1970 Chevrolet El Camino Custom 🇮🇹

The story of the half truck / half car El Camino can be traced back to 1935. In 1934, Ford of Australia introduced a light truck that utilized a beefed-up passenger car chassis, a passenger car coupe body and a small pickup truck bed.  This much beloved style of vehicle, officially a coupe utility,  became known as a UTE. In 1935, General Motors Australian division, Holden, released a Chevrolet version of the Ford coupe utility. 

In 1957,  Ford brought the Ute to America in the guise of the Ranchero. Harley Earl had proposed a similar vehicle for Chevrolet as early as 1952. The Ranchero proved popular enough in its first year that GM wanted in on the action. In 1959, Chevrolet introduced the El Camino. Based on the mid-level Brookwood station wagon, the El Camino only came in one trim level, the mid-level Bel Aire exterior trim coupled with the more spartan Biscayne interior.

Despite a decent sales volume in 1959, sales of the El Camino declined drastically in 1960. Chevrolet decided it was not worth the trouble to keep producing the car based pickup at those volumes. Yet, Ford kept the Ranchero, moving it to the smaller Falcon platform in 1960.

The El Camino reappeared in 1964. This time the car was based on the mid-sized Chevelle. Initial engine offerings were limited to the inline-six and the base 283 cubic inch V8 but later in the year the 327 cubic inch V8 became available. From 1966 onward, the El Camino would get all the same cosmetic and engine updates as the Chevelle. This meant if a customer wanted an El Camino with all the muscle car performance options of a Chevelle passenger car, they could have it.

In 1968, the styling was updated and the El Camino grew longer, now based on the new Chevelle four-door /  station wagon chassis. The car came standard with the six-cylinder engine and three-speed manual transmission but the list of driveline options was long, including everything up to the Super Sport SS396 version pumping out 375 horsepower. 1970 was the zenith of the muscle car El Camino. It was the only year that the LS6 454 cubic inch V8 was available.

Production of the El Camino would peak in 1973 at just under 65,000 units. Some of the same factors that killed the muscle car, high insurance rates, high fuel costs, plus changing buyer tastes, the rise of regular pickup trucks, and eventually sport utility vehicles would all conspire to kill the El Camino. By 1987, sales had retreated to about 14,000 units, roughly where they were in 1960 when Chevrolet first killed the El Camino. This spelled the end of the car-truck El Camino but it didn’t mark the end of blurring the lines between cars and trucks.