead of driving a pickup truck to the office and worksite. It was a badge of social and economic status the you were climbing the ladder out of being merely blue collar. It signified that the boss or small business owner didn’t need to drive around in a dirty, noisy, uncomfortable pickup truck. Whenever a Ranchero or El Camino pulled up at the job site, the work crews knew it was time to look busy and productive.
I had 2 college summers in the early ’70s working for an excavating company driving a dump truck. By then the bosses drove regular pickups. Excavating sites had an interesting vehicle status order. Higher paid guys like the foreman, inspectors, union rep etc, had the smallest vehicles on the job site. Workers muscled the big iron.
My older brother Bob displayed, in his ’57 Ranchero, his hiding place for a full case (12) of beer, right behind the grille.
” Coupe Express” began in the 1930’s .
I love these 57’s, to me they look lighter and more streamlined than they actually are .
My ’57 Ranchero back i the late 1970’s had a big V8 from a Mercury or Lincoln, boy howdy did it scoot and suck gasoline .
-Nate
Another great read, but I have to correct one statement concerning Chevrolets entry into ‘passenger sedan based utes (trucks?).
General Motors Holden (GMH) offered a genuine “Chevrolet’ passenger fronted ute / truck as early the 1930’s. But even better than that, from 1949 until 1952 GMH offered a Chevrolet utility with a USA passenger car front. These 1949 through to 1952 Chevrolet utes were in every sense ‘El Caminos’.
So, GM through GMH actually first offered a Chevrolet El Camino, in 1949, a good ten years before Americans would see the car. Not surprisingly, many 1949, 1950, 1951 and 1952 Chevrolet Utes (El Caminos) have been imported into the USA from Australia in recent decades.
And even a bit earlier, in 1946 and 1947 as shown from these vintage brochure pictures.
https://oldcarbrochures.org/Australia/Chevrolet/Trucks%20and%20Utes/1947-Chevrolet-Utilities-Brochure/index.html
My parents operated a small town feed store , where i worked starting in 1960. Many of the farmer customers still did not have pickup trucks at that point. Some came to town with a two wheel trailer hitched to the car and we made lots of deliveries in the store truck. We even had one guy who still used a team of mules and wagon for his weekly trips to the store. A lot of farmers would own only a car and a large truck for field or harvest work. About 1965 that all began to change and the pickup became universal .
Love American utes, this one looks like a Peter Wilding build.
I’m planning a sixties-on pickup story for later this year. I probably don’t have enough Rancheros and El Caminos for a full story on them. Revell’s ’57 Ranchero (below) was cut down from a four door wagon, so the doors are too short. And then to make matters worse they chopped the top on later issues.
I reckon it’s bigger than a Wilding, but it just might be my eyes.
Utes have always been in demand here – you can literally find ever maker including posh Armstrong-Siddeley offering them – but they were not as universal as you might think. Up until perhaps 25 years ago, Australia was not nearly as wealthy a country as the US: even when I was a nipper, not too many people had second cars. Credit was much more regulated, and fuel was (and is) pricier. I speculate that the combined effect was that the farmer of yore could only afford one new vehicle, and thus it had to fit both the load of chooks and the missus in her good outfit. This seems even more plausible when one adds that the missus most likely didn’t drive.
Like the US, farms used to be way smaller, and diffusely owned, by families. Oz having a large rural sector, the demand for such a hybrid vehicle was substantial. (When I say “large”, at its peak in the 1950’s, something like an incredible 80% of our economy was made up of sheep farming! Then the world invented nylon, but I’m digressing).
The thing is, and I stand to be corrected by other Aussies here, but I don’t reckon you saw too many utes in the suburbs back in the day. They seemed to be all of them out in the country. Tradies always drove panel vans (sedan deliveries), and wagons, in my mind’s eye. Builders had larger English trucks (about the size of F100’s).
But not now. Every second thing on the road is a Ford ranger-sized twin-cab 4wd ute, stupid bloody oversized things with QE2 turning circles and exxy diesel engines. God knows why every man and woman and their dog has to have one to drop kids at netball and footy is beyond me, but, the image that we’re all ute lovers hereabouts has finally come to pass!
My Aussie colleague calls them Toorak Tractors.
The difference between American utes and Aussie utes was shown sharply by Hudson’s Australian factory. Unlike the big three, Hudson was still building American-style utes in the 30s and 40s, ending in ’47 when the stepdown’s unibody made the change too hard.
Hudson’s small trucks were car-based with a separate bed. The Australian division, Neals Motors, could have simply converted the Hudson truck to RHD, but that wouldn’t do. They built an entirely different smooth-sided body.