(first posted 2/8/2016) One of Australia’s oldest and most popular car magazines, Wheels, recently published an article with renderings and photographs of clay mock-ups of several Zeta-based Holden Commodore derivatives that were in development. One was a crossover SUV, the Nullarbor, which would have likely been a huge success; the other two were a more rakish ute and a planned production version of the Coupe 60 concept, pictured above, which would have replaced the Monaro (aka Pontiac GTO). The article is definitely worth a read, but the Nullarbor and its kin were not the only cars to be mooted for production before being shelved.
Incidentally, it’s worth noting that Nullarbor would be a peculiar name for a crossover SUV, even if it wasn’t to be a hardcore off-roader. Why? Well, this is the Nullarbor Plain, the cancelled crossover’s namesake. It is a flat expanse of nothingness. Naming a crossover after this would be like Jeep launching an SUV called the Kansas.
Speaking of the Holden Commodore, the Pontiac G8 sedan was to be joined in North America by rebadged versions of the Commodore wagon and ute. The wagon plan was dropped fairly quickly, given the unpopularity of station wagons. However, the ute – which would have been GM’s first car-based pickup since the death of the Chevrolet El Camino and GMC Caballero in 1987 – was an idea that had traction. Scheduled to be launched in 2009 as a 2010 model, the G8 ute would have come with only the 361 hp, 385 ft-lb 6.0 V8 mated to a six-speed automatic transmission.
GM was serious about bringing the ute over, even as the dollar weakened and GM’s financial situation spiralled downwards. In 2008, a competition was launched on the Pontiac website to name the G8 ute that had been given the placeholder title of “ST”, or Sport Truck. The winner of the competition? ST, or Sport Truck.
Although it had been twenty years since the El Camino and the niche’s commercial viability was unknown, GM evidently thought there was a sufficient business case to be made. The G8 ST would have been aimed at young, active types who wanted something with acceptable load-carrying capacity but also a truck that was fun to drive. The payload was around 1300 pounds with a towing capacity of 2000 pounds; the bed was 73.9 inches long. As Holden has seen in Australia, the Commodore Ute had become increasingly popular in performance trims; in essence, it was much like a two-door coupe but with a lot more practicality. Unfortunately, GM’s financial problems killed the launch plans and the Pontiac division altogether. GM would eventually relaunch the Commodore, in heavily revised VF form, as the Chevrolet SS but any hopes of an El Camino revival were dashed.
The idea of a Pontiac “El Camino” had been floated before. Here is a picture of a Grand Am/El Camino hybrid developed by General Motors…
…and a similar idea from 20 years prior, the 1959 “El Catalina” prototype. Bunkie Knudsen rejected the proposal after seeing slow sales of the Ford Ranchero and Chevrolet El Camino, but a working prototype was manufactured and changed hands a few times, before eventually being restored. Hemmings Classic Car published a feature on the El Catalina.
This photograph is of a planned coupe version of the Eagle Premier, known as the Eagle Allure. A wagon was also planned, as was a five-speed manual transmission for the AMC 2.5 four-cylinder engine. But the coupe actually reached the clay mock-up stage as this photograph shows. Although fairly far along in development and planned for a 1989 launch, the Allure was cancelled when Chrysler purchased American Motors Corporation in 1987. This was a shame as it would have given Eagle another unique product – although the Premier proved to be a slow seller – and thus fleshed out the lineup somewhat. Instead, the Eagle exercise was mostly bungled and a missed opportunity.
Much like Chrysler didn’t know what to do with Eagle, Ford didn’t seem to have a clue what to do with Mercury. And if you need proof of this assertion, I submit as proof the Mercury Magellan and the proposed reintroduction of the Mercury Tracer. The Magellan was presaged by the Meta One concept. Effectively, Mercury’s first full-size crossover was to be a lightly restyled version of the Ford Freestyle. Although this seems like unnecessary duplication, the Meta One concept at least featured unique front and rear styling, which was more than could be said for many contemporary Mercury models that differed from their respective Fords only in taillight lenses and grilles. Ford announced there would be no Mercury version of the Freestyle, before changing their minds, and then finally changing their minds again and deciding the Freestyle would remain a Ford exclusive.
