Why I Think We Should Turn Our Moldy Buick Park Avenue Into An El Camino

If you actually waste any time reading posts authored by “The Bishop,” you will be familiar with the rather inane “what if” automotive scenarios that I propose. From third generation Corvairs (which some people seem to think are real) to Tesla ride on mowers, it’s possible that the best thing about my concepts is that there is no chance of these atrocities ever coming to life. Until now. Maybe.

The Swamp Ute?

You see, the other day my Facebook feed coughed up an image of an eighties Electra Park Avenue that some person had decided to turn into a sort of El Camino ‘ute’:

Knowing that our own beloved shitbox-saving staffer S.W. Gossin owns a rather moldy and currently non-functional big Buick sedan he calls the Swamp Thing, I shared it through our infamous Slack channel.

The ever-enthusiastic Stephen seemed quite inspired, even joking about doing that same type of work to the currently-refusing-to-start Park Avenue he rescued. His 1994 model is of the much different later generation, a more organic looking car (filled with very organic fungi from a blocked sunroof drain).

I had a design proposal for a store display program that I needed to get together for work that day, so of course I dropped that and immediately did the more important task of a quick photoshop of what this car/pickup mashup might look like. We have priorities, right? Steven’s level of excitement for this project-that-I-didn’t-know-was-a-project seemed to kick into high gear. Like me, S.W. also labors in the corporate salt mines for at least nine or ten hours a day, so we naturally wasted our employers’ time and money briefly discussing how he’d like to turn the $400 remains of a used land yacht into a pickup truck. (For the record, we do this during our breaks).

It was obvious to us that we’ll certainly want the great hive mind of Autopian readers to offer expert bodywork advice in the comments below. Oh, but save your typing energy on one thing- we’re well aware that you can get good condition similar cars for only $4000-6000 or so all day long. But where’s the challenge there? Plus, we’re not doing CAD virtual stress tests or whatever on this thing, so wouldn’t you rather chop away at a sacrificial lamb first to learn what would work best before ruining a pristine example?

Whatever the case, here’s what we were thinking.

Square Box In A Round Hole

While General Motors embraced the whole ‘ute’ concept down under, in the United States, General Motors only ever offered the body style as the Chevrolet El Camino and identical GMC Caballero, the last one being the 1978-1987 model:

When the first El Camino was introduced in 1959, there was a Pontiac version prototyped that never went to production:

However, there were never any variations even suggested from more upscale GM brands.  And why not? The whole idea of a ‘ute’ is to offer utility when you need it and the ability to drive to church in it on Sunday. Nothing says ‘drive to church’ like a Buick, does it?

The way I see it, doing such a conversion could be handled with two distinctly different approaches:

Concours- The end result will be analyzed by chin-scratching judges in sport coats with paint depth gauges on a country club lawn.

Passably Janky- Your girlfriend deems it acceptable to actually ride in for short distances as long as her friends won’t see her.

As I just mentioned, the first significant challenge of such a conversion is that the Buick in the Facebook picture is the boxy front drive 1985-1990 C Body style, the one that was often held up as an example of Roger Smith’s era of identical looking General Motors sedans that got crucified by the critics and public, especially when the Audi-looking aero Fords appeared. Still, boxy shapes convert to pickups more easily.

Stephen’s 1994 Park Avenue Ultra is the second generation built on this platform, a much more curvaceous body that was one of the last projects that veteran designer Dave Holls worked on at GM (along with the more angular but still attractive 1992 Cadillac STS). Whatever you say about it being a car for matrons cruising to bingo or Cracker Barrel in, this later Park Avenue is really quite a nice looking design. Buick took the 1989 Park Avenue Essence show car and kept the production model surprisingly close to the initial concept.

The tapering nose and tail, lack of GM’s ‘formal roofline’, and rather tasteful detailing like the waterfall grille were more Coventry than Cleveland; I mean, maybe not exactly a Jaaag but easily one of the nicest looking Buicks released in years. The car set the identity and direction of Buick design for the next decade or so, but none of these later cars had quite the look or pleasing proportions of the original.

Such a sculptural form (especially with that descending trunk lid) obviously does not suit itself to lopping off parts and adding a cargo box area as easily as the earlier designed-with-a-T-square Park Avenue seen at the Sonic. Speaking of Jaguar, you can see the disaster that results from adding a ‘box’ to the back of a similarly rounded XJ6 as done by coachbuilder in the image below. Yikes!

Come Sail Away

Another challenge that you might not see at first is that simply cutting a four door sedan aft the front doors creates a surprisingly compact front passenger compartment. Look at where the front seat is in the image below. Just ask any hearse or taxi driver how far back they can slide their seat and they will likely begin a rant about how difficult it is to spend hours behind the wheel of one of these things.

