The "ute" is to Australians what the pickup is to Americans: a blue-collar icon and a symbol of rugged independence. Utes are integral to everyday existence in the bush -- and, increasingly, to life in the city.
What's a ute? A utility vehicle, though the term has a different connotation down under. Simply put, it is a pickup based on a sedan -- a car with a cargo bed.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
There have been utes in the US, too, though they were seldom called that. The Ford Ranchero made its debut as a 1957 model and Chevrolet introduced its El Camino for 1959. Both ceased production long ago.
The Australian ute's origins date to Ford "roadster utilities" built in Geelong, Victoria, in 1930; these were essentially the same Model A roadsters with pickup beds that were sold in the US. But within a few years, American and Australian trucks headed onto different paths.
In the US, pickups grew ever larger and more distinct from cars; in Australia, the ute remained closely tied to automobile designs.
The early roadster-utes were unpleasant in a land with so much dust, so in 1934, Ford started making a "coupe utility" with a metal top and wind-up windows -- reportedly at the request of a farmer's wife.
"She wrote to Ford and said she wanted a car they could drive to church on Sunday and take animals to market on Monday," said Phil Newell of Portland, Oregon, an Australian who imports old utes and muscle cars -- think "Mad Max" -- at www.AussieCarImports.com.
Today's utes look like station wagons with the tops cut off behind the front seats. Every year, Australians buy 70,000 utes and small pickups, about 9 percent of the vehicle market. The Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore, from General Motors, each have about a quarter of the market, with Japanese imports accounting for the other 50 percent.
Utes can be muscle cars, with the Holden SS facing off against the Ford XR8 Pursuit Ute. Both have V8s rated at about 300hp and five-speed manual transmissions. Ute collectors who want something more rare than a Ranchero or El Camino sometimes buy them in Australia and ship them across the Pacific. The Reverand David Stands, of Kennewick, Washington, got his when he served as minister for a Church of Christ congregation in Perth for three years in the early 1990s.
A lifelong hot-rodder, Stands, 44, grew up near Bakersfield, Califoernia, where "we could see the dragstrip from the roof of our house."
In Australia, he sought out one of the early roadster-utes.
He paid US$350 for a battered example, a 1935 Ford, he found sitting beside a house in Perth. He bought another 1935 model and shipped the two to the US together. Of the six survivors from that year, he owns two; the others are unrestored.
Stands spent six years restoring the ute from Perth. He sold the second one, which is now being restored to its original condition in Florida.
"I did all the sheet metal and paint," he said of the blue and red beauty.
"And the fenders were pretty far gone -- although the Australians would say, `Oy, mate, that's mint!'"
He didn't like the proportions, so he "chopped" the windshield two inches and squared off the cowl behind the seat, flattening the original arc. He also moved the back of the cab forward and shortened the box. He devised a rumble seat for his children that folds flush into the front of the bed when not in use.
What's his custom ute worth? "When I finished it," he said, "somebody offered me US$75,000, which is a `slap me silly and pick me up off the ground' price. But it's not for sale."
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
RSS