The Magellan would have been a compelling offering had it featured the Meta One’s powertrain, but that would have been highly implausible as the Meta One concept was powered by a twin-turbocharged V6 diesel engine with an electric motor. Ultimately, Mercury received no crossover beyond the compact Mariner despite the format soaring in popularity.
After the Magellan was scrapped, Ford contemplated turning Mercury into a marque specializing in premium compact offerings. The first step in this process was axing the slow-selling Sable (née Montego). The second step was to dust off the Tracer nameplate for a restyled version of the 2011 Ford Focus. Ford executives confirmed these plans in early 2010. Just a few months later, the shuttering of the brand was announced for 2011. Those holding out hope for a distinctly differentiated Tracer would likely have been disappointed; unlike the later, similarly-themed Buick Verano, which was completely different inside and out from its Chevrolet Cruze platform-mate, the Tracer would probably have shared most sheetmetal with the Focus.
There are many more stillborn vehicles from throughout automotive history whose stories will be told, as well as some cancelled projects for which little or no information exists, like this Oldsmobile-badged Corvair. Until next time.
Related Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1982 Chevrolet El Camino
Junkyard Classic: 1989 Eagle Premier
Curbside Classic: 1959 Chevrolet El Camino
Obscure Rebadges From Around The World: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
What a fantastic read William. The VE was the best looking thing out of oz since the HQ and that coupe was a missed opportunity. The real shame of the VE is that it demonstrated such a leap in sophistication, but was released when the headwinds for this large RWD sedan category would prove too strong. I love the coupe ute in the link; given the Commodore/Falcon-based ute is nowadays essentially a sports coupe with a tray for many purchasers, that ‘VA Utility’ was spot-on to meet this market. Looking forward to more instalments.
Don, you need to see a VE side to side (and on a lift) with a VT-VZ to truly appreciate the leap made. And a sophisticated car it is. It’s traditional competitor has also pulled impressive feats, even more considering its constrains.
VF brought more improvements, many of them skin deep.
But those are stories better told around a cappuccino. Not on the interwebZ.
If you have a chance or access, go drive a LSA GTS or one of the LSA Clubsports. Try not to lose your license in the process…
Athos, I never liked the VF styling upgrades and was also mindful that Ford was putting together a very able competitor. But too much advancement too late (i.e. ESC etc). The market simply shifted away at the very point these cars were truly at international benchmarks. Perhaps the same could be said for the VT-VZ, but gee the VE looked so frigging good even to this non-partisan bystander.
If we have another meetup at Motorclassica, then that coffee might turn into a lunch.
I have to get organised before. Always remember about MC the day of the event. And then it’s too late.
We’ll try and give as much notice as possible this year and see if we can get some numbers. Last year we got a few but it was still ad-hoc.
Biggest mistake GM ever made, killing Pontiac instead of Buick. If the general brought the Holden ute to our shores with that V8, they would’ve sold a ton of them. Thats the problem…. GM killed off most of their cool cars (Pontiac G5, G6, G8, Vibe, and the entire Saab line) in favor of the Lacrosse and the Rendezvous? They deserved to go bankrupt with those kinds of leadership decisions.
+1 RIP Pontiac.
Nope, disagree with that sentiment completely. Pontiac had turned into nothing more than the “if Chevrolet has it, we have to have it, too” division over a decade earlier. And they were there so the Pontiac-Buick-GMC dealer could try to steal sales from the local Chevrolet dealer, insuring that nobody made much of a profit. The killing of Pontiac was just as bad, if not worse, than the killing of Oldsmobile.
