COWBOYS AND HOONUGANS

BACK IN 1933, A FARMER’S WIFE FROM GIPPSLAND, AUSTRALIA, WROTE TO THE HEAD OF THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY’S OUTPOST IN MELBOURNE WITH A QUANDARY.

“My husband and I can’t afford a car and a truck,” she said, “so can you build a vehicle that we can use to go to church on Sunday and that my husband can use to take the pigs to market on Monday?”

Amazingly, in an act of consumer responsiveness reserved these days following a public PR disaster or shouty tweet, Ford Australia agreed. The firm gathered its brainiest brains in a room and had a long, hard think. After a bit more thinking, a lightbulb moment: why not mash the benefits of a car with the practicality of a truck? They called it… the utility vehicle. Or ute, for short. Fundamentally, its ethos was the opposite of a mullet: party in the front, business at the back. Yet it was a concept that proved to be very popular with people with haircuts that were the other way around.

Utes started flying out of the showrooms. So