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Commodore Ute to US: 100,000 votes needed!

According to The Age Drive and an article by Barry Park, we are again set to export our Commodore Ute to the US.

The article is as follows:

US website rallies to GM's Twitter call of 'If you ask for an El Camino ute, we'll do it'.

An off-the-cuff quip from General Motors' newly appointed chief marketing officer could be just the thing to help Holden's cause to sell the Commodore ute in the US.

Joel Ewanick, who made the jump from Hyundai to the US car maker late last year, recently joined the social networking service Twitter. He soon started interacting with Chevrolet fans, with many of them asking for the car maker to re-introduce a vehicle based on a cross between a truck (ute) and a car.

In response to one passionate request for a new-age El Camino, Ewanick wrote: ''Well, we need you and 100,000 more of your best friends.''

Advertisement: Story continues below That was enough for US motoring website Jalopnik, which is now on a campaign to collect the names tally it needs to convince Ewanick to kick-start the ute program.

Former Holden managing director Mark Reuss, who now heads up GM's North American operations, told Drive recently that rising fuel prices and the weak US economy could open up space for the Commodore ute to find a place as low-cost tradesman's transport.

The groundwork has already been done, too. Holden has had one failed attempt to get the Commodore-based ute — the two-seat version has quite a lot in common with the four-door sedan it shares its name with, including the way it drives — into the US.

After building up hype, including a fan-based competition to name the US version of the ute as the Pontiac G8 ST, the program was cancelled in early 2009 as GM collapsed into bankruptcy and diverted it efforts to trying to keep the company alive rather than build new markets.

However, with GM since shelving the Pontiac name indefinitely, the new US version of a Holden ute would need to wear a Chevrolet badge — again spurring hope that the El Camino name could be resurrected.

GM has even shown a more rugged-looking version of the Commodore ute — badged the GMC Denali XT concept — in 2008, but the concept is yet to make it into production.

Jalopnik's call has only been out for a week so far, but already the website has collected more than 3000 names.

''Let's show GM [that] 'Merica wants the only car that's business up front with a party in the back,'' the website says.


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