Long before infotainment screens and built-in phones were standard equipment, one enthusiast crammed a television, a telephone, and a working mini bar into a customized 1959 El Camino and called it the Ultimus. Built by hand for a fraction of what a factory concept would cost, its gold metalflake paint and double bubble top made it one of the strangest show cars of its era. Here’s the story behind the build.
Back in 1965 Chevrolet hoped to hit it big with the Ultimus. Unfortunately for them, the car just didn’t take off due to the weird design.
Lookslike one got out though . If you look at the multi color Ultima, it has a 1979 Michigan plate on it.
Lots of retro and cool stuff in this car of yesteryear!
Strange Retro Chevrolet!
src=”https://musclecarfan.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/25/the-chevrolet-ultimus-is-a-serious-blast-from-the-past-4-300×209.jpg” alt=”Future car 1965″ width=”300″ height=”209″ class=”size-medium wp-image-49909″ /> The Jetson’s would b jealous[/caption]
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A gold metalflake paint job. A built-in television. A telephone mounted on the center armrest. A fully stocked mini bar with a cocktail shaker built into the dash. None of that sounds like it belongs in a car from the JFK era — yet it’s all real, and it once wore Chevrolet badging. The story behind this rolling time capsule gets stranger the deeper you dig: what looks like a factory concept car was something else entirely, built by hand for a fraction of what Detroit would have spent, and somehow it survived long enough to resurface decades later wearing a 1979 Michigan plate.
Not a Factory Concept — A Backyard Build
Multiple sources tracing the car’s history point to it starting life as an ordinary 1959 Chevrolet El Camino before an enthusiast named Tom Holden transformed it into a one-off show car for roughly ,000 — real money in the early 1960s, but a fraction of what a genuine factory concept would have cost Chevrolet.
Features That Still Sound Futuristic
Whatever its origin, the features hold up. A double bubble top, hand-built bucket seats trimmed in gold and white Naugahyde, a dash-mounted television, a built-in tape recorder, a center-console telephone, and a functional mini bar complete with glass and cocktail shaker — details more at home in a spy film than a car show. Despite the ambition, the radical style never quite caught on with the wider public in period, which may be exactly why a surviving example, spotted wearing a 1979 Michigan plate, feels like such an unlikely find today.
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Hot, literally!
That’s different, but obviously not the car of the future, which at this point would appear to be a Government-mandated autonomous NSA surveillance pod…
Good one!
Looks like a ’59 El-Camino
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