Buick had a couple of things going for it: 1. China sales. The Chinese weren’t going to buy a car that was a China-only product. The country has too many of those kind of manufacturers already. 2. Buick never attempted to impinge on Chevrolet. Before becoming the senior citizens car, it was always the “Cadillac for those who are into subtlety” car. And still had some of that aura left, which is why the seniors were all over it. So you had a brand differentiation in Chevrolet-Buick-Cadillac that Chevrolet-Pontiac-Cadillac could have never done.
Sorry Pontiac fans. Dealer demands for sales right now ensured that Pontiac would be both redundant and insignificant in the long run.
I agree about the sales poaching. There used to be Chevy Caprice commercials in the early 1980’s that extolled the virtues and how it was priced cheaper then the Oldsmobile Delta 88 and had as many options. So Instead of the Caprice poaching sales/competing with the Ford LTD Crown Victoria, they were instead competing with another GM Division.
It may have been a East Coast Chevy Dealership chain doing this(as the ads did look a bit on the amateur side) but it shows that GM Divisions regarded the other GM divisions as competitors.
If the Ute was to be a viable car in the US (and I don’t think it would have been – I suspect it would have sold well in its first year to everyone who wanted them, and then it’d stagnate), then why would it have to be a Pontiac? The El Camino was a Chevy, not a Pontiac. The Ute could have been sold as a Chevy.
Pontiac hadn’t been a “cool” brand in decades, and as much as I wish otherwise, Americans aren’t really that interested in rear-wheel drive non-luxury sedans. Pontiac was just a sort-of-Chevy.
I think the fact it didn’t appear after the GFC (when Bob Lutz was out of the picture?) was evidence that any business case was marginal
AND they kept GMC. Which is the most pointless of all, being a total retread of Chevy’s truck division. Why not fold that linup into the Bowtie, OR better yet just scrap Chevy trucks and let them focus on cars. Then combine Hummer with GMC and let them do the truck thing. Pontiac could have been whittled down to a few unique products like the Holden cars and the Solstice. MAYBE the G6 to drive volume since it was still selling.
The reason for keeping GMC? Unlike the other divisions, its always been profitable. It makes money for damn little development costs. Period. If Oldsmobile and Pontiac had made money like GMC, they’d still be around, too.
As a young kid (say 10 or 11) I asked dad about GMC’s. His answer was, essentially (back then) that the market was regional. In some areas Chevrolet trucks sold well and you couldn’t give away a GMC. In other areas the reverse was true. Why? Human nature.
And these is no guarantee, should GM dump GMC, that all their owners would go over to Chevrolet. Most likely, the majority would go to Ford, Ram or Toyota just out for spite for GM killing “their” truck.
Between the Denali line and the CUVs, GMC makes more money now than it ever did as a Chevy-with-a-different-grille. GM saw what was coming for GMC and wisely kept it around…or they flipped a coin and keeping GMC ended up being the right choice anyway. Either way, it’s good (for them) that GMC is still around. Gotta have some trucks for Buick to sell.
Nice looking concepts, just a shame theyre goin nowhere instead of being able to export Pontiacs and Chevys to the US Holden is going to import rebadged Vauxhalls to OZ & NZ, some of the lineup was photographed doing cold weather testing recently in the south island of NZ 4wd Astras are coming so they say but the Aussie motoring press insisting they are brilliant new Australian designs fooled nobody as usual.
Indeed a shame. One of the best Vauxhalls of recent years was the Monaro coupe – i.e. one that came from Australia, a rebadged Holden rather than the other way round.
link?
http://www.autotrader.co.uk/used-cars/vauxhall/monaro/used-vauxhall-monaro-6-0-i-v8-vxr-2dr-virginia-water-fpa-201602060777556?logcode=p
More HSV Coupe than Monaro (actually, HSV Coupe), but you get the idea.
sorry – that was to bryce. I wanted him to show where the Oz press were claiming these were australian designed cars.
