Extract from our constitution:-
The objects of the Club shall be to hold in high regard, the family the environment and the promotion of safe sensible off-road recreation
MILESTONE: Ford is celebrating the 80th anniversary of its Australian invention of its ute, which led to the development of vehicles such as the F-Series and Ranger (background)
You'd think the Americans had invented the ute, after all the US's roads are teeming with them and for almost 40 years, the F-150, GM Sierra and Silverado and Dodge Ram have dominated the sales charts, with sedans not having had a look-in in years. But it was the Aussies who did it.
Ford has put things straight, with the Detroit-based company celebrating the 80th anniversary of the ute, as the forerunner of modern pickup trucks, acknowledging that we can all thank a Victoria farming family or more accurately the lady of the house for the idea in the first place.
Back in the early 30s a 23-year- old Ford Australia designer called Lewis (Lew) Bandt created the ute by listening to that farming family's request for a vehicle with more "utility". Hence the name, well in this part of the world, anyway.
Like all good ideas, the first integrated passenger-car based ute was born out of necessity, as with the first Model T.
In mid-1933 the then managing director of Ford Australia, Hubert French, received a letter from a farmer's wife in Gippsland, Victoria.
She wrote: "My husband and I can't afford a car and a truck but we need a car to go to church on Sunday and a truck to take the pigs to market on Monday. Can you help?" What the customer wanted was a vehicle with passenger car comfort that could also carry loads.
Full story:- http://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/lifestyle-vehicles/9798347/First-ute-is-80-years-old
Post your comment
Comments
No one has commented on this page yet.
RSS feed for comments on this page | RSS feed for all comments