May 24: Used Australian for sale

We came this close to having the Pontiac G8 Sport Truck roaming our highways and biways. How close is "this close"......really close and it was only the cancelling of the brand, that kept this unusual Australian native from ripping up our roads. An idea whose time had long passed in North America, but an idea that those wild and crazy Aussies have been building for the past, God knows how many years. Sure, there would be those few outliers, who would have dropped the coin to have the only one of these on their block, but probably the closing of Pontiac saved the dealers from having these Sport Trucks collecting dust on dealers' lots. My opinion, of course, but I've never doubted my ability to get things wrong.

Can't sleep at night thinking about what might have been? Yeah, I feel for you, buddy, but help is on the way. A company in Colorado has seen the light and has been importing these unique cars (trucks?) for a number of years. Just the thing for someone who wants to be different and wants to have their steering wheel on the right hand side of the dash.

Show up at your local cruise night in something like this heated up orange Falcon and you'd have to beat away the crowds. Not a Ford folk? Rest easy, my friend, as Left Hand Utes also sells Holdens, which with a simple and inexpensive switch of the grille can be made into a Chevy. And since the current US only Chevy SS, also started out as a Holden, your ute can easily be converted to left hand drive, i.e. Left Hand Utes 

Amaze your friends. Be the envy of all of those old Ranchero and El Camino fans, who have been lost for the past thirty years, as that was about the time the last of those American car/truck hybrids rolled off an American assembly line. Right there, that should tell you something about their North American popularity.

But those Aussies are another matter entirely. So, now that Ford and GM have stopped making unique vehicles for the local market, what will those ute lovin' Aussies turn to? I mean, just look at the variety of Holden utes that have been available, from mild to wild........

And how will they feel when they go looking for a good used ute, only to see their local dealer boxing them up to ship to Colorado? Oh, the pain. Just to be safe, maybe they should only do this in the dead of night.

But luckily for us, we have Left Hand Utes, who are bringing these oddities to our shores. Ok, so I see that you are about to ask, how much? Good question, but most of their prices aren't listed. One was, though. For a 2012.5 Holden SS, they wanted a princely $47,500 USD. Do the math, folks. That's about $70k Canadian for a used trucklet, that might have sold new here, if the Pontiac brand had been retained, for about $45k. Man, you sure do have to love your ute to be willing to pony up that kind of coin just to be utenique (cute, Barry). 

After you get over the sticker shock and still want to get your ute fix, why not go for what might have been, but never was? You got it, they'll also swap in a Pontiac G8 front clip, so you'll really have something that will get those heads scratching at your local cruise.

Thinking a trip to Colorado might be a good use of your money? Then why not drop into Left Hand Utes? Ask them to dig deep into your pockets and also max out your credit cards to bring home a gently used Aussie ute? Maybe even buy a bale of hay to throw in the back, so people will think you are actually going to use it for what it was intended. 

And remember, just because God gave you brains, doesn't mean you have to use them.

Until next time........