[SWG’s take on the above: First off, Bishop is a luminary and seems to have this unique clairvoyant ability to inspire others with his visions of the future. Secondly, I’m 110% with him on the above take on having an “extended cab” for this build. Right now, I’m envisioning the rear glass to be located about midway upon the present rear doors. This will leave enough space to recline the (currently non-operational) seats and for a little storage area/breathing room. -SWG]

Not that Stephen wants such a cut off-looking passenger compartment anyway. No, that wouldn’t be befitting the design of the car. The sweeping C pillars of the original car are something that he’d like to keep. Still, that angled backlight of the Buick just isn’t going to work with a pickup truck. However, he did throw out an idea: utilizing sail pillars in a manner similar to any number of cars, including the aformentioned 1978-1987 El Camino.

So the rear roof section would be cut off and moved forwards, mating with the roof just aft the B pillars. How you would join these roof sections obviously could be done in a concours way (welded, angle ground, body filler) or in a janky way (weld as best possible and fill the gaps with Great Stuff). If done in a Janky way, this mess could be covered by a mock ‘targa’ bar.

Or, the whole business hidden by a vinyl roof cover. Don’t laugh- there’s a reason that stretch limos always have vinyl roofs. I was told by a model maker we’d hired from a limousine builder that they would need far too much time and effort to get the seams presentable enough with a mirror black finish. Hell, you might remember the way that Chrysler was able to add a ‘formal’ roof line to a lowly Dodge sedan. This image below is a factory job, black goop and all. Can you believe this shit?:

I really don’t want to do the vinyl roof, especially on a car known for dealer installed fake convertible top kits. But the solution is always there..

[SWG: This begets another issue though, which is the glass/area between the B-pillar and the rear glass/ flying buttress C-pillars. If you look at the stock glass setup on the Park Avenue, you’ll see that the rear windows are square, with a filler piece of glass on the aft side, to lie flush against the curvature of the C-pillar. The “2 pathways here, daawg!” paradigm from above holds true with this choice as well. Either we:

1. Order custom glass to fit the space between the B-Pillar and the C-Pillar or
2. Just use steel to fill that area (which would serve for a cool look, but would create a killer blind-spot) 

As I’ve done previously, I think letting the readership decide this quandary would be the best move. What says Ye, oh fellow Autopians? Ok, back to The Bishop. -SWG]

The new rear quarter windows, as Stephen said, could be glass or, as a slightly jankier solution, we could use plexiglass (you don’t have to scrape ice off of the windows in Wilmington, North Carolina). However, I think the quarter windows from the rear doors plus fabricating a small filler panel looks best and would likely be the most cost-effective solution:

The full steel panel Stephen wanted to see as an option, well, it’s a big heavy blind spot, ain’t it?

Oh, and the moonroof that was the guilty party in this moldy mess will need to forever stay shut, and the drain tubes rerouted. At least the Parkamino will require about 60 percent less headliner than the stock sedan to replace the black-with-mold original.

Windows Of Opportunity

The sail panels of the El Camino which Stephen would like to emulate actually surround a complex and likely expensive curved rear window that is, surprisingly, a dead ringer for the back glass in a Ferrari 308/328:

That won’t fly here with a semi-home build, so the sail panels here could hide that this ‘Parkamino’ features a flat back panel to seal off the opening behind the seats in either steel (concours conversion) or marine plywood (janky). Then, a vertical window from whatever mid-sized Ranger or S-10 wreck happens to be sitting in the salvage yard Steven is visiting on that particular day could be installed. He might need to get a template for the rear window and carry it with him to see what fits.

A great example of this template work was used in developing the Lynx Eventer, a rather fetching ‘shooting brake’ conversion of the not-universally-loved Jaguar XJS. Apparently, the coachbuilder finished the metalwork of the fabricated hatchback on the first one and made a cardboard template of what they needed in terms of size and shape of the glass to fit in the hatch. They then walked through a bunch of parking lots and tried the template out on any car that seemed to have glass that came close. The winner- a backlight from a Citroen Ami 8 wagon.

With super-low production cars, this is how you have to do things, be it a bespoke $100,000 Jag or $400 Buick.

Make Your Bed

Creating the cargo area in the back of the Buick to make it a pickup truck will require a flat surface. Once the rear seats are removed and any other items aft the front seats (except for the fuel filler, unfortunately), we will have to put down crossbars of some kind for a floor, which can be done with welded-in steel (concours) or a chunk of marine plywood (janky). With the Janky solution, Stephen might want to look on his next junkyard visit and see if he can find any cargo bed liners on mid sized trucks that are ready for the crusher. This plastic tray could be cut down to fit the space and it would take care of finishing off the sides, back, and bottom of the new bed.

