Chevrolet El Camino

The El Camino was a car/pickup hybrid marketed by Chevrolet from the fifties to eighties. It was first based on the Bel Air, then the Impala, then the Chevelle, then the Malibu. A GMC version was also available known first as the Sprint then as the Caballero. The name El Camino comes from El Camino Real (Spanish for "The Royal Road"). Caballero means "knight" in Spanish and even came in a Knight trim. The Diablo package gave the Caballero a demon on its hood similar to the Pontiac Trans Am's phoenix (Diablo means devil in Spanish). Like the Super Sport trim for Chevrolet, the Sprint had the SP trim (although taken from the first two letters in its name rather than meaning anything). GM was planning on importing the Australian Holden Commodore Ute (already having imported the Monaro as the Pontiac GTO) as a Pontiac, but those plans were dropped after Pontiac's demise. Ford's attempt at competing with the El Camino was the Ranchero (Spanish for rancher), marketed from the fifties to seventies. Dodge had its own hybrid in the eighties known as the Rampage (after the Dodge Ram), also marketed as the Plymouth Scamp, although these were not as powerful and were smaller.