Well, I can say with some property that the ute with those facias and bonnet certainly look great in person. And that appreciation doesn’t come from watching cars on the street…
A variation of that side vent and the bonnet vents (on the coupe) made it into VF and VF2. It looks terrific in those VE clays. And too bad they toned down the side surfacing.
The diesel story wheels posted correlates with what I know. I thought the SUV was a fairy tale, and even in that BS photoshop image it looks terrific.
The Mercury has a lot of the Territory theme, specially on the side. Reminds me a lot of the R7 concept.
+1 first glance of that handsome Mercury and I saw the Territory.
The SUV looks like they put a Holden front end on an Audi, it would be interesting to see what the real design looked like.
I wonder if the coupe utility was proposed in addition to, or instead of, the normal ute that was produced? Surely not the former!
That is the production ute but in HSV trim
It’s not a production HSV; the roofline is lower, and it has the still-born coupe’s door so the the rear edge of the door glass slopes forward. The front end is close to the production SS.
That really does look very Audi-esque, doesn’t it?
I think that clay (coupe utility) is for the ute that made into production. Frameless windows or a different window frame would have made it prohibitively expensive, without a coupe. Hence the use of the sedan’s door as it has been the case.
The SUV looks like a half 4$$3d photoshop job, probably because Holden wouldn’t allow them to show the real thing.
Only in the car business would a company toss out a possible product because “the powers that be” think a segment is dying, but consider a product for a segment that is for all intents and purposes “dead”.
Although to be honest, an El Camino type vehicle might be of more interest than another station wagon.
BTW, that picture of the Nullarbor looks like a piece of candy resting on a bigger piece of candy.
Sometimes the business case doesn’t stack up. Or it falls over before the car reaches certain stages in the program.
It happens everywhere, not just the auto industry.
Its not the ‘car business’ who called the shots. They took government money. No matter which political side you take concerning that (trying to avoid that here), the reality is when you ask someone to pay the frieght, they get to call the shots. Problem with that is, its a bunch of politicians and beauracrats who usually have the combined real world business savvy of a fully ripened bean and thats who was pulling the strings.
Well, the businessmen with all the real world business savvy should have simply pulled themselves up by their magical bootstraps and foregone a government bailout in the first place.
Thank you!
The Nullarbor’s not all like that. We went for a train trip across it a few years back. The rail line’s more inland, and it was fascinating to see the variety of scenery and vegetation. But yes, it’s very flat. And just about deserted.
Ive driven across it very undulating road a lot of the way flat it isnt treeless? certainly but not flat.
The Eagle Premier Alure has the misfortune of bearing a striking resemblance to a Hyundai Scoupe, although on a much larger scale. A wagon would have been a lot more appealing. A boxy wagon in the Volvo/Peugeot school, but with sturdy American mechanicals. Since the Premier already had the AMC 2.5, a 4.0 in a wagon would be an obvious upgrade and a cheaper unit than the French V6.
Problem is, Chrysler was obligated to use the PRV V6 and that was why they introduced the 1990 Dodge Monaco.
Agreed, though: a Premier wagon would have been nice and the 4.0 V6 would have been a good fit. I think the Premier/Monaco were very underrated cars and I still think they look very handsome.
Strange then they did a Dodge version and not a Plymouth version of the Eagle Premier and with some tweaks here and there, the Allure coupe could had been an updated and modernized Cordoba without the Corintian Leather.
Another missed opportunity is the 1962 DeSoto.
I was unaware there was a four-cylinder Premier.
By 1988 the PRV V6 really should’ve long since been put out of its’ misery. Was there ever a more misbegotten engine or one with a higher percentage of cars that used it having been Lucy-and-Ethel style attempts to stuff them anywhere at all just to use up excess production capacity? Deadly Sin, anyone?
Had the Allure seen full production, it probably would’ve been criticized for resemblance to a Ford Probe, which it would’ve been a class up from.
There was a four-cylinder Eagle Premier. I rented one in the Philadelphia area, from a small rental car office located in a slum (Chester, PA) near the airport.
