30 wonderfully utilitarian classic cars

Everyday classic heroes

At the most conservative estimate, cars have been around for more than 130 years, and many of them have been magnificent in one way or another.

But those are the outliers. Historically, motorists have been in far more urgent need of cars which are cheap, reliable and practical.

Manufacturers have responded to this demand countless times by producing models which can be described – with no hint of criticism – as utilitarian, often with great success.

Here are a representative 30 examples, listed alphabetically, all of them dating from the 20th century.
 

1. Austin Seven

The Austin Seven had a similar effect in the UK as the Ford Model T did on the other side of the Atlantic.

It might have been slow and cramped, but it was a ‘real’ car, as opposed to the cyclecars which preceded it.

Its influence was wide-ranging. The first BMW was a Seven built under licence, and future Formula One team owners Bruce McLaren and Colin Chapman both modified the baby Austin early in their careers.

But these are side issues. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Seven provided simple transport at low cost, and that was good enough for many thousands of happy buyers.

2. Chevrolet Suburban

The Suburban nameplate is the longest-running in the motor industry, having been introduced in the mid 1930s.

The original model was known as the Carryall Suburban – and that was no idle boast.

Owners could indeed carry as much in it as could reasonably be expected. Up to eight seats were available, and there was room for an enormous amount of luggage.

Today’s version, based on the same platform used for the Silverado pick-up truck and the Cadillac Escalade, is the largest SUV Chevrolet builds.

Across several generations, the Suburban has appeared in more than 1750 films and television series. In recognition of this, it became the first vehicle to be given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in December 2019.

3. Citroën 2CV

Citroën combined simplicity and practicality to an almost unbelievable extent in the 2CV.

According to legend, part of the design brief was that the car should be able to transport a pile of eggs across a ploughed field without breaking any of them, and you can’t get much more utilitarian than that.

The 2CV was designed in the 1930s, but its launched was delayed by the Second World War and it didn’t go on sale until 1949.

By then it was already old-fashioned, but that didn’t matter. The car was ideally suited to the customers it was aimed at.

Latterly, it was also considered cute (and perhaps a statement that the owner didn’t really care about cars), which must have had something to do with the fact that production continued into the 1990s.

4. Citroën Méhari

Sometimes manufacturers transform an existing model into something even more utilitarian than it started out as, and we’ll be looking at three examples of that here.

The first is the Méhari, which is essentially a 2CV with all the bourgeois extravagance removed.

The mechanical parts were retained, but the body was made of plastic, there was no structural roof (though a non-structural one could be attached), and the four full-sized doors were replaced by two vestigial ones which were hardly worth opening.

Several thousand were sold to the French army, but the Méhari is better remembered as a beach car, ideal for puttering along Mediterranean coastal roads in the height of summer.

5. Citroën Berlingo Multispace

Although there are exceptions, it is part of the French national character to indulge in high-quality food, wine, art and so on, and to regard cars as functional objects.

This is demonstrated by, among many other vehicles, the Berlingo Multispace and the closely related Peugeot Partner Combi, which were both derived from the same van introduced in the 1990s.

The two brands did little more than add side windows and extra seats to the van, creating the simplest compact MPVs imaginable.

Both the Multispace and the Combi were very roomy and, in a typically French manner, about as unpretentious as any cars of their time could be.

6. Fiat 500

Fiat’s first 500, nicknamed Topolino (as the Italians call Mickey Mouse), was a tiny front-engined economy car which first appeared in the 1930s and survived well into the post-war era.

Its successor, the Nuova 500, was even smaller, and unlike the previous car its engine was mounted in the rear.

This change, which removed the need for a propshaft running along the centreline, allowed Fiat to offer more interior space, one of many practical features which made the 500 so popular both in Italy and further afield.

Coincidentally, the 500’s design was also one of the most charming of any mass-production car ever built. When Fiat created a new 500 in 2007, half a century after the launch of the Nuova, it had very similar styling despite being entirely different in every other respect, which largely explains why it was also a big success.

7. Fiat 600

The Nuova 500 was preceded by the slightly larger 600, which made its debut in 1955.

It was about the same length as the old Topolino, but taller and wider. Like the 500, its engine and transmission were at the back, in the interests of packaging.

The car had great appeal outside Italy. 600s were built in Spain as a Seat, in Germany as a Neckar, in former Yugoslavia as a Zastava and in various parts of South America with Fiat branding.

The extraordinary Multipla derivative could seat six people, though the two in front were so close to the action that a collision with anything more substantial than a loose pile of straw was best avoided.

