The Chevrolet El Camino turns 55 today

When your author was 14 years old, his first car, a 1975 Chevrolet El Camino, arrived in his parents' driveway. You can read all about that particular swivel-seated malaise special elsewhere on this site. Today, that is not so important. What is important is that in late 1958 -- Oct. 16, 1958, to be exact -- General Motors' most vaunted North American truckcar (the GMC Sprint and Caballero were also offered, and the company continues to build the Holden Ute in Australia) was offered to the American public.

It followed Ford's Ranchero to market by a couple of years -- both vehicles can trace their lineage to Ford Australia's Coupe Utility of the 1930s -- and perhaps reached its zenith in 1970, when you could purchase one with Chevy's hairy-honker LS6 454. (Many, your author included, would concur that the 1970 model is also the best-looking of the breed).

Though the ElCo started out based on Chevy's full-size offerings, after a production break from '61-63, it returned for 1964 on GM's new midsize A-platform. Embiggened and belightened for 1973, it was summarily downsized for 1978. The A-platform saw a name-change to “G” for 1982, when the letter A was reserved for the FWD group that included the Olds Cutlass Ciera and Chevy Celebrity — an entire class of vehicles largely lost to the twin mists of memory and Pick-n-Pull. Though our friend Peter Hughes did spend one Mountain Goats tour trying to capture a photo of each FWD A-body coupe.

Instagram-obsessed arcane-car completists aside, the FWD A-bodies are uninteresting to anybody but academics studying how Detroit lost its way. The El Camino, on the other hand, still captures the imagination despite (or perhaps due to) its 1987 discontinuation. Jalopnik maintains what's likely the Internet's largest archive of home-brewed, special-purpose OEM and coachbuilt truckcars.

GM came very close to bringing the truckcar back to America as the G8 ST before they killed the concept and then jettisoned Pontiac entirely. (The fact that GM was considering bringing the El Camino back to the U.S. as a Pontiac pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the company's pre-bankruptcy headspace.) Every once in a while, rumblings out of the Renaissance Center suggest they haven't entirely abandoned the idea of bringing the Holden Ute to the States. Thankfully, they've now got the good sense not to try to sell it as a Buick. We hope.

In the '50s and '60s, it was a gentleman's pickup. In the '70s and '80s, it became the province of longhairs and good ol' boys with possible intoxicant issues. The truckcar is Australia's gift to the world -- as American a thing as St. Patrick's Day. Soldier on proudly, you remaining El Caminos. Today is your day. With your chrome hearts shining in the sun, long may you run.

By Davey G. Johnson