BACKWARD GLANCES
THE EARLY AND MID-1960S BROUGHT SOME OF the most iconic four-wheel-drive sport utilities known to history. Not that we knew they were icons at the time. Nor did we know the name “sport utility” just yet, but the market was definitely broadening past bare-bones utility rigs. As people had more disposable income for outdoor recreation or a second car, there was a place for a recreational vehicle that was second-car friendly. This became the vital part of the successful sport utility equation.
The market for passenger-carrying 4x4s in the ’50s and ’60s was small and had long been served mainly by a relatively small company: Jeep. Jeeps were joined by a few imports from Land Rover, Toyota, and Nissan, but the Big Three in