Regardless of the method use, there’s one thing that this conversion will also have in common with the El Camino. Many don’t know this, but America’s favorite ute has a secret- the footwells for back seat the Malibu wagon on which the El Camino is based are still there, right under the front of the cargo bed floor. Pull back the carpet hanging over the back of the cab and you’ll see what is known in Camino circles as ‘the smuggler’s bin’ (I doubt that was an official General Motors title). Extra storage space and an area for the spare. Sorry, El Camino owners- I shouldn’t have spilled the beans on your hiding place like that.

The Buick will have such voids as well, and we can even use the plastic bin from a wrecked El Camino if we can find them, or fabricate marine plywood boxes for cargo. If the factory (Bose?) audio system is shot, amps and subs could fit here; I know this is an old Buick but we need bass since we’re not animals for Chrissake.

Stephen threw another wrench in the works, in that he wants to have the trunk lid become a tonneau cover over the new ‘bed’. Well, shit, how is that gonna work? Understandably, the soft curves of the trunk lid would be nice to keep, but how to continue it? Regardless of if we do a Concours or Janky solution, I’d propose a welded steel structure from 1x1s to connect to the old trunk lid. These would connect to hinges mounted to the back wall of the car.

The Concours way might be to extend the trunk lid with perfectly formed sheet metal or aluminum perfectly blended into the original trunk lid; the Janky solution would stretch vinyl or convertible top material over the metal frames. Actually, that would keep it lightweight and allow us to grab hatchback shocks from Autozone to lift it. You’d now just have to add steel channels along the sides to mount weatherstripping to and allow for a water gutter/channel. No, we would not go so Janky as to use actual rain guttering. I hope.

[SWG: Here’s where my head is regarding the above at the moment. Cutting the roof off and getting the “cab” section to actually exist as an entity will be a huge undertaking and also an expense that is in no way commensurate with the value of this car. 

The existing, stock deck lid is water-tight, fits the adjacent panels perfectly, creates a stylistic and visual “top” to the rear light bar section and keeps water away from the taillight array. I think that leaving it for “Version 1.0” of this car may be the right move so as to not create extra work where it is not needed. I can always remove it in the future and do a full-length bed section. -SWG]

Good point from Stephen there – so at least to start why not keep the whole trunk intact, and then the center section for semi-open cargo. In fact, we could even do that stretched fabric cover over the ‘mid bed’ opening were the rear seat was, and even add some matching canvas to part of the trunk lid to give the illusion of a full-sized bed cover. If the cover wouldn’t make the ‘mid bed’ area fully weatherproof, I see a $45 X-Cargo roof box you could pop in the area.

Finishing It Off

Some people like the whole ‘rat rod’ look and I have to count myself in the group that does not. There’s cases where it works but if it’s just a lazy way to finish a project, then no. I would think that even in a Janky way this thing could be made to look sort of like a factory ute; look at the Saturn Ute that Thomas posted a little while ago and you’ll be inspired by what can be done in a back yard (we’re guessing). Keeping it as close to stock as possible instead of a custom will only add to the appeal and double takes by passers-by. “Did Buick really make a pickup truck?”

Paint? I mean, it’s a big nineties Buick, so it has to stay that signature metallic dark green, right? Plus, do we really want to clear out the whole engine bay or get into the door jambs to paint a new color in there anyway? The Ultra wheels are great rolling stock and should clean up nicely or even re-powder coat if needed.

Also, if Jason gets too close to this project he’ll demand installing the Euro-spec taillights with amber indicators and rear fog lamps in the bumper.

How many of these did they actually manage to sell overseas anyway?

Of course, the US specification tail would retain its slide-in license plate holder. No rusty bolts; just open the trunk and pop the plate in place. Are you kidding me? Why in God’s name don’t more cars offer this type of feature?

You Got Something To Say?

As dumb as I might be, I’m not totally stupid. I’d never try to actually build any one of the creations that I’ve drawn.

[SWG: Ok I would forgo the use of the word “dumb”, but instead utilize “mechanically ambitious”perhaps? I’d actually pay good money and would strongly encourage The Bishop to try to real-world-create one of his digital masterpieces. Doing so would elevate mankind and be a step towards the kind of future we all want to be a part of. 

After all, there’s only one Bishop and that dude inspired me to cut the roof off my car. And I’m actually doing it! Stay tuned. -SWG]. 

Oh, no – this decapitation idea appears to be entirely my fault. Please do me a solid – could you Autopian bodyshