November 12, 2019 • 48 mins
It's a car! It's a truck! No! It's an El Camino! Listen as CarStuff crew discuss the venerable Chevy El Camino, and mull the future comeback of the light-utility pickup truck.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hello again, all of you car stuff
head gaskets. This is Kurt Garren coming to you from
the side car of the out of control car Stuff
motorcycle as we careen down the highway of life. Then
this to my left behind the handlebars at full throttle,
(00:20):
and I suspect he is out of his mind on coffee.
And me, well, here I sit, leather, helmet and goggles
firmly a fix to my noggin, face forward facing the
onslaught of the chilly midfall air, completely unable to influence
what this madman next to me is about to do.
But hey, what can you do? Welcome to another wild
ride here in the land of car Stuff. Ben, Can
(00:43):
you hear me over there? Yes, Kurt, I can hear you.
Thank you again for having me back on the air.
Although I am not a dent on board with that description,
to be is an unhinged, coffee fueled lunatic, I cannot
object to its accuracy. We had a lot of conversations
(01:03):
off air, you and I, didn't we after our previous
episode on the Cars of Breaking Bad. Yes, we did.
We talked about let's see we we We really took
some pot shots at the poor old Pontiac Aztec in particular.
But during that exploration, you and I started talking about
(01:25):
some cars we love, uh and some cars we hate.
Long time car stuff listeners will recall my um, very
very complicated hate hate relationship with a particular minivan known
as the Honda Odyssey. You and I have talked about this.
(01:46):
Did we talk about this on area last time? I
don't think we were on air when we were talking
about it, And since then, I had one negative experience
with an Odyssey and maybe in line with some of yours.
But please continue, no, no, please come with come with me. Well,
you know it was just, uh, it was one of
those road situations where you're just trying to make some
(02:06):
progress and there's this one person that doesn't want you
to and they just happened to be in a Honda Odyssey.
You know what happened? The words out, They know that
you and I worked together. Now I'm telling you there's
a vast and insidious conspiracy, you know. Jokes aside. I
want to thank everybody over the years who has sent
(02:26):
me wonderful email about or wonderful Facebook messages, tweets and
so on about the Honda Odyssey, about many vans in general.
And there's a very weird commercial that, uh, some of
your co workers and I filmed a while back about
many vans. I've got to send you or maybe we
can post it on car Stuff's Facebook page. Two. But
(02:48):
with that being said, jokes aside, here's the beef with
Honda odysse's when you buy a Honda. No, this is
a true story, Curt. When you buy a Honda Odyssey
at a dealership a you know, you get engine wise,
it's a pretty good vehicle, right, specwise, pretty good vehicle.
If you're a person who feels like there's no such
(03:09):
thing as too many cup holders, Honda Odyssey, that's the
ride for you. But if you have a problem with
the price point or something like that, the dealer takes
you into a back room and they say, hey, we're
gonna give you a discount on this van so long
as you let us install this one extra feature. And
this feature recognizes when there's a guy named Ben Bollin
(03:31):
and Amante Carlo within about a half mile of you,
and it slows your vehicle down and make sure like
this weird autonomous system. Make sure that you're directly in
front of his car, and you know, understandably people buying
a Honda Odyssey, you're like, well, you're gonna knock five
k off the price, then of course I'll do it.
So that's my beef with that. And they must have
(03:52):
updated the software on that after you well, what's a
what's a car? What's a car that you particularly love?
Kurt well, on the top of my head, and El
Camino comes to mind. Ah, you've hit upon the topic
of today's episode. So behind the scenes, uh, this is
(04:13):
this is a weird one. By the scenes, when you
and I were working on our previous episode on the Cars,
Breaking Bad, we also talked about the spinoff filmed to
Breaking Bad that came out called El Camino, and at
some point, I don't know if we ever mentioned this
on air man, but at some point we were both
(04:33):
baffled that there had never been a car stuff episode
on El Camino, or as we call it here in
the US, the El Camino, which should be hilarious to
anyone who speaks a lick of Spanish, because what we're
saying is the the road. You know, it's like saying
a t M machine or VIN number right, vehicle identification
(04:55):
number number. Uh. The el Camino man, By the way,
I going to continue calling it v el Camino before
the entire tive um. The the l Comuno is a
fascinating vehicle. It's it's sometimes like a It's like a
platypus of the road. You know what I mean. It's
not quite fish, it's not quite foul. It's something different,
(05:18):
something unique. A mix tape and you and I have
some personal stories about the el Camino, but I have
the following proposition, why don't we start with the origin
story of the actual vehicle, which may surprise some people.
Some eighties babies may be surprised how old this vehicle
actually is. El Camino was introduced the first generation was
(05:41):
introduced to nineteen fifty nine. It was basically a response
to Ford's ranchero um. But even before that, in Australia
and the thirties, they created this vehicle known as the
coupe utility. So the idea of a car that had
some of the attributes of a truck um. The idea
(06:03):
of that was around for a while before they started
showing up in America, and even in the early fifties,
Chevy and Ford made light duty trucks like the Chevyes
made a truck called the Task Force. It was a
light duty pickup truck. But the El Camino brought in
some of that, I guess, the elegant lines of the
late fifties and early sixties, the chrome trim, some of
(06:25):
the more visually appealing aspects of the sedans at the time. Yeah,
you can look at some pictures of the first generation
El Caminos and you can clearly see the aesthetic you're
talking about here, Kurt. I do have to also confess
I have a weakness for those uh, those flowing lines,
(06:46):
that space age retro futurism so common in Fords and
Chevies of the fifties and into the sixties. We do
have a previous episode on car stuff about you in
Australia and and their origin for anybody wants to check
that out. There's a really cool quote that you found
(07:07):
about the ut as well of from like the way
it was marketed in Australia, right yea so um. It
was a farmer's wife and Victoria, Australia. She desired a car,
that quote to go to church and on a Sunday
in which to carry our pigs to market on Mondays.
And so that encapsulates the entire concept here, you know
(07:31):
what I mean, the idea that instead of buying two
separate vehicles for two separate specific task, right, you can
buy something that fulfills both of those functions. This is
a question that will come back to, right because what
we're what we're gonna see here is going to be
(07:54):
ultimately a battle between some of those functions, Like is
is a daily driver or your you know, your good
looking car, right, your business car? Is that the same
thing as your hauler, your work vehicle. The folks who
made the Cameo carrier and the folks who made the
(08:17):
El Camino, and the folks who made the utes in general,
their answer to that was, yes, you can be the
same thing forward the future. What a time to be alive,
you know what I mean. Uh So, let's let's dive
in a little bit into the first generation of trying
(08:38):
to not to crack up when I say this. The
El Camino V the road and it was based on
a station wagon that Chevrolet produced at the time. It
was the Brookwood station Wagon. So the first generation spanned
um two years nineteen fifty nine to nineteen sixty and
throughout the generations. By the way, the El Camino, it
kind of flip flops back and forth between car, muscle car, light,
(09:01):
utility truck, and I kind of has this funny quest
of finding its place where it fits in in the
car universe, I guess, And maybe ultimately that's why it disappeared,
because it was just kind of always that it sat
in the middle, somewhere between car and truck, obviously, but
also between car that you would want to be in
(09:23):
every day to a car that he may have had
to have another car to seat maybe more than two
to three people if you wanted to want him riding
in the bed, which became unacceptable at some point. I
know which you know, you and I both probably grew
up in areas where it was completely normal to just
(09:43):
hop in the back of the pickup truck, right Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah.
I like that we're starting with the first generation here,
and I like that you mentioned the Ranchero earlier, because
the El Camino, that's the last time I'm gonna laugh
and say that the Yale Camino was a little edgier.
It was more stylized. It was hipper than the Ranchero,
(10:06):
and when it first came out, it sold more quickly
than the Ranchero, something along the lines of like twenty
two thousand to fourteen thousand. And then it also, while
it was clearly based on the Brookwood's Wagon, it had
some different variants. You had some more options. You could
(10:29):
get it with any full size Chevy drive train. It
had a single trim level. And then we can dive
into the stats a little bit. Let's look at the
price point. So the nineteen sixty model next model year
still has that that kind of classic or what would
(10:52):
come to be classic bel air look, right, But how
much how much did it cost? The starting price was
around two thousand, three hundred and sixty six dollars, and
that was with the six cylinder engine. You could also
get a V eight for around a hundred bucks more,
which was eight three cubic nch engine. So let's do
let's do just a little bit of inflation calculator math.
(11:16):
If you're ready, all right, let's see, let me get
a let me get a drum roll here, two thousand,
three hundred and sixty six dollars in nineteen sixty is
equivalent to about twenty thousand, seventy one in fifty eight
cents in twenty eighteen, so twenty thousand dollars functionally, it's
(11:42):
nothing to sneeze at. That's definitely an investment, especially when
you consider that weren't super practical for a lot of
people in the US for sure, especially around the time
the Baby Boomer generation, so you had larger nuclear families
after World War Two, and we you needed space for
the kids and you. You know, one thing you told
(12:03):
me that I thought was very interesting was you said,
when I look at the first generation El Camino, I'm
also kind of seeing the story about the time. Yeah,
it seems like you step back and you look at
the El Camino throughout the generations, that directly reflects um
(12:24):
the time that it was produced. And that kind of
sounds obvious. If you look at any car during any generation,
you could say that. However, the uniqueness of the El
Camino being a car truck UM kind of makes it.
It's just interesting to see what the manufacturer made the
al Caminos, like, do we make it more like a car,
do we make it more like a truck? Do we
(12:44):
make it a muscle car? R do we make it
an economy car. So in general, the general look of
the car, the general feel of the car, you can
tell where the industry was at at the time, and
that is kind of neat about the El Camino for sure.
And we're looking at this hybridization right again, two separate
(13:04):
vehicle concepts smooshed together into one thing. You could make
an argument here that the El Camino has always been
a little more car than it is truck. Right. It's
strange because the big truck parts or truck aspects, attributes
(13:25):
for lack of a better word, of the El Camino
are going to be the bed and the fact that
it's a two seater. Those are the defining traits and
most of the other stuff all car. By way of contrast,
we can look at another attempt to compromise something that
is incredibly prevalent in modern pickup trucks today, which is
(13:49):
the extended cab. We're we're kind of we're coming towards
the same thing from a very different direction. Since this
is an audio podcast, when everybody listening to that, what
I'm doing is staring off into the middle distance, completely
out of my mind. At Caffeine gesticulating wildly with my
two hands about to like slap together. Because the extended
(14:13):
cab pick up is trying to also function as a
family vehicle, and in some cases it's doing it successfully.
You can comfortably see the family of four to five
in an extended cab right, depending on the make, model,
et cetera. With the el Camino, there's not an extended cap.
(14:34):
It's just the two seats and the pickup. But like
you said, and I love this idea, man. Like you said,
we can conduct a bit of um, a bit of
forensic work based on the way that the El Camino
evolves or has changed with successive generations. We can also
(14:54):
see the way American culture is changing, or at least
car man manufacturer's perception of American car cultures. There was
a gap, first of all, between the first and second
generation of a couple of years. However, when the Ranchero
continued success in the two year absence, so Chevy said, well, okay, well,
(15:15):
let's take another stab at it. So they began to
base the l Camino on the chevel It definitely has
a scale back appearance as the Chevell did at the time.
The Chevelle is smaller muscle car type vehicle. So Chevy
began to make a car that was leaning in that direction,
so leaning away from luxury headed towards performance, but not
(15:39):
quite there yet. I've got this interesting thing here because
now we're moving from two unrelated functions, right, family, daily driver,
work vehicle, hauler. We're moving from two unrelated functions towards
two functions that are arguably oppositional. High performance vehicle is
(16:00):
built to avoid weight, and a hauling vehicle is built
to move with as much weight as reasonably possible. So
this is one of the areas where we see the
contradiction of design in the El Camino come to the forefront.
Is in the second gen? However, do you want to
point out they still look very cool? They do. Yeah.
(16:22):
As far as weight and weight distribution, it is interesting
to have a muscle car with little weight on the
rear wheels. Yeah, but I guess you could put some
weight UM four when the second generation was introduced. Um
it was initially introduced with six cylinder engine, but very
(16:42):
soon after that they were throwing V eights in there.
I think the seven engine horse power so not slack there.
So throughout the year sixty four until the second generation
ended nineteen sixty seven. They ramatically increased power and and function.
(17:04):
To get towards the third generation, they change the dashboard
layout to horizontal speedometer, which was becoming popular at the time.
I remember when growing up, I was driving some of
my older relatives, older cars that had the horizontal sphenomena.
The thing that freaked me out is maybe just the
(17:24):
illusion or the spatial reasoning involved. I started thinking less
in terms of the numbers more in terms of where
this thing is right, and uh like where the indicator is.
And that's a terrible way to think about driving, because
I'm like, well, as long as it's you know, as
long as it's not all the way to the right,
(17:46):
we're fine. We're not really speeding. We're only speeding if
it's laying down completely flat on the right. Don't try
that at home, kids. And the culmination of the generation
of sixty seven, they introduced the lapsible steering column. Disc
brakes were now an option. They included an automatic transmission
as an option, and they also introduced three or air shocks,
(18:09):
which um would raise and lower the rear end. We're
in this plus minus plus, you know, pro compro kind
of situation here. Collapsible steering column, great disc brakes, thank god. Also,
you know, I hope this is not a hot take,
but having an automatic on a muscle car, I don't
(18:32):
feel like that's the right move, especially considering that's a
nine seven automatic. The l came, you know at this
point is a muscle car that has the handicap of
a pickup bed. Now, I'll say it, because that's what
it is. If you think of a muscle car mission,
it has a handicap. The center cannot hold. This is
an unsustainable situation, and they, I don't know. It's interesting
(18:55):
because we see from the second generation on that the
el Camino does have its own evolution, but it's also
following the Chevel's evolution. A change in the Chevelle affects
a change in the El Camino, and this holds true
for the third generation. Right, yes, So third generation range
(19:17):
from nineteen sixty eight to nineteen seventy two, and yet
the design changed along with the chevel options paralleled the
Chevelle's options over the years. This one will be familiar.
I mean, this is when this is the muscle car generation. Yeah,
these are the years of the muscle car el Camino
right here was so the second generation was kind of
walking us up up to this point. Society was changing.
(19:41):
The baby boomer children of the early fifties were starting
to drive, and this is what they want and they
mean to I like it. This particular generation of El
Camino and Chevelle, very beautiful cars. Um. The body style
did change between the nineteen sixty nine and seventy Yearly enough,
it's the same generation. Uh there's to me, there's a
(20:04):
big difference between those two. Even when we're talking Chevelle.
The seventies Chevelle, that was the year. Man that was
like the year that had the gigantic engine in it. Um,
Oh that's right, yeah, because nine Yeah, so they bumped
it up for fifty four four during fifty horse power.
This is the very end of that muscle car, unrestricted,
(20:28):
no worries about gas mileage, none of that garbage. We're
just gonna see if we were how big of an
engine we can put in the car, and then we're
just gonna put it in there. Yeah. So it's it's
beautiful thing. But rewinding back to sixty eight a little bit,
so the l Camino was based on the four door
chevelle station wagon slash Sedan. It was bigger yet lighter
(20:48):
than the previous generation, which if you were to look
at it, it would be hard to believe that. We
also know that this was sixty eight, was the year
the super Sport was launched, right, superspert version. Yeah, so
that was a three six cubic kinch l Camino SS.
One thing interesting that you pointed out to me here
is that there was a noticeable engineering problem or design
(21:15):
problem with the sixty model. Yeah. So they put the
backup lights. They moved them from the rear bumper up
to the bed, so if the tailgate was down, you
couldn't see the backup lights. You know, maybe it was
on purpose. Maybe they were like, do you know what
you really need when you're reversing this car. You need
to be kind of a wild card. People need to
(21:36):
not know where you're going, what you're doing exactly? Is
he going forward backward? Who knows? You know, we keep
life interesting exactly? Why not? Why not? And of course
when you're driving the SS version, you would want to
leave that tailgate down because if you left it up,
I believe the airflow might be a little bit restricted. Yeah,
it's like that what do the kids call it? The
(21:56):
Naruto run? That's it's something on the internet where where
people are saying that if you run with your arms
pointed out behind you, you're running faster. I haven't checked
into the science, you know, I'm not Yeah, I'm not
gonna buy I'm not buying that. Just from a mechanical standpoint,
it doesn't like it would it would be the best
(22:17):
way to run, but um, for the research isn't necessary. Though.
There we go, and when we get to seventy the
El Camino, it's it's bitter sweet, right, because this is
I think we can both agree this is the apex moment.
This is the highest performing El Camino at least, maybe
(22:39):
not in terms of sales, but in terms of it's
on the road abilities. It has some drawbacks depending on
where you put the tailgate. No one knows if you're
going to go forward or backward. Uh. And also it's
officially a muscle car. It hits all, it ticks the
boxes of a muscle car, but it's a muscle car
that happens to have a pick up truck and it's
(23:01):
on its butt, right, So what happened that stopped this
clear trend, because if we're being honest, we see from
nineteen sixty four all the way up to nineteen seventy,
we see this clear trend towards building more performance into
the front end. It's becoming more and more muscle car also,
(23:22):
you know, kind of following the market at the time,
but it's still has this pickup truck bed that's becoming
more and more of a legacy. Right It's sort of
like an interesting novelty attached to the El Camino. So
there's something that happens right around nineteen seventy. What you're
getting at would be fuel regulations, rocktane fuel, a more
(23:45):
fuel economy centric mindset in the United States. I don't
think the gas crisis had fully kicked in yet, but
the riding was on the wall. The car was changing forever,
and um American car companies were about to jump on
the bandwagon or get left behind. This was it. This
was the end of the the muscle car as we
(24:07):
know it, so as we knew it as we knew it. Yeah,
So in seventy one, lower octane unleaded fuel mandates are
in effect, and this means that the l caminos from
seventy one on start using lower compression engines, right, and
then we see, oddly enough, despite these mandates, we see
(24:31):
that the GMC Spirit is introduced this year, which is
the GMC's counterpart to the al Camino. And you know,
other than those regulations, not too much like fundamental. There
aren't too many fundamental shifts in design or inspects until
we get to the fourth generation, which I know a
(24:51):
lot of us listening I have been waiting for. The
fourth generation was from nineteen seventy three to nineteen seventy seven.
