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"Could you please make a car that we can go to church in on Sunday and take the pigs to market on Monday," wrote a Gippsland farmer's wife in 1933 to Ford Managing Director Hubert French. Bank managers at the time wouldn't lend money to farmers to buy a passenger car, only a farm truck, hence the plea from one very fed up woman!
French handed the letter to a young man in the Design Department, Lewis Bandt. Lew came up with a design that incorporated the front half of a sedan with the rear half of a light truck and the Coupe Utility was born. His design was approved and production started in 1934.
In 1935 Henry Ford I invited Lew to Detroit to design a utility for the US market, especially for the State of Texas.
Manufacturers around the world eventually copied Lew Bandt's design but Ford Australia was the first to build and market the Coupe Utility and has produced an unbroken line of coupe utes ever since.
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