It sucked. The V6 was decent, even if the car was quirky in design. But with the Four, quirky, noisy and S-L-O-W were too much.
Turned out the car rental company was owned by a Jeep-Eagle dealership.
How bad an armpit was Chester, PA? I met its Chief of Police on a train to Burlington, VT. He was going there for an interview for a position as a patrol officer. I, too, would sooner be in Vermont than in Chester.
The circa 1988 PRV was a completely different animal than the earlier versions. It was heavily re-engineered in ’84 and switched to even-fire, and the oiling problems were solved around that time also. By ’87 or so it was a very solid and smooth engine, if not exactly a powerhouse. But the tainted reputation, built upon the legitimately bad originals, was too much to overcome. The 3.0 variant used in the Premier/Monaco was actually the largest-capacity version to see production also (though not the most powerful, there were several turbo variants in Europe).
The Allure looks like a mix of Ford Probe and Renault 21, and yet I kind of like it.
The Allure would have bombed as badly as the Premier.
Minor nitpick about the Allure. If it was scrapped because of the Chrysler takeover of AMC, that would indicate that Eagle would never have even considered it much less made a mock up with Eagle badging. Prior to the takeover, the Premier was supposed to be sold as a Renault and was all set to launch that way until Chrysler bought AMC (I can remember initial driving impressions in various car magazines at the time were of the Renault Premier). The Eagle division came from Chrysler’s creation after the takeover in order to sell the legacy AMC/Renault cars and captive imports. The Allure’s photo looks like it has a Renault diamond badge on the grille rather than the Eagle ‘shield’
Chrysler actually considered offering the Allure as an Eagle, and in the 1988 Jeep Eagle dealer intro cassettes, showed the Allure as an upcoming product along with the Premier and Medallion.
Chrysler probably decided against building it for a couple of reasons: 1) Midsize coupe sales were starting to swirl the drain at this point. 2) The Allure shared architecture with the Premier, but no exterior sheetmetal, so it would have been expensive to build for a product in a shrinking market segment. 3) They probably figured the Eclipse-based Talon, which Chrysler themselves had a major hand in designing, would be cheap enough to make and sell well enough that the Allure either wasn’t necessary, or they’d steal sales from each other.
I think that a Ute type vehicle might indeed be a good seller in the USA. With the death of the compact pickup truck there are a lot of folks that still want a small truck for errands, Home Depot runs etc and a large F150 type truck is not acceptable. A ute like vehicle that is ether an extended cab like or has 4 doors( like the Subaru Baja but only with a longer bed and perhaps a bit more wider) should sell well. You have truck like capability to bring home some mulch or soil and enough room to put a couple of bikes into the bed without dissembling them to do so and you also have a car like ride with lots of interior room.
Heck GM does not even have to look far. They sell a Ute in Mexico called the Chevy Tornado, simply get permission from the US Govt to bring a bunch in and do a promotion(like Ford did with the Fiesta) and let folks drive them for weeks and gauge interest. If you can get one of these things for less then $25,000 for a base model, then it might be a hit.
What a prediction, Leon. It’s as though Ford was reading your comment in 2016 and came up with the Maverick.
All I need a truck for is to have something that will haul a piece of furniture or an appliance home and tow a lightweight trailer to a campsite. I don’t need a hard to park something that carries 5,000 pounds or tows a loaded 4 horse trailer. A 2022 el Camino would be right in my ballpark. Heck, make it out of the Malibu just like they did in the 60s! FWD with on call AWD would rock!
The only thing close to that on the market would be the new Ranger as far as I can tell from the advertising, or maybe the Colorado.
I’d love find out something about that Oldsmobile Corvair. I knew a fair bit about the Pontiac version, which DeLorean fought against. I have a feeling this was nothing more than a quick, cheap, “what if?” bit of brainstorming of something that GM would have considered doing had the Corvair pulled in 1960 sales figures like the Falcon.
