Don’t Boot the El Camino Ute!
Personally, I miss the El Camino. It provided usability, power and a stance that couldn’t be beat. It was epic. Maybe not epic to drive because let’s face it, it was built in the 60’s and 70’s, but it was epic nonetheless.
Here in the States, we haven’t had a resurgence of the El Camino in a long while, but in Australia the El Camino lives on or at least for a few more months.
With GM closing domestic manufacturing in Australia, this wonderful piece of automotive erotica will soon come to an end and the El Camino Ute will die soon thereafter.
However Holden, GM’s Australian division, and its special vehicles team HSV, will produce one of the most badass Utes ever to be made as a closing of an era. The HSV GTS Maloo.
This untamed beast makes due with a 6.2L Supercharged V8 with 576 hp and 545 lb-ft of torque, or enough to light up the rear wheels pretty much all the way through 4th. What makes this way different than the U.S. versions from the late 60’s though is that this can actually stop and turn as well as go extremely fast in a straight line.
To stop, the Maloo uses 6 piston calipers and a two piece rotor. And to get it around corners without sliding the tail out, it is the first Holden to use a torque vectoring system in order to keep everyone going in the right direction.
While prices haven’t been announced, I’d say it would be safe to figure it will be around the $70k mark based off of previous iterations that HSV has tuned.
I think this is a bit of a travesty. The world needs cars like this. Cars that defy convention. Defy consumer studies. We need more cars like this and the Hellcat.
Cars that engage the driver, engage the sense, engage in turning tires to smoke! GM has been in talks with HSV to possibly bring the team over to the States to help us with the cars over here. If they do, they should bring this with them as well! The world needs more UTEs!