8. Fiat Panda

“The Panda is like a pair of jeans: a simple, practical article of clothing without pretence.”

So said designer Giorgetto Giugiaro when describing the first-generation Fiat Panda in 1980 – and there was no reason to argue with him.

Far more than the two of the same name which followed it, this boxy little car was extraordinarily simple, even to the point where the rear seat was basically a hammock.

The Panda 4x4 wasn’t as much fun as the front-wheel-drive version on Tarmac, but it was magnificently capable off-road.

9. Ford Model T

Like many early utilitarian cars, the Ford Model T was intended to bring motoring to people who had not previously been able to afford it.

The T was cheap when it first went on sale, and became cheaper. Its engine was reliable because it was so lightly stressed (20bhp from 2.9 litres), and spare parts and accessories were widely available.

The car was also multi-purpose, capable of acting as road transport, a competition vehicle or even a tractor.

Around 15 million were built until 1927. That stood as a production record for the next 45 years – a tribute to how well the company had designed its car for what founder Henry Ford described as “the great multitude”.

10. Ford F-series

Introduced in the 1948 model year, the first F-series created a lineage which has remained very successful until the present day.

It was available with many body styles and with eight different chassis, from a half-ton pick-up to two heavy-duty examples both known as Big Job. 

Ford had not produced vehicles like this before, but it hit gold at its first attempt. The earliest F-series became almost the definitive example of the American truck, even though it had strong opposition from the contemporary Chevrolet Advanced Design and GMC New Design.

Today’s F-series is much flashier than its oldest ancestor, as current tastes demand. In 2022, despite a 10% decline, it was the best-selling vehicle in the US at 653,957 units, well ahead of the 513,354 achieved by the rival Chevrolet Silverado.

11. Lada Classic

The cars collectively known nowadays as Lada Classic were not designed by Lada, but were derived from the Fiat 124 and altered to suit Russian road conditions.

In western European terms, this arguably made them worse than the Fiat had been, though they sold well in the UK because they cost very little to buy.

This was helpful in Russia, too, but so was the car’s ability to be pounded along rough ground without falling to pieces.

Production began in 1970, reached one million units within four years and continued into the late 1980s.

12. Lada Niva

By western standards, the Niva was a very cheap, and correspondingly unrefined, 4x4. It seems astronomically unlikely that anyone would spend even a few seconds wondering whether to buy this or a Range Rover.

That’s fair enough, because these cars were aimed at very different markets.

The Niva was meant to – and did – appeal to Russians who needed to venture away from the Tarmac, and it soon found a sympathetic audience in other countries, too.

It may have had very few frills and no pretensions whatever, but it performed as well off-road as almost anyone could want it to, at very little cost.

13. Land-Rover

When the last of the original Defenders came off the production line in January 2016, it was, despite a high level of equipment, one of the most basic cars you could buy at the time.

Yet it was also practically a luxury model compared with the first-generation Land-Rover, which went on sale in 1948. As a road car, this was a fearful contraption, but it could go just about anywhere.

In 2008, its maker claimed that the Land Rover was being exported to nearly 70 countries within a year of going on sale.

To begin with, it was simply one of several vehicles produced by Rover – it did not become a standalone brand until 1978, by which time it had become one of Britain’s great motoring institutions.

14. Matra Rancho

The Rancho was based on the Simca 1100 supermini, which it slightly resembled if looked at face-on.

From there to the rear bumper, it was like nothing else on the road. The roofline of the glassfibre body rose sharply behind the front seats, creating an enormous amount of space for rear passengers and luggage.

Extra glass above the conventional rear side windows emphasised the considerable interior volume, at least as far as people sitting in the back were concerned.

Despite its appearance, the Rancho was no off-roader, being powered by a 1.4-litre engine which drove only the front wheels. If you wanted to carry a lot of stuff without buying a van or a very large estate, though, it more or less stood alone.

15. Mini

Several of what have become known as cult cars were intended by their makers to be thoroughly utilitarian. This certainly applies to the Citroën 2CV and the Volkswagen Beetle, and it applies to the Mini, too.

Forget, for a moment, that it was supremely successful in motorsport, and that it was once at least as popular among celebrities as the Toyota Prius and the Cadillac Escalade would later be.

Far more importantly, it was able to accommodate four adults despite being only 10 feet long. It was also cheap (too cheap, it’s said, for the British Motor Corporation to make a profit from it), economical and, perhaps most crucial of all, something you could be seen in without feeling embarrassed, as you might have been if you had bought a bubble car instead.

