Regardless, the Ranchero sold like hotcakes. The Ranchero filled a niche that manufacturers thought existed but didn’t know for sure. The Ford Ranchero proved to be a massive hit and was popular with the automotive press and buyers alike. This would also be the formula used by the El Camino in the following years. The Ranchero was built on a full-sized coupe station wagon platform that was later adapted to feature a truck bed. Ford revived their pre-war niche Australian ute creation and made it available for an American audience in 1957, which marked the first time that a mass-produced coupe utility vehicle was available in the U.S. Both manufacturers had very important and well-selling models at the time, including the Ford Model A and the Chevrolet AD Series Universal, and were trying to innovate to gain market dominance in new and unexplored areas. In the 1930s, and far after that, Ford and Chevrolet were embroiled in a battle for supremacy in the American car market. We’ll cover the El Camino’s specs throughout the years and its overall history which turned it into one of the most well-known American cars ever made.

In this guide, we cover the famous El Camino, complete with all of its odd and charming characteristics. It would be a while before the El Camino was a commercial success too, with the Ranchero outselling the El Camino by a significant margin until the El Camino’s second and third generations. The El Camino came much further down the line and was really just an attempt to encroach on the unique market that Ford had created with the Ranchero. While Ford’s Utility Coupe is widely considered the first production ute, there were examples of the car/truck formula earlier than that, just not in full production. That changed in the mid-1930s, when Ford Australia built the first production “ute,” which combined the small form factor of a coupe with the read bed of a pickup truck. Cars were made for driving and trucks were meant for trucking. At that time, cars were designed for an explicit purpose and typically only worked for that specific purpose. In the early 1930s, cars were only starting to become good and properly usable. A copy that got more popular than the original. In fact, the El Camino is a bit of a fluke. The funny thing is that the Chevy El Camino wasn’t an American idea, despite it becoming a cultural icon. Tucked somewhere near the top is the Chevrolet El Camino. That list would start with the Corvette and end with the Ford Raptor.

There is an unquestionable short list of unique American cars.

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