We love a Ute at PH, what's not to like about them? Fast, practical, cool, and unobtainable in the UK - which only adds to the appeal. Unobtainable that is, unless you care to import one yourself or, rather, unless someone has done the hard work for you already.
While we may think of Utes solely as the saloon-based performance pickups which we know and love, in many parts of Australia a Ute can be any kind of bedded truck. It's thanks to this that Ford can lay claim to inventing the genre in 1932. That vehicle is said to have been devised in response to a letter from a farmer's wife in Victoria, famously asking for "a vehicle to go to church in on a Sunday and which can carry our pigs to market on Mondays."
It took Holden until 1951 to catch up when it created its first "utility" model, based on the 48-215 sedan. In recent years Ford has of course been responsible for many a performance pickup, but it has been Holden which owned the low-slung, tray-backed Ute market, not least thanks to the Maloo.
Maloo means thunder in one of the hundreds of Aboriginal languages spoken by Australia's original inhabitants. It's an appropriate name, given that the car in question is a Z Series. Produced between 2004 and 2007 it was just the second vehicle in the world to make use of the Corvette's 6.0-litre V8 LS2. In the Holden it produced 400hp, enough, in 2006, to set a new Guiness World Record for fastest production pickup, with a top speed of 168.7mph.
This example ought to be rather faster than that, though, boasting as it does a Wortec supercharger, intercooler and ECU upgrades for a new output of 620hp. As well as the standard traction control (new to the Maloo for this generation), LSD, and multi-link rear suspension, that power is kept in check thanks to the installation of an LS7 clutch and an upgrade to Wortec race brakes all around.
You may not have noticed from the picture - it's pretty subtle - but today's Spotted also sports a very fetching snake graphic down its flank. The serpent is contorting itself to form the word Maloo, as they are known to do in the wild. You may be thinking of removing it after purchase, but such a move is ill advised; decals like this known to ad at least twenty horsepower. With or without it, though, at £17,500 it'll likely be hard to find a more amusing way to put down so much power for such little outlay.
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