It was still on the market 41 years after its 1959 launch, until the BMW-era Mini replaced it. If that hadn’t happened, the original version might have survived for half a century.
 

16. Mini Moke

At least in its first decade, the Mini was offered in various body styles, including an estate, a pick-up and, in the case of the Riley Elf and Wolseley Hornet, a three-box saloon.

The most basic of the lot was the Mini Moke which, like the Citroën Méhari, had no roof and, unlike the Méhari, no doors.

It was originally intended for military use, but that idea didn’t get very far. Instead, the Moke became a popular recreational vehicle, built first in the UK, and later in Australia and Portugal.

Well into the 21st century, the Moke returned in a new form. Mechanically, it no longer has anything to do with the original model (it’s even available with an electric powertrain nowadays), but in spirit and appearance the old and the new are almost identical.
 

17. Morris Minor

Two of the Morris Minor’s key selling points were that it had plenty of interior room for its overall size and that it was easy to drive.

The formula worked splendidly. Introduced in 1948, the car – available initially as a saloon and later as an estate, a van and a pick-up – established a new UK production record of one million units in 1961.

It remained on the market for 10 years after that, surviving the introductions of the more modern Mini and Austin/Morris 1100.

The image most people have of the Minor dates back to 1952, when the headlights were moved outwards and upwards from the radiator grille to the front wings. An old sidevalve engine was replaced by the BMC A-series unit at the same time.

18. Peugeot 404

The Peugeot 404 bore a close resemblance to the many BMC Farina models of the 1960s, which was no coincidence because they were all designed by Pininfarina.

The Peugeot remained on sale for longer than the British cars, and had more international appeal. It was so tough that it did particularly well in Africa and South America, where it was built locally in several countries.

On four occasions, it even won the East African Safari Rally, notoriously one of the most difficult motorsport events in the world even to finish, never mind do well in.

The coupé and convertible variants were beautiful, but not particularly utilitarian. The 404’s presence on this list is based on the existence of the saloon, the estate and the pick-up, the last of these still being built in Kenya as late as 1991.

19. Renault 4

As Citroën pointed out rather grumpily, the 4 was very similar in concept to the 2CV, but it was introduced far later (in 1961), and its water-cooled four-cylinder engine was larger and more refined than the Citroën’s tiny air-cooled twin.

Brought to market at a time of financial crisis for Renault, the 4 essentially saved the company.

Buyers responded so positively to this inexpensive and utterly practical car that production hit one million units in just four and a half years.

Like the 2CV, the 4 eventually became outdated. Also like the 2CV, it had such a loyal following that Renault was able to continue building it into the 1990s.

20. Renault 5

The continued success of the Renault 4 a decade after its launch did not alter the fact that something more modern was required.

The something in question was the 5, Renault’s first supermini and its first small hatchback with unibody construction rather than, as with the 4, a body bolted on to a separate chassis.

The 5 was inexpensive, economical, practical and, almost as importantly, chic, and it was backed up by a very effective advertising campaign. The only non-utilitarian version was the 5 Turbo, which was mid-engined and existed as a road car only so that Renault could use it in international rallying.

A new 5 came along in 1984. This was an almost completely different car, but Renault capitalised on its predecessor’s success by making it look very similar.

21. Renault Rodeo

The Rodeo was very much like – and almost certainly a response to – Citroën’s Méhari, and occupied the same space in the motor industry as both that car and the Mini Moke.

It was designed and built on Renault’s behalf by a company called ACL, whose name was later changed to Teilhol, but under the plastic body the chassis and running gear were initially taken from the Renault 4.

The situation changed slightly in 1972, two years after launch, when the Rodeo became available with a larger engine.

This unit had already been around for a decade, and would eventually become standard in the 4, too.

22. Suzuki Jimny

Suzuki has been selling small, basic off-roaders with the Jimny name for more than half a century.

It all started with the LJ10 of 1970. This was not an original Suzuki design, but an adaptation of the HopeStar ON360 which had arrived two years earlier.

Suzuki replaced the 360cc engine with one of its own and created a new body, making the vehicle short enough to qualify for the Japanese kei class.

This made it cheaper to tax than the HopeStar had been, which is probably why it was far more successful.
 

23. Toyota Land Cruiser

Today’s Land Cruiser is a mighty, and rather expensive, machine whose body-on-chassis construction, no longer common in SUVs, hints at why the nameplate has been so successful over the years.

The first version started out as a vehicle supplied in small numbers to Japanese authorities before going into full-scale production in 1953. Known at that time as the Toyota Jeep BJ, it was renamed Land Cruiser in 1954.

Later models became more appealing to the general public due to their less aggressive styling, but they never lost their utilitarian purpose of providing transport over difficult ground.

To take one unfortunate example, the final stage of a long-running conflict between Chad and Libya is known as the Toyota War because the winning Chadians relied so heavily on Land Cruisers.

24. Toyota HiAce

The HiAce can be thought of as the Japanese equivalent of the Chevrolet Suburban and the Volkswagen Transporter.

It was offered in various body styles as both a private and a commercial vehicle. In the former case, its appeal centred on the fact that it could carry up to eight people.

This was largely because the engine was placed conveniently beneath the front seats, where it didn’t intrude on the considerable passenger space.

In contrast to many small utilitarian cars produced in Europe, there was a propshaft running from the engine to the rear axle, but the HiAce was so tall that this wasn’t a problem.

25. Trabant

By almost any standard, the Trabants produced over three generations from 1957 to 1990 were awful machines.

On the plus side, they were just about cheap enough to be within the means of buyers who might otherwise have been unable to buy a car at all, which in the case of Communist-controlled East Germany meant almost everyone.

Furthermore, since their two-stroke engines had very few components, there wasn’t much that could go wrong.

A final model, still dreadful in most respects but fitted with a far more modern 1.1-litre Volkswagen engine, was produced briefly until the reunification of Germany, which gave buyers access to far better cars, making the Trabant unnecessary.

26. Trojan Utility Car

As its name suggested, the Trojan took the idea of utilitarian transport just about as far as it could go.

Despite appearances to the contrary, there was almost nothing under the high bonnet. The 1.5-litre engine was mounted beneath the seats, and such power as it had was transferred to the rear axle by chain. All the wheels were fitted with solid rubber tyres in the early days, pneumatic ones becoming available only later.

The engine produced only 11bhp, so high performance was out of the question, but it was also just about indestructible, so repair costs were minimal.

In fact, there was no need for owners to spend much money at all. In an advertising campaign whose like has not been seen since, Trojan claimed that walking 200 miles would be more expensive, due to the necessity of buying replacement shoes, than covering the same distance in one of its cars.

27. Vauxhall 10-4

The worldwide recession of the early 1930s had many effects, including a sudden demand in the UK for small, inexpensive cars.

Vauxhall didn’t sell anything like this at the time, and realised that it now had to. Rather than lash something together, it created the 10-4, also known as the H-type, which was described in the press as “one of the most brilliant pieces of design that has been seen in Britain for 10 years”.

This little masterpiece featured unibody construction (not unheard of at the time, but very rare) along with synchromesh on two of its three forward gears, torsion-bar independent front suspension and hydraulic brakes. It was cheap to buy and, being capable of more than 40mpg even when driven hard, cheap to run, too.

The 10-4 had a shorter life than it deserved. Introduced in 1937, it went out of production early in the Second World War and returned for only two more years once peace had returned.

But for that, it might be better remembered now as one of the UK’s finest utilitarian cars.

28. Volkswagen Beetle

Properly known as the Type 1, the Porsche-designed ‘people’s car’ was the result of a project devised not by a manufacturer but by the German government of the 1930s.

The aim, with which you’ll by now be familiar, was to provide cheap, reliable and economical transport. This was also another example of a car whose interior space was maximised by placing the engine at the extreme rear.

The Second World War brought the whole scheme to a crashing halt, but the Beetle – like Volkswagen itself – was later resurrected by the British Army.

Long after its practicality had been overtaken by that of more modern cars, the Beetle was still seen as a useful and (despite its origins) friendly car, and to some extent a fashion statement. Boosted by continuing demand, production finally overtook that of the Ford Model T in 1972.

29. Volkswagen Transporter

Transporter is the best-known of several names applied to the Volkswagen Type 2, which was related to the Beetle but much larger.

It was available in many forms, including a pick-up truck and a campervan.

Introduced in 1950, it was hugely practical and sold very well, latterly becoming a major part of hippie culture.

There were many updates, but the Type 2’s rear-engined layout and general character were largely preserved until a very different front-engined version came along in 1990.
 

30. Willys Jeep

The original Jeeps were supplied to the US Army by Ford, Willys and American Bantam during the Second World War.

Of the three manufacturers, only Willys continued to produce these vehicles in peacetime for civilian customers.

Not exactly intended for highway use, they were extremely basic, but so highly renowned for their off-road ability that they became an American institution.

The spirit of the earliest Jeeps lives on in the current Wrangler. The Willys company is long gone, but its name is used for the least expensive version in the range.