In 1934, the Australian Ford Coupe Utility was born of a farm wife?s protest that there was no vehicle suitable for doing work around the family homestead that could also ferry herself and her husband to church. It thus kicked off a fascination with car/truck hybrids that persists to the present day?even if today’s hybrids seem to have grown the wrong way ?round. For decades, the formula was simply a sedan-based light pickup, pioneered in the United States by the Ford Ranchero in 1957.
Chevrolet countered in 1959 with the El Camino, having tested the market?s waters with the truck-based, fiberglass-and-steel-bedded Cameo in 1955. Today, of course, everybody from down-home Ram to highfalutin Lamborghini sells a gussied-up trucklike object of some sort, but the scales have tipped in favor of lifted wagons and leather-trimmed behemoths in the half-ton-and-up classes. In the mid-1970s, the classiest option available from a factory was GMC?s El Camino clone, the Sprint, but the well-heeled sort of folks who thought Nudie Cohn?s idea of vehicle customization wasn?t entirely off base had to turn to small-batch private enterprise to feed their need for legitimate luxury in pickup form.
One contender came from Traditional Coach Works, a concern based in Chatsworth, California, that once employed famed customizer Gene Winfield. Its Mirage, a Coupe de Ville?based pickup, wasn?t the only customized Caddy to emerge from the shop. Traditional also built a de Ville?based wagon cal...