Nine seventy three saw dramatic read design of bel Camino.
It still was based on the Chevelle station wagon, and
it was the largest el Camino to this point ever produced.
I probably the largest al Camino ever produced. Because I
believe the next generation is a little smaller. Front discs
(25:13):
are now also standard in seventy three. So Ben, why
in particular do you say that this generation is special
in terms of our story here? This version of the
El Camino is one that I think a lot of
people growing up or our age are probably familiar with.
This is also I've got some personal bias here, Kurt,
(25:35):
because this is also the first El Camino that I
had experience with, and that was a nineteen I want
to say it was. I want to say it was
a seventies six with the quad headlights. My father had
(25:55):
gotten into a very serious argument of the guy they
was getting this lcimino from. And the argument, which was
with a coworker of his, went this way. The coworker said,
let me just give this to you. Just take it
out of my yard. My wife is so pissed that
(26:16):
this thing is sitting here. It takes, like you know,
it takes like a quarter oil to get it anywhere.
It's in bad shape. It's what we Uh, it's a
huge pos. Since we're a family show, that means piece
of stuff and a piece of stink, whatever you wanna
call it. And so on the other side of this,
(26:38):
my dad, the old man is like, uh, it's like, no,
I can't do that. We have to have the title.
There has to be an exchange of money. I want
to give you at least a hundred bucks. And so
after they had this this drag out argument, I would
just take it. I'll feel bad. I will just let
me give you some money. This became like our work
vehicle for taking care of the yard moving stuff around,
(27:03):
and this thing was in my in my mind, it
was very old when we got it. Uh, this thing
was in my mind our flint Stone's car because the
shotgun seat had a hole in the undercarriage that had
plywood over it, and I kept trying to convince my
dad to let me move the plywood, to let you
(27:25):
know how old I was at the time, so that
I could do the flint Stones by which, yes, it
is as dumb an idea as it sounds today. The
idea was, I was like, I'm gonna put my feet
through it, and I'm gonna run along with the car. Um.
The reason I still left feet today is because thank
god there was an adult round too convince me. Uh.
(27:50):
They took a very my parents look a very interesting
tack with this, they said. They didn't try to convince
me that I couldn't do it, or tell me that
I couldn't do it. They did tell me, obviously, but
they didn't try to convince me that that itself was
a bad idea because of the physics involved. Instead, they
convinced me the first off, they told me they would,
you know, from the air of corporal punishments. They make
(28:12):
me it clear there would be consequences if I tried
to do this. And then they also got my head
man and they convinced me that the flint Stones was
a crappy cartoon and by doing that, you know, they
made it uncool. Chris wantn't do this. But this thing
had a drinking problem but with oil and uh. It
was one of those things where we thought, you know,
(28:33):
forget Blue Book value, because whenever you're fixing a used car,
you always want to compare it to the value of
the vehicle. And this thing was scrap metal that happened
to be held together by duct tape wire, some prayers
to a higher power. Uh, and you know, eventually my
(28:53):
dad ended up giving it away. But I will always
remember that seventies six elk me, you know, because I
was certain. I was a kid at the time, but
I was certain that when I got to be sixteen
years old, this would be the car is gonna drive.
And I thought I was gonna be like hot stuff,
you know at the high school parking lot. But you
(29:14):
had you also had some experience growing up with all caminos,
right I did I did? I want to rewind the
for a second and ask you if there's a story
as to why that hole was in the floorboard on
the passenger side. You know, it was clearly not an
intentionally made whole. It looks kind of like rusted. I well,
(29:38):
I you know what, I don't know. I don't know
the story of the flint stone shotgun hole. Ill you
know what, how about this? I will check and get
back to everybody on that, because the weirdest things seemed
normal when you're a kid and looking back in my
in my thirties and thinking, yeah, it's it's unusual for
(30:00):
a car to have a hole in the undercarriage like that. Well,
did y'all drive it around other than from here to there?
Around the house? Did y'all drive it out to the store?
And yeah, like maybe maybe around the block in the community,
in the neighborhood. So it wasn't really debot or something. Yeah, no, no, no, no,
very much like you would hal sawed in it and
stuff like that. Yeah. I feel like those types of cars.
(30:23):
People used to have those types of cars for sure. Yeah,
and not many people have retain a car now just
to kind of do you know what I mean? In
the floor the beat yeah, the beater, Yeah, so the
era of the Beater, it was kind of over. This
is an interesting thing that you bring up, and it
touches on a larger concept here. You're right, a lot
(30:48):
of people just have a daily driver, no, right, And
I think part of that is because we know that
the entry level price for a new car. Don't ever
buy a brand new car, by the way, we know
the entry level price for a newer car just sedan,
not even a bunch of bells and whistles. Uh, that
price seems to continually rise, you know. And maybe part
(31:11):
of it is that we also see more people living
in cities, so they're living with less land. I think
I would like to think that the death of the
Beater has been the news of the death of the Beater,
to quote Mark Twain, has been greatly exaggerated because in
rural areas and the countryside and stuff, you still need
(31:32):
a vehicle like that, you know what I mean. You
still have to go off the road, you have to
go into a field, or you have to haul uh
some messy, heavy stuff. And what what are you gonna do.
You're gonna take the nice car, you are You're gonna
screw up the nice car. That's how I always think
of it. I don't have a Beater right now. Wait no, wait, no,
that's not true. I do have a Beater. It's my
(31:53):
daily driver, it's my Monte carl Um. So my personal
story has to do with the next generation. So we're
looking at the fifth generation, the nineteen seventy eight to
nineteen eighties seven. Now it's based on the Malibu, or
at least in the early part of this generation was
based on the Malibu. This is the one that I
think of when I think of El Camino. My grandfather
(32:15):
pretty much exclusively drove this. We used to do a
lot of fishing, so this was perfect for carrying all
that gear and going out into the on the tight
dirt roads. I know this one is based on the Malibu.
Correct back to the start of this generation in nineteen
seventy eight, the al Camino had its own unique chassis
(32:37):
for the first time, so it wasn't based off of
the actual undercarriage of any particular car. You can kind
of tell about looking at us this different stature. It
doesn't seem like a car stature. Yeah, yeah, So this
is where we see this fifth generation based on the
(32:58):
Chevy Malibu for a while it's generally based on the
GM G platform or the G body, and the day
of the muscle car el Camino is long gone by
this point, right, and now people are focusing more on
economy of fuel. Right. And when and when we say
people here we mean car manufacturers, we don't necessarily mean drivers,
(33:22):
because anybody wanted a muscular el Camino is holding onto
it for dear life. Right, speaking of fuel um from
a D two eighty four, the diesel engine was included,
UH and the L Camino. It was an Oldsmobile engine.
Believe it became known for reliability issues. However, it did
have some signs of life back to towards the muscle
(33:45):
car towards the s S. Even though this generation of
L Camino was based on the Malibu, there were SS
models made by Choo Chow Customs and they were commissioned
by Chevrolet to make these cars. Choto Customs was based
in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The El Caminos that they produced had
the more of a Monte Carlo front end. Um. A
(34:05):
lot of people may be familiar with this, but it
technically is the same body, same generation as the Malibu
based El Camino, just kind of has a different nose
clip on it. There were no performance modifications. This was
purely a visual aesthetic upgrades, but very iconic looking vehicles.
It made for a nice looking al Camino. On the
(34:27):
way to the El Camuno's demise, there were a lot
of pitches internal and external for ideas of resurrecting or
reinventing the L Comuno. And that makes sense because since
its first generation, the L Communo has continually been kind
of reinvented as people try to figure out, should this
be more truck, should this be more car? Can we
(34:49):
put these two things together in an effective way? So
the end of the El Camino era in eight seven UM.
Shortly before that, production was moved to Mexico, so the
riding was on the wall there. In the early eighties,
the S ten was introduced, so it was filling that
small truck category. And then fast forward to the nineties
(35:10):
when when some of these concepts started showing up. The
suv was starting to creep into the picture. Then Ford
had the Bronco and Chevy had the Blazer, and GMC
had the Jimmy, and those cars evolved, and really the
manufacturers haven't looked back since then. Yeah, you're right. You're right.
Before the demise of the El Camino and even after
(35:35):
it went to Mexico to die like Ambrose bears, Even
before that occurred, Gum in particular kept kept reworking ideas
for possible resurrections of the El Camino, new iterations thereof,
and so on. In nine two they unveiled this concept
(36:02):
car El Camino. It was more or less a pickup
version of the Chevy Lumina. You can imagine how ugly
it looked. Just take a second to imagine that, folks. Yes, correct,
you win the prize. It was just as ugly as
(36:22):
you imagine. Uh. There was a Pontiac G eight s
T concept that they showed at the two thousand eight
New York Auto Show. I'm gonna show you this one, Kurt,
What do you think? Just initial reactions, it's pretty ugly.
It's just yeah, oh wow, that's our new that you
(36:43):
know what I propose, that's a new rating system. Especially ugly.
It's aztec ugly. It's just trying. It's you know, it's
the platypus problem. It's it's trying to be two different things.
At that point, however, I would argue that for or
a time during a certain period of the El Camino's
(37:04):
rise and it's fall, it did somehow not but somehow
it kind of like seventy nailed what it was trying
to do, you know what I mean. You know, it's
not a secret that I would love for the El
Camino to return. I think it would be cool if
(37:25):
it was done right. I don't think we are alone
and yearning for the return of at least a small
pickup why duty pick up. Yeah, maybe even the El Camino.
But hey, we can't get too greedy here, right right,
But the small truck. It seems like if you want
and this goes for cars too, if you want a
(37:47):
small truck or a small car, they're either comically small
or they're way too big. If you can't reach behind
you and tap on the glass, then you're not driving
a small truck. If you look at things like the
best small trucks for en, you know, you go to
go to any auto blog or even Gelopnick or CarMax
(38:10):
or whatever, you'll see that a lot of them still
have extended caps. Have an extended cap to me, does
not make it a small truck. We are seeing this
trend and it happened with the many Cooper as well.
We're seeing this trend toward bigger and bigger things. There's
this mission creep in the footprint of a vehicle. I
(38:31):
am not in any way, shape or form saying that
there's something wrong with big vehicles. You need vehicles with
that horse power, with that firepower sometimes. But like you're singing, man,
for anybody who wants a small pickup truck, it's little
two seater, you know, Okay, maybe with that pretend middle
(38:54):
that no one ever wants to use. So let's just
call it a two seater. If you want one of
those right now, you don't have a ton of viable alternatives.
Before I was brought out a cry asleep and returned
to car stuff here, I was listening to some of
the recent episodes that you and Scott had done, and
(39:14):
one thing that I think is particularly relevant to this
conversation is the earlier episode about the Ford Ranger. Since
it was out of commission from what two thousand and eleven,
you guys asked a really good question like will this
Ranger actually be the small pickup truck people want? So
(39:35):
they just pulled this up on our car stuff community
Facebook page, and we're seeing some pretty good conversations here.
Rudy M. Notes that the Ranger Raptor is available as
a factory model and has a pretty good review of it.
Says it's tough as nails, includes all the extras. Alex
s says the new Ranger is too big and too expensive.
(39:58):
Whatever happened to the small, basic simple trucks? And I
think that's what they're I think that's what they're going for.
And you can see the conversation when Alex has continues
on in the conversation says the new Rangers are the
size the f one fifty used to be. I don't
want to truck that big. I just want the old
(40:19):
Ranger size. It's just unfortunate that we don't get to
decide what the automakers make. A lot of the options
they include in the in the cars now they're outdated
several years after they're introduced, like the displays and things
like that. Yeah, it just seems like we're steering in
that direction towards more automation in cars and having a
(40:40):
basic pickup truck doesn't fit into that model. I hate
to say it, but um, there may be a day
when we're not driving our cars anymore. I hear you, man,
and it's something that honestly bugs me more than a
little bit, because there's an ongoing dilemma I've had here.
(41:00):
If you okay, let's get apocalyptic real quick, right, So
imagine there's something whereas some sort of global event occurs
where there's like an e M P. Right, an electromagnetic
pulse disabled. All computers, electronic devices, what have you. Older
cars past a certain age will work because they're purely
(41:24):
mechanical devices. Right. I've been looking increasingly towards getting a
new car, which I hate to do. I'm probably going
to keep the Monte Carlo. I'll make it a full
time beater. But but I've been looking at this, and
you know, one thing that's disconcerting is there's this tendency,
or there's this increasing trend of cars being made such
(41:48):
that the owner is not allowed to work on certain
aspects or components of the system. And to me, that
that shows us that that is just one aspect of
our society's increasing move away from an ownership society towards
a service society. Technologies like that. Already, computers are becoming
(42:13):
where you can't replace components anymore. Everything's affixed to this
circuit board basically. So yeah, cars are going that way too.
In the design of the vehicle, they can say it
performs a certain way, it gets this kind of gas mileage,
and they can regulate certain components of the car just
to last longer. I mean, a lot of it is
for our own good, true, but a lot of it
(42:35):
does restricts. Um It restricts a lot of the things
that you can do, a lot of the modifications that
you can do. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I never thought it
would be a hot take to say I think that
when you buy something, you should own it and you
should be able to do what you want with it.
I never in a million years thought that would be
a controversial opinion. But apparently a lot of car manufacturers
(42:56):
disagree with me. Well, I wonder what they think about
the El Camino too. And I'm you know, I know,
I'm giving I'm dragging them a little bit, but uh,
a lot of these high level manufacturing decisions are made
after extensive research, you know what I mean. So you
and I are talking about what we like, what we
(43:16):
want as drivers, and what they're thinking about is a
decision that can make or lose billions of dollars for
you know what I mean. So they're coming at it
from a different direction. Well. And also when we get
nostalgic about cars, when car fans getting nostalgic about cars,
they tend to think of the older days as being
(43:37):
the better days. Cars are more beautiful, vengeines were more powerful,
sounded better, the exhaust smells, you know. So as time
has gone on, though cars have gotten a lot more
fuel efficient. You can now buy a car new or
use car very few miles on it, and you could
drive it relatively maintenance free for a hundred and fifty
(44:01):
to two hundred thousand miles before you would have to change,
you know, before you would have to consider a major repair.
As long as you do your basic maintenance fluids things
like that, you know, spark plugs and filters and all
that stuff, you're good to go. And now that was
has not been the case in the past. You know,
(44:21):
we've gotten to this point now where tolerances are just
so strict that it's really making for better cars in
a way, but it is it's also taking some of
that romanticism away I always think of. Now try to
try to ask this question, which cars are we gonna
look at in thirty forty fifty years and say, like, man,
(44:41):
that car is classic. I think about that too. You know,
it's also a it's a function of time. You're you're
bringing up some really great points here, man, because uh,
so there were there were other vehicles around during the
reign of the Model T. Model T is widely considered
(45:02):
a classic. It's a function of its age, and it's
also a function of its prevalence. It's ubiquity. There were
just so many Model Ts around that you're more likely
to find one in the wild. So with that mind,
maybe we would ask, let's see what would be ah,
what would be an interesting example. So the Honda Civic,
(45:23):
right first, Honda Civic comes out in seventy two, and
it becomes, uh it eventually becomes the for a number
of years, the most popular car in the United States,
like several decades down the road. But when it becomes
the most popular car in the United States, it also
becomes one of the most stolen vehicles in the United
(45:46):
States because you can, you know, chop it down and
you can sell the parts and there will always be
someone to buy it. Because they they are odds of
only a Honda Civic or needing to repair one or
so much higher. So so I wonder what a on
To Civic eventually be a classic. It's tough because now
we're we're trying to think what future historians, future car
(46:06):
buffs will will explore, you know, and what they will
what they will value. Like I'm gonna be honest, man,
I know I keep wingin and moaning about this Monty Carlo,
this this automotive albatross around my neck. But the fact
that the fact of the matter is that I am
going to keep it and wait until I can get
those special license plates, man, and not have to take
(46:28):
it to emissions ever. You know what I mean. It's
a good look. So I'm gonna at least keep that,
keep that beater until it's an antique and then, you know,
I don't know, maybe when I'm a d I can
sell it. Yeah, I mean car collecting in the future.
You know. Again, that's hard to predict. But like, what
will that be? Will the El Camino be back eventually?
(46:48):
Who knows? Um, it's just not looking good. It's not
looking good for the al Camino, It's not looking good
for the small truck. But we could start a small
revolution here maybe what our our stuff gear heads, nuts
and gasket heads alike. Thank you so much for tuning
into today's episode, folks, Kurt and I would like to
(47:11):
hear from you. First off, big question, should the l
Camino be resurrected or something like? Second question, are there
any other vehicles that you would like to see back
on the road? If so, what are they and why?
Last question for me, at least small pickup trucks, not
(47:34):
the ones being marketed as small pickup trucks today and
these are modern times, but actual small pickup trucks. Should
they come back? Would they not? Why would you get one?
Let us go. You can find us on Facebook and
Twitter at car Stuff hs W. Can also check out
every single episode of car Stuff that Kurt, Scott and
(47:57):
I have ever done on our website car Stuff Show
dot com. And let me tell you, folks, there's a
there's a ton of stuff out there. You can listen
to that you episode we mentioned at the top for free,
which is my favorite number. And thanks everyone for listening,
and we will see you next time with more car
Stuff Goodness. Car Stuff is a production of I Heart
(48:25):
Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to car Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hello again, all of you car stuff
head gaskets. This is Kurt Garren coming to you from
the side car of the out of control car Stuff
motorcycle as we careen down the highway of life. Then
this to my left behind the handlebars at full throttle,
(00:20):
and I suspect he is out of his mind on coffee.
And me, well, here I sit, leather, helmet and goggles
firmly a fix to my noggin, face forward facing the
onslaught of the chilly midfall air, completely unable to influence
what this madman next to me is about to do.
But hey, what can you do? Welcome to another wild
ride here in the land of car Stuff. Ben, Can
(00:43):
you hear me over there? Yes, Kurt, I can hear you.
Thank you again for having me back on the air.
Although I am not a dent on board with that description,
to be is an unhinged, coffee fueled lunatic, I cannot
object to its accuracy. We had a lot of conversations
(01:03):
off air, you and I, didn't we after our previous
episode on the Cars of Breaking Bad. Yes, we did.
We talked about let's see we we We really took
some pot shots at the poor old Pontiac Aztec in particular.
But during that exploration, you and I started talking about
(01:25):
some cars we love, uh and some cars we hate.
Long time car stuff listeners will recall my um, very
very complicated hate hate relationship with a particular minivan known
as the Honda Odyssey. You and I have talked about this.
(01:46):
Did we talk about this on area last time? I
don't think we were on air when we were talking
about it, And since then, I had one negative experience
with an Odyssey and maybe in line with some of yours.
But please continue, no, no, please come with come with me. Well,
you know it was just, uh, it was one of
those road situations where you're just trying to make some
(02:06):
progress and there's this one person that doesn't want you
to and they just happened to be in a Honda Odyssey.
You know what happened? The words out, They know that
you and I worked together. Now I'm telling you there's
a vast and insidious conspiracy, you know. Jokes aside. I
want to thank everybody over the years who has sent
(02:26):
me wonderful email about or wonderful Facebook messages, tweets and
so on about the Honda Odyssey, about many vans in general.
And there's a very weird commercial that, uh, some of
your co workers and I filmed a while back about
many vans. I've got to send you or maybe we
can post it on car Stuff's Facebook page. Two. But
(02:48):
with that being said, jokes aside, here's the beef with
Honda odysse's when you buy a Honda. No, this is
a true story, Curt. When you buy a Honda Odyssey
at a dealership a you know, you get engine wise,
it's a pretty good vehicle, right, specwise, pretty good vehicle.
If you're a person who feels like there's no such
(03:09):
thing as too many cup holders, Honda Odyssey, that's the
ride for you. But if you have a problem with
the price point or something like that, the dealer takes
you into a back room and they say, hey, we're
gonna give you a discount on this van so long
as you let us install this one extra feature. And
this feature recognizes when there's a guy named Ben Bollin
(03:31):
and Amante Carlo within about a half mile of you,
and it slows your vehicle down and make sure like
this weird autonomous system. Make sure that you're directly in
front of his car, and you know, understandably people buying
a Honda Odyssey, you're like, well, you're gonna knock five
k off the price, then of course I'll do it.
So that's my beef with that. And they must have
(03:52):
updated the software on that after you well, what's a
what's a car? What's a car that you particularly love?
Kurt well, on the top of my head, and El
Camino comes to mind. Ah, you've hit upon the topic
of today's episode. So behind the scenes, uh, this is
(04:13):
this is a weird one. By the scenes, when you
and I were working on our previous episode on the Cars,
Breaking Bad, we also talked about the spinoff filmed to
Breaking Bad that came out called El Camino, and at
some point, I don't know if we ever mentioned this
on air man, but at some point we were both
(04:33):
baffled that there had never been a car stuff episode
on El Camino, or as we call it here in
the US, the El Camino, which should be hilarious to
anyone who speaks a lick of Spanish, because what we're
saying is the the road. You know, it's like saying
a t M machine or VIN number right, vehicle identification
(04:55):
number number. Uh. The el Camino man, By the way,
I going to continue calling it v el Camino before
the entire tive um. The the l Comuno is a
fascinating vehicle. It's it's sometimes like a It's like a
platypus of the road. You know what I mean. It's
not quite fish, it's not quite foul. It's something different,
(05:18):
something unique. A mix tape and you and I have
some personal stories about the el Camino, but I have
the following proposition, why don't we start with the origin
story of the actual vehicle, which may surprise some people.
Some eighties babies may be surprised how old this vehicle
actually is. El Camino was introduced the first generation was
(05:41):
introduced to nineteen fifty nine. It was basically a response
to Ford's ranchero um. But even before that, in Australia
and the thirties, they created this vehicle known as the
coupe utility. So the idea of a car that had
some of the attributes of a truck um. The idea
(06:03):
of that was around for a while before they started
showing up in America, and even in the early fifties,
Chevy and Ford made light duty trucks like the Chevyes
made a truck called the Task Force. It was a
light duty pickup truck. But the El Camino brought in
some of that, I guess, the elegant lines of the
late fifties and early sixties, the chrome trim, some of
(06:25):
the more visually appealing aspects of the sedans at the time. Yeah,
you can look at some pictures of the first generation
El Caminos and you can clearly see the aesthetic you're
talking about here, Kurt. I do have to also confess
I have a weakness for those uh, those flowing lines,
(06:46):
that space age retro futurism so common in Fords and
Chevies of the fifties and into the sixties. We do
have a previous episode on car stuff about you in
Australia and and their origin for anybody wants to check
that out. There's a really cool quote that you found
(07:07):
about the ut as well of from like the way
it was marketed in Australia, right yea so um. It
was a farmer's wife and Victoria, Australia. She desired a car,
that quote to go to church and on a Sunday
in which to carry our pigs to market on Mondays.
And so that encapsulates the entire concept here, you know
(07:31):
what I mean, the idea that instead of buying two
separate vehicles for two separate specific task, right, you can
buy something that fulfills both of those functions. This is
a question that will come back to, right because what
we're what we're gonna see here is going to be
(07:54):
ultimately a battle between some of those functions, Like is
is a daily driver or your you know, your good
looking car, right, your business car? Is that the same
thing as your hauler, your work vehicle. The folks who
made the Cameo carrier and the folks who made the
(08:17):
El Camino, and the folks who made the utes in general,
their answer to that was, yes, you can be the
same thing forward the future. What a time to be alive,
you know what I mean. Uh So, let's let's dive
in a little bit into the first generation of trying
(08:38):
to not to crack up when I say this. The
El Camino V the road and it was based on
a station wagon that Chevrolet produced at the time. It
was the Brookwood station Wagon. So the first generation spanned
um two years nineteen fifty nine to nineteen sixty and
throughout the generations. By the way, the El Camino, it
kind of flip flops back and forth between car, muscle car, light,
(09:01):
utility truck, and I kind of has this funny quest
of finding its place where it fits in in the
car universe, I guess, And maybe ultimately that's why it disappeared,
because it was just kind of always that it sat
in the middle, somewhere between car and truck, obviously, but
also between car that you would want to be in
(09:23):
every day to a car that he may have had
to have another car to seat maybe more than two
to three people if you wanted to want him riding
in the bed, which became unacceptable at some point. I
know which you know, you and I both probably grew
up in areas where it was completely normal to just
(09:43):
hop in the back of the pickup truck, right Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah.
I like that we're starting with the first generation here,
and I like that you mentioned the Ranchero earlier, because
the El Camino, that's the last time I'm gonna laugh
and say that the Yale Camino was a little edgier.
It was more stylized. It was hipper than the Ranchero,
(10:06):
and when it first came out, it sold more quickly
than the Ranchero, something along the lines of like twenty
two thousand to fourteen thousand. And then it also, while
it was clearly based on the Brookwood's Wagon, it had
some different variants. You had some more options. You could
(10:29):
get it with any full size Chevy drive train. It
had a single trim level. And then we can dive
into the stats a little bit. Let's look at the
price point. So the nineteen sixty model next model year
still has that that kind of classic or what would
(10:52):
come to be classic bel air look, right, But how
much how much did it cost? The starting price was
around two thousand, three hundred and sixty six dollars, and
that was with the six cylinder engine. You could also
get a V eight for around a hundred bucks more,
which was eight three cubic nch engine. So let's do
let's do just a little bit of inflation calculator math.
(11:16):
If you're ready, all right, let's see, let me get
a let me get a drum roll here, two thousand,
three hundred and sixty six dollars in nineteen sixty is
equivalent to about twenty thousand, seventy one in fifty eight
cents in twenty eighteen, so twenty thousand dollars functionally, it's
(11:42):
nothing to sneeze at. That's definitely an investment, especially when
you consider that weren't super practical for a lot of
people in the US for sure, especially around the time
the Baby Boomer generation, so you had larger nuclear families
after World War Two, and we you needed space for
the kids and you. You know, one thing you told
(12:03):
me that I thought was very interesting was you said,
when I look at the first generation El Camino, I'm
also kind of seeing the story about the time. Yeah,
it seems like you step back and you look at
the El Camino throughout the generations, that directly reflects um
(12:24):
the time that it was produced. And that kind of
sounds obvious. If you look at any car during any generation,
you could say that. However, the uniqueness of the El
Camino being a car truck UM kind of makes it.
It's just interesting to see what the manufacturer made the
al Caminos, like, do we make it more like a car,
do we make it more like a truck? Do we
(12:44):
make it a muscle car? R do we make it
an economy car. So in general, the general look of
the car, the general feel of the car, you can
tell where the industry was at at the time, and
that is kind of neat about the El Camino for sure.
And we're looking at this hybridization right again, two separate
(13:04):
vehicle concepts smooshed together into one thing. You could make
an argument here that the El Camino has always been
a little more car than it is truck. Right. It's
strange because the big truck parts or truck aspects, attributes
(13:25):
for lack of a better word, of the El Camino
are going to be the bed and the fact that
it's a two seater. Those are the defining traits and
most of the other stuff all car. By way of contrast,
we can look at another attempt to compromise something that
is incredibly prevalent in modern pickup trucks today, which is
(13:49):
the extended cab. We're we're kind of we're coming towards
the same thing from a very different direction. Since this
is an audio podcast, when everybody listening to that, what
I'm doing is staring off into the middle distance, completely
out of my mind. At Caffeine gesticulating wildly with my
two hands about to like slap together. Because the extended
(14:13):
cab pick up is trying to also function as a
family vehicle, and in some cases it's doing it successfully.
You can comfortably see the family of four to five
in an extended cab right, depending on the make, model,
et cetera. With the el Camino, there's not an extended cap.
(14:34):
It's just the two seats and the pickup. But like
you said, and I love this idea, man. Like you said,
we can conduct a bit of um, a bit of
forensic work based on the way that the El Camino
evolves or has changed with successive generations. We can also
(14:54):
see the way American culture is changing, or at least
car man manufacturer's perception of American car cultures. There was
a gap, first of all, between the first and second
generation of a couple of years. However, when the Ranchero
continued success in the two year absence, so Chevy said, well, okay, well,
(15:15):
let's take another stab at it. So they began to
base the l Camino on the chevel It definitely has
a scale back appearance as the Chevell did at the time.
The Chevelle is smaller muscle car type vehicle. So Chevy
began to make a car that was leaning in that direction,
so leaning away from luxury headed towards performance, but not
(15:39):
quite there yet. I've got this interesting thing here because
now we're moving from two unrelated functions, right, family, daily driver,
work vehicle, hauler. We're moving from two unrelated functions towards
two functions that are arguably oppositional. High performance vehicle is
(16:00):
built to avoid weight, and a hauling vehicle is built
to move with as much weight as reasonably possible. So
this is one of the areas where we see the
contradiction of design in the El Camino come to the forefront.
Is in the second gen? However, do you want to
point out they still look very cool? They do. Yeah.
(16:22):
As far as weight and weight distribution, it is interesting
to have a muscle car with little weight on the
rear wheels. Yeah, but I guess you could put some
weight UM four when the second generation was introduced. Um
it was initially introduced with six cylinder engine, but very
(16:42):
soon after that they were throwing V eights in there.
I think the seven engine horse power so not slack there.
So throughout the year sixty four until the second generation
ended nineteen sixty seven. They ramatically increased power and and function.
(17:04):
To get towards the third generation, they change the dashboard
layout to horizontal speedometer, which was becoming popular at the time.
I remember when growing up, I was driving some of
my older relatives, older cars that had the horizontal sphenomena.
The thing that freaked me out is maybe just the
(17:24):
illusion or the spatial reasoning involved. I started thinking less
in terms of the numbers more in terms of where
this thing is right, and uh like where the indicator is.
And that's a terrible way to think about driving, because
I'm like, well, as long as it's you know, as
long as it's not all the way to the right,
(17:46):
we're fine. We're not really speeding. We're only speeding if
it's laying down completely flat on the right. Don't try
that at home, kids. And the culmination of the generation
of sixty seven, they introduced the lapsible steering column. Disc
brakes were now an option. They included an automatic transmission
as an option, and they also introduced three or air shocks,
(18:09):
which um would raise and lower the rear end. We're
in this plus minus plus, you know, pro compro kind
of situation here. Collapsible steering column, great disc brakes, thank god. Also,
you know, I hope this is not a hot take,
but having an automatic on a muscle car, I don't
(18:32):
feel like that's the right move, especially considering that's a
nine seven automatic. The l came, you know at this
point is a muscle car that has the handicap of
a pickup bed. Now, I'll say it, because that's what
it is. If you think of a muscle car mission,
it has a handicap. The center cannot hold. This is
an unsustainable situation, and they, I don't know. It's interesting
(18:55):
because we see from the second generation on that the
el Camino does have its own evolution, but it's also
following the Chevel's evolution. A change in the Chevelle affects
a change in the El Camino, and this holds true
for the third generation. Right, yes, So third generation range
(19:17):
from nineteen sixty eight to nineteen seventy two, and yet
the design changed along with the chevel options paralleled the
Chevelle's options over the years. This one will be familiar.
I mean, this is when this is the muscle car generation. Yeah,
these are the years of the muscle car el Camino
right here was so the second generation was kind of
walking us up up to this point. Society was changing.
(19:41):
The baby boomer children of the early fifties were starting
to drive, and this is what they want and they
mean to I like it. This particular generation of El
Camino and Chevelle, very beautiful cars. Um. The body style
did change between the nineteen sixty nine and seventy Yearly enough,
it's the same generation. Uh there's to me, there's a
(20:04):
big difference between those two. Even when we're talking Chevelle.
The seventies Chevelle, that was the year. Man that was
like the year that had the gigantic engine in it. Um,
Oh that's right, yeah, because nine Yeah, so they bumped
it up for fifty four four during fifty horse power.
This is the very end of that muscle car, unrestricted,
(20:28):
no worries about gas mileage, none of that garbage. We're
just gonna see if we were how big of an
engine we can put in the car, and then we're
just gonna put it in there. Yeah. So it's it's
beautiful thing. But rewinding back to sixty eight a little bit,
so the l Camino was based on the four door
chevelle station wagon slash Sedan. It was bigger yet lighter
(20:48):
than the previous generation, which if you were to look
at it, it would be hard to believe that. We
also know that this was sixty eight, was the year
the super Sport was launched, right, superspert version. Yeah, so
that was a three six cubic kinch l Camino SS.
One thing interesting that you pointed out to me here
is that there was a noticeable engineering problem or design
(21:15):
problem with the sixty model. Yeah. So they put the
backup lights. They moved them from the rear bumper up
to the bed, so if the tailgate was down, you
couldn't see the backup lights. You know, maybe it was
on purpose. Maybe they were like, do you know what
you really need when you're reversing this car. You need
to be kind of a wild card. People need to
(21:36):
not know where you're going, what you're doing exactly? Is
he going forward backward? Who knows? You know, we keep
life interesting exactly? Why not? Why not? And of course
when you're driving the SS version, you would want to
leave that tailgate down because if you left it up,
I believe the airflow might be a little bit restricted. Yeah,
it's like that what do the kids call it? The
(21:56):
Naruto run? That's it's something on the internet where where
people are saying that if you run with your arms
pointed out behind you, you're running faster. I haven't checked
into the science, you know, I'm not Yeah, I'm not
gonna buy I'm not buying that. Just from a mechanical standpoint,
it doesn't like it would it would be the best
(22:17):
way to run, but um, for the research isn't necessary. Though.
There we go, and when we get to seventy the
El Camino, it's it's bitter sweet, right, because this is
I think we can both agree this is the apex moment.
This is the highest performing El Camino at least, maybe
(22:39):
not in terms of sales, but in terms of it's
on the road abilities. It has some drawbacks depending on
where you put the tailgate. No one knows if you're
going to go forward or backward. Uh. And also it's
officially a muscle car. It hits all, it ticks the
boxes of a muscle car, but it's a muscle car
that happens to have a pick up truck and it's
(23:01):
on its butt, right, So what happened that stopped this
clear trend, because if we're being honest, we see from
nineteen sixty four all the way up to nineteen seventy,
we see this clear trend towards building more performance into
the front end. It's becoming more and more muscle car also,
(23:22):
you know, kind of following the market at the time,
but it's still has this pickup truck bed that's becoming
more and more of a legacy. Right It's sort of
like an interesting novelty attached to the El Camino. So
there's something that happens right around nineteen seventy. What you're
getting at would be fuel regulations, rocktane fuel, a more
(23:45):
fuel economy centric mindset in the United States. I don't
think the gas crisis had fully kicked in yet, but
the riding was on the wall. The car was changing forever,
and um American car companies were about to jump on
the bandwagon or get left behind. This was it. This
was the end of the the muscle car as we
(24:07):
know it, so as we knew it as we knew it. Yeah,
So in seventy one, lower octane unleaded fuel mandates are
in effect, and this means that the l caminos from
seventy one on start using lower compression engines, right, and
then we see, oddly enough, despite these mandates, we see
(24:31):
that the GMC Spirit is introduced this year, which is
the GMC's counterpart to the al Camino. And you know,
other than those regulations, not too much like fundamental. There
aren't too many fundamental shifts in design or inspects until
we get to the fourth generation, which I know a
(24:51):
lot of us listening I have been waiting for. The
fourth generation was from nineteen seventy three to nineteen seventy seven.
Nine seventy three saw dramatic read design of bel Camino.
It still was based on the Chevelle station wagon, and
it was the largest el Camino to this point ever produced.
I probably the largest al Camino ever produced. Because I
believe the next generation is a little smaller. Front discs
(25:13):
are now also standard in seventy three. So Ben, why
in particular do you say that this generation is special
in terms of our story here? This version of the
El Camino is one that I think a lot of
people growing up or our age are probably familiar with.
This is also I've got some personal bias here, Kurt,
(25:35):
because this is also the first El Camino that I
had experience with, and that was a nineteen I want
to say it was. I want to say it was
a seventies six with the quad headlights. My father had
(25:55):
gotten into a very serious argument of the guy they
was getting this lcimino from. And the argument, which was
with a coworker of his, went this way. The coworker said,
let me just give this to you. Just take it
out of my yard. My wife is so pissed that
(26:16):
this thing is sitting here. It takes, like you know,
it takes like a quarter oil to get it anywhere.
It's in bad shape. It's what we Uh, it's a
huge pos. Since we're a family show, that means piece
of stuff and a piece of stink, whatever you wanna
call it. And so on the other side of this,
(26:38):
my dad, the old man is like, uh, it's like, no,
I can't do that. We have to have the title.
There has to be an exchange of money. I want
to give you at least a hundred bucks. And so
after they had this this drag out argument, I would
just take it. I'll feel bad. I will just let
me give you some money. This became like our work
vehicle for taking care of the yard moving stuff around,
(27:03):
and this thing was in my in my mind, it
was very old when we got it. Uh, this thing
was in my mind our flint Stone's car because the
shotgun seat had a hole in the undercarriage that had
plywood over it, and I kept trying to convince my
dad to let me move the plywood, to let you
(27:25):
know how old I was at the time, so that
I could do the flint Stones by which, yes, it
is as dumb an idea as it sounds today. The
idea was, I was like, I'm gonna put my feet
through it, and I'm gonna run along with the car. Um.
The reason I still left feet today is because thank
god there was an adult round too convince me. Uh.
(27:50):
They took a very my parents look a very interesting
tack with this, they said. They didn't try to convince
me that I couldn't do it, or tell me that
I couldn't do it. They did tell me, obviously, but
they didn't try to convince me that that itself was
a bad idea because of the physics involved. Instead, they
convinced me the first off, they told me they would,
you know, from the air of corporal punishments. They make
(28:12):
me it clear there would be consequences if I tried
to do this. And then they also got my head
man and they convinced me that the flint Stones was
a crappy cartoon and by doing that, you know, they
made it uncool. Chris wantn't do this. But this thing
had a drinking problem but with oil and uh. It
was one of those things where we thought, you know,
(28:33):
forget Blue Book value, because whenever you're fixing a used car,
you always want to compare it to the value of
the vehicle. And this thing was scrap metal that happened
to be held together by duct tape wire, some prayers
to a higher power. Uh, and you know, eventually my
(28:53):
dad ended up giving it away. But I will always
remember that seventies six elk me, you know, because I
was certain. I was a kid at the time, but
I was certain that when I got to be sixteen
years old, this would be the car is gonna drive.
And I thought I was gonna be like hot stuff,
you know at the high school parking lot. But you
(29:14):
had you also had some experience growing up with all caminos,
right I did I did? I want to rewind the
for a second and ask you if there's a story
as to why that hole was in the floorboard on
the passenger side. You know, it was clearly not an
intentionally made whole. It looks kind of like rusted. I well,
(29:38):
I you know what, I don't know. I don't know
the story of the flint stone shotgun hole. Ill you
know what, how about this? I will check and get
back to everybody on that, because the weirdest things seemed
normal when you're a kid and looking back in my
in my thirties and thinking, yeah, it's it's unusual for
(30:00):
a car to have a hole in the undercarriage like that. Well,
did y'all drive it around other than from here to there?
Around the house? Did y'all drive it out to the store?
And yeah, like maybe maybe around the block in the community,
in the neighborhood. So it wasn't really debot or something. Yeah, no, no, no, no,
very much like you would hal sawed in it and
stuff like that. Yeah. I feel like those types of cars.
(30:23):
People used to have those types of cars for sure. Yeah,
and not many people have retain a car now just
to kind of do you know what I mean? In
the floor the beat yeah, the beater, Yeah, so the
era of the Beater, it was kind of over. This
is an interesting thing that you bring up, and it
touches on a larger concept here. You're right, a lot
(30:48):
of people just have a daily driver, no, right, And
I think part of that is because we know that
the entry level price for a new car. Don't ever
buy a brand new car, by the way, we know
the entry level price for a newer car just sedan,
not even a bunch of bells and whistles. Uh, that
price seems to continually rise, you know. And maybe part
(31:11):
of it is that we also see more people living
in cities, so they're living with less land. I think
I would like to think that the death of the
Beater has been the news of the death of the Beater,
to quote Mark Twain, has been greatly exaggerated because in
rural areas and the countryside and stuff, you still need
(31:32):
a vehicle like that, you know what I mean. You
still have to go off the road, you have to
go into a field, or you have to haul uh
some messy, heavy stuff. And what what are you gonna do.
You're gonna take the nice car, you are You're gonna
screw up the nice car. That's how I always think
of it. I don't have a Beater right now. Wait no, wait, no,
that's not true. I do have a Beater. It's my
(31:53):
daily driver, it's my Monte carl Um. So my personal
story has to do with the next generation. So we're
looking at the fifth generation, the nineteen seventy eight to
nineteen eighties seven. Now it's based on the Malibu, or
at least in the early part of this generation was
based on the Malibu. This is the one that I
think of when I think of El Camino. My grandfather
(32:15):
pretty much exclusively drove this. We used to do a
lot of fishing, so this was perfect for carrying all
that gear and going out into the on the tight
dirt roads. I know this one is based on the Malibu.
Correct back to the start of this generation in nineteen
seventy eight, the al Camino had its own unique chassis
(32:37):
for the first time, so it wasn't based off of
the actual undercarriage of any particular car. You can kind
of tell about looking at us this different stature. It
doesn't seem like a car stature. Yeah, yeah, So this
is where we see this fifth generation based on the
(32:58):
Chevy Malibu for a while it's generally based on the
GM G platform or the G body, and the day
of the muscle car el Camino is long gone by
this point, right, and now people are focusing more on
economy of fuel. Right. And when and when we say
people here we mean car manufacturers, we don't necessarily mean drivers,
(33:22):
because anybody wanted a muscular el Camino is holding onto
it for dear life. Right, speaking of fuel um from
a D two eighty four, the diesel engine was included,
UH and the L Camino. It was an Oldsmobile engine.
Believe it became known for reliability issues. However, it did
have some signs of life back to towards the muscle
(33:45):
car towards the s S. Even though this generation of
L Camino was based on the Malibu, there were SS
models made by Choo Chow Customs and they were commissioned
by Chevrolet to make these cars. Choto Customs was based
in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The El Caminos that they produced had
the more of a Monte Carlo front end. Um. A
(34:05):
lot of people may be familiar with this, but it
technically is the same body, same generation as the Malibu
based El Camino, just kind of has a different nose
clip on it. There were no performance modifications. This was
purely a visual aesthetic upgrades, but very iconic looking vehicles.
It made for a nice looking al Camino. On the
(34:27):
way to the El Camuno's demise, there were a lot
of pitches internal and external for ideas of resurrecting or
reinventing the L Comuno. And that makes sense because since
its first generation, the L Communo has continually been kind
of reinvented as people try to figure out, should this
be more truck, should this be more car? Can we
(34:49):
put these two things together in an effective way? So
the end of the El Camino era in eight seven UM.
Shortly before that, production was moved to Mexico, so the
riding was on the wall there. In the early eighties,
the S ten was introduced, so it was filling that
small truck category. And then fast forward to the nineties
(35:10):
when when some of these concepts started showing up. The
suv was starting to creep into the picture. Then Ford
had the Bronco and Chevy had the Blazer, and GMC
had the Jimmy, and those cars evolved, and really the
manufacturers haven't looked back since then. Yeah, you're right. You're right.
Before the demise of the El Camino and even after
(35:35):
it went to Mexico to die like Ambrose bears, Even
before that occurred, Gum in particular kept kept reworking ideas
for possible resurrections of the El Camino, new iterations thereof,
and so on. In nine two they unveiled this concept
(36:02):
car El Camino. It was more or less a pickup
version of the Chevy Lumina. You can imagine how ugly
it looked. Just take a second to imagine that, folks. Yes, correct,
you win the prize. It was just as ugly as
(36:22):
you imagine. Uh. There was a Pontiac G eight s
T concept that they showed at the two thousand eight
New York Auto Show. I'm gonna show you this one, Kurt,
What do you think? Just initial reactions, it's pretty ugly.