As it didn’t, so much for the quick, cheap route. Try again with an original (ok, semi-original) design.
I’ve read elsewhere that it was to be called the “Sixty-Six”, and that’s certainly what the badging on the example in the pic appears to read.
There was a Buick version of the Corvair proposed too. I recall photos of clays for the Pontiac Polaris and the Olds and Buick Corvair variants were published in Collectible Automobile several years ago. Only the Pontiac had much styling distinction from the Corvair, and it seemed to be under stronger consideration than the Olds and Buick variants.
The ute was built, and sold in the UK as the Vauxhall VXR8 Maloo.
Certainly, a great looking vehicle, capable of giving an M5 a fright, and the driver a fright at the pump
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=1125664
I remembered that this one was for sale here, a few years ago:
And here’s the special part: it’s LHD.
Link to a Carscoops-article:
http://www.carscoops.com/2013/12/possibly-world-only-left-hand-drive.html
Mercury’s business case was stronger when they were “Junior Lincolns” rather than “Tarted-Up Fords”. However Lincoln is now a tarted up Ford with no unique platforms.
Now GM is dumping money into Cadillac but likely getting a lower return in investment than Ford is for Lincoln.
And don`t forget the Pontiac Polaris-the Wide Track divisions badge engineered version of the Corvair. I understood that a few were built until GM pulled the plug at the last minute.
It has been speculated that the Pontiac Polaris may have resurfaced, much changed, as the 1961 Tempest, either because Pontiac figured out something to do with the Corvair transaxle, or because Pontiac had committed to buying a quota of them in Corvair clones before axing tne Polaris and going upmarket with Buick and Olds.
The Polaris got farther along in development and had some unique front sheetmetal and rectangular taillights in back. I don’t think there was anything like even a pre-production run. The usual story is that DeLorean nixed it.
Jeep Kansas concept car…..
MAJOR bummer bout the ute not happening here. I really wanted Dodge to do a Magnum ute, but if the G8/PonchoCamino would have happened, Id have definitely been tempted to cheat on Ma Mopar. Im the poster child of the kind of guy who would buy something like this. I want a muscle car in the worst way, but also like and need the utility of a pickup. I just dont need a full on dedicated truck on a day to day basis, so something like this would satisfy that. On the complete opposite of the spectrum, Im also a Jeep fanatic. I like the capability, durability and also like running top/doors off. So that Wrangler pickup thats FINALLY supposed to happen, just might grab my eye…
Calling the G8 ute “ST” seems an odd choice to me — I most strongly associate that acronym with the Toyota Celica. (It was the base trim for U.S. models through most of the Celica’s life, although it was mid-level trim in Japan.) The old joke was that it stood for “Secretarial Transport,” since the Celica ST sold strongly to single professional women who wanted a sporty-looking commuter car.
I was gonna say that naming a car “No Trees” was pretty strange. Then I saw that was obviously how the Nullarbor Plain got ITS name. Still, that place makes a billiard table look topographically interesting. OK, Tundra works as a truck name, and it denotes a region where there are trees, I get that, but in all the great land of Australia there must be SOME other more interesting place whose name hasn’t been attached to a vehicle.
Reading about those Holden designs, all I could think of was “a ute and coupe that share a long frameless door with different glass? How very 1972 Ford Falcon of them” 😉
From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Falcon_%28XA%29 )
> The Hardtop’s longer doors with frameless windows were shared with the Utility and Van, with a different shape glass to suit the commercial vehicles’ body apertures
I thought I would add to this, Holden were also working on a replacement Crewman. I saw a different reference to it the other day, but it was going to be a unibody arrangement rather than the bolt-on rear chassis used on VY-VZ.
https://www.goauto.com.au/future-models/holden/crewman/ve/detroit-show-americans-say-039-come-in-crewman-039/2008-01-21/11346.html
“… the Meta One concept. Effectively, Mercury’s first full-size crossover…”
The Ford Freestyle/Explorer was/is not “full sized” as the Expedition/Navigator models.
“… restyled version of the 2011 Ford Focus. ”
The Tracer was to be based on the 2012 Focus, not 2011. Mercury was fading fast, and all the “Jill Wagner commercials” didn’t matter.
“(Allure) would have given Eagle another unique product…”
A 2 door Eagle Premier would have sold as well as the Fuego, poorly. If they could hardly sell the 4 door, coupe would’ve been DOA. DSM based Talon was more in line with coupe market, then.
“The Ford Freestyle/Explorer was/is not “full sized” as the Expedition/Navigator models.”
True, but it was a 3-row CUV built on the same platform as the “full-size” Taurus and Flex.
In 1970 AMC had a ute version of the Hornet ready for production, but the sedans and wagons were a hit, so another variation wasn’t needed. They should have brought it back for Eagle.
There was a mockup of a Buick version of the Corvair too, which was shown in Collectable Automobile along with the Olds version and the Pontiac Polaris. Only the Pontiac had much visual differentiation from the others.
A true 1957 Packard made it to the running prototype stage, but they couldn’t get funding to produce it. It would have shared its understructure with a new Studebaker and an in-between marque called Clipper.
There was a sub-compact Studebaker in development in the early 60s that was killed after sinking $4 million into it (more than the whole Avanti program cost). Some body parts were already ready to produce.
An International Scout III was in development, but never made it to production because IH exited the light truck market after 1980. Big car sales were down, RV sales had collapsed, and the future for pickup trucks and SUVs looked bleak. Whoops.
There was the Amati 1000, a V12 (not W12!) RWD luxury sedan that would have topped Mazda’s proposed luxury brand in the early ’90s before it was axed due to the financial meltdown in Japan. Some of the smaller Amatis did make production, but were sold under the existing Eunos, Xedos, or just Mazda brands depending on national market.
A more recent almost-was that fell victim to the pandemic was a Lincoln version of the upcoming Rivian R1S. Too bad, that was promising.
Then there were cars that were to be sold in the U.S. but were pulled at the last minute. The Ford Cardinal, a FWD German-sourced model that was smaller than the Falcon that would have been ready for 1962. Lee Iacocca was convinced it was too small for Americans at the time.
Rover had at least two of these – the 800 coupe was designed to appeal to Americans, and benefitted from a facelift given to all Rover 800 series models in 1992. Unfortunately, it never made it to the country it was designed for, due to dwindling sales of the Sterling sedans and hatchbacks. Rover was planning to drop the “Sterling” marque name in favor of “Rover” for 1992, and had already been advertising the ’91s as “Sterling by Rover”. (As it turned out, big coupe sales tanked in the ’90s so I doubt the 827 coupe would have been popular). Then in 1999, the Rover 75 was designed to meet federal safety and pollution standards, but financial issues plaguing Rover nixed their return to the U.S. (along with a possible MG sports car). We did get the new Mini.
And Ford was planning to bring over the Focus Active wagon, the one given the AMC Eagle/Subaru Outback treatment, but it would have been built in China and thus subject to the increased taxes the Trump administration put into place at the time. There’s still talk we’ll get the next generation of the larger Mondeo/Fusion Active wagon.
The Cardinal was a Dearborn design meant to be produced in the US but when it was cancelled here, it was foisted off on the Germans, who marketed it as the Taunus 12M. They didn’t like it much.
There’s a CC article on it: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/cc-global-ford-taunus-lost-in-translation-nein/
Recently on a photo posted to Flickr that seems to have disappeared – a design proposal for a reskin of the early ’70s Lincoln Continental sedan for the mid t- late ’70s dated the week before the first gas crisis hit – another commenter spoke of a “Lost Fleet” of full-size cars in the planning stages at that point.
Fords, mostly, since GM had by all reports already decided to downsize from the ’71-76 B/Cs while Chrysler had just launched a new generation of their C-bodies and were putting their design and engineering resources to what would become the Aspen/Volare.