It's just yeah, oh wow, that's our new that you
(36:43):
know what I propose, that's a new rating system. Especially ugly.
It's aztec ugly. It's just trying. It's you know, it's
the platypus problem. It's it's trying to be two different things.
At that point, however, I would argue that for or
a time during a certain period of the El Camino's
(37:04):
rise and it's fall, it did somehow not but somehow
it kind of like seventy nailed what it was trying
to do, you know what I mean. You know, it's
not a secret that I would love for the El
Camino to return. I think it would be cool if
(37:25):
it was done right. I don't think we are alone
and yearning for the return of at least a small
pickup why duty pick up. Yeah, maybe even the El Camino.
But hey, we can't get too greedy here, right right,
But the small truck. It seems like if you want
and this goes for cars too, if you want a
(37:47):
small truck or a small car, they're either comically small
or they're way too big. If you can't reach behind
you and tap on the glass, then you're not driving
a small truck. If you look at things like the
best small trucks for en, you know, you go to
go to any auto blog or even Gelopnick or CarMax
(38:10):
or whatever, you'll see that a lot of them still
have extended caps. Have an extended cap to me, does
not make it a small truck. We are seeing this
trend and it happened with the many Cooper as well.
We're seeing this trend toward bigger and bigger things. There's
this mission creep in the footprint of a vehicle. I
(38:31):
am not in any way, shape or form saying that
there's something wrong with big vehicles. You need vehicles with
that horse power, with that firepower sometimes. But like you're singing, man,
for anybody who wants a small pickup truck, it's little
two seater, you know, Okay, maybe with that pretend middle
(38:54):
that no one ever wants to use. So let's just
call it a two seater. If you want one of
those right now, you don't have a ton of viable alternatives.
Before I was brought out a cry asleep and returned
to car stuff here, I was listening to some of
the recent episodes that you and Scott had done, and
(39:14):
one thing that I think is particularly relevant to this
conversation is the earlier episode about the Ford Ranger. Since
it was out of commission from what two thousand and eleven,
you guys asked a really good question like will this
Ranger actually be the small pickup truck people want? So
(39:35):
they just pulled this up on our car stuff community
Facebook page, and we're seeing some pretty good conversations here.
Rudy M. Notes that the Ranger Raptor is available as
a factory model and has a pretty good review of it.
Says it's tough as nails, includes all the extras. Alex
s says the new Ranger is too big and too expensive.
(39:58):
Whatever happened to the small, basic simple trucks? And I
think that's what they're I think that's what they're going for.
And you can see the conversation when Alex has continues
on in the conversation says the new Rangers are the
size the f one fifty used to be. I don't
want to truck that big. I just want the old
(40:19):
Ranger size. It's just unfortunate that we don't get to
decide what the automakers make. A lot of the options
they include in the in the cars now they're outdated
several years after they're introduced, like the displays and things
like that. Yeah, it just seems like we're steering in
that direction towards more automation in cars and having a
(40:40):
basic pickup truck doesn't fit into that model. I hate
to say it, but um, there may be a day
when we're not driving our cars anymore. I hear you, man,
and it's something that honestly bugs me more than a
little bit, because there's an ongoing dilemma I've had here.
(41:00):
If you okay, let's get apocalyptic real quick, right, So
imagine there's something whereas some sort of global event occurs
where there's like an e M P. Right, an electromagnetic
pulse disabled. All computers, electronic devices, what have you. Older
cars past a certain age will work because they're purely
(41:24):
mechanical devices. Right. I've been looking increasingly towards getting a
new car, which I hate to do. I'm probably going
to keep the Monte Carlo. I'll make it a full
time beater. But but I've been looking at this, and
you know, one thing that's disconcerting is there's this tendency,
or there's this increasing trend of cars being made such
(41:48):
that the owner is not allowed to work on certain
aspects or components of the system. And to me, that
that shows us that that is just one aspect of
our society's increasing move away from an ownership society towards
a service society. Technologies like that. Already, computers are becoming
(42:13):
where you can't replace components anymore. Everything's affixed to this
circuit board basically. So yeah, cars are going that way too.
In the design of the vehicle, they can say it
performs a certain way, it gets this kind of gas mileage,
and they can regulate certain components of the car just
to last longer. I mean, a lot of it is
for our own good, true, but a lot of it
(42:35):
does restricts. Um It restricts a lot of the things
that you can do, a lot of the modifications that
you can do. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I never thought it
would be a hot take to say I think that
when you buy something, you should own it and you
should be able to do what you want with it.
I never in a million years thought that would be
a controversial opinion. But apparently a lot of car manufacturers
(42:56):
disagree with me. Well, I wonder what they think about
the El Camino too. And I'm you know, I know,
I'm giving I'm dragging them a little bit, but uh,
a lot of these high level manufacturing decisions are made
after extensive research, you know what I mean. So you
and I are talking about what we like, what we
(43:16):
want as drivers, and what they're thinking about is a
decision that can make or lose billions of dollars for
you know what I mean. So they're coming at it
from a different direction. Well. And also when we get
nostalgic about cars, when car fans getting nostalgic about cars,
they tend to think of the older days as being
(43:37):
the better days. Cars are more beautiful, vengeines were more powerful,
sounded better, the exhaust smells, you know. So as time
has gone on, though cars have gotten a lot more
fuel efficient. You can now buy a car new or
use car very few miles on it, and you could
drive it relatively maintenance free for a hundred and fifty
(44:01):
to two hundred thousand miles before you would have to change,
you know, before you would have to consider a major repair.
As long as you do your basic maintenance fluids things
like that, you know, spark plugs and filters and all
that stuff, you're good to go. And now that was
has not been the case in the past. You know,
(44:21):
we've gotten to this point now where tolerances are just
so strict that it's really making for better cars in
a way, but it is it's also taking some of
that romanticism away I always think of. Now try to
try to ask this question, which cars are we gonna
look at in thirty forty fifty years and say, like, man,
(44:41):
that car is classic. I think about that too. You know,
it's also a it's a function of time. You're you're
bringing up some really great points here, man, because uh,
so there were there were other vehicles around during the
reign of the Model T. Model T is widely considered
(45:02):
a classic. It's a function of its age, and it's
also a function of its prevalence. It's ubiquity. There were
just so many Model Ts around that you're more likely
to find one in the wild. So with that mind,
maybe we would ask, let's see what would be ah,
what would be an interesting example. So the Honda Civic,
(45:23):
right first, Honda Civic comes out in seventy two, and
it becomes, uh it eventually becomes the for a number
of years, the most popular car in the United States,
like several decades down the road. But when it becomes
the most popular car in the United States, it also
becomes one of the most stolen vehicles in the United
(45:46):
States because you can, you know, chop it down and
you can sell the parts and there will always be
someone to buy it. Because they they are odds of
only a Honda Civic or needing to repair one or
so much higher. So so I wonder what a on
To Civic eventually be a classic. It's tough because now
we're we're trying to think what future historians, future car
(46:06):
buffs will will explore, you know, and what they will
what they will value. Like I'm gonna be honest, man,
I know I keep wingin and moaning about this Monty Carlo,
this this automotive albatross around my neck. But the fact
that the fact of the matter is that I am
going to keep it and wait until I can get
those special license plates, man, and not have to take
(46:28):
it to emissions ever. You know what I mean. It's
a good look. So I'm gonna at least keep that,
keep that beater until it's an antique and then, you know,
I don't know, maybe when I'm a d I can
sell it. Yeah, I mean car collecting in the future.
You know. Again, that's hard to predict. But like, what
will that be? Will the El Camino be back eventually?
(46:48):
Who knows? Um, it's just not looking good. It's not
looking good for the al Camino, It's not looking good
for the small truck. But we could start a small
revolution here maybe what our our stuff gear heads, nuts
and gasket heads alike. Thank you so much for tuning
into today's episode, folks, Kurt and I would like to
(47:11):
hear from you. First off, big question, should the l
Camino be resurrected or something like? Second question, are there
any other vehicles that you would like to see back
on the road? If so, what are they and why?
Last question for me, at least small pickup trucks, not
(47:34):
the ones being marketed as small pickup trucks today and
these are modern times, but actual small pickup trucks. Should
they come back? Would they not? Why would you get one?
Let us go. You can find us on Facebook and
Twitter at car Stuff hs W. Can also check out
every single episode of car Stuff that Kurt, Scott and
(47:57):
I have ever done on our website car Stuff Show
dot com. And let me tell you, folks, there's a
there's a ton of stuff out there. You can listen
to that you episode we mentioned at the top for free,
which is my favorite number. And thanks everyone for listening,
and we will see you next time with more car
Stuff Goodness. Car Stuff is a production of I Heart
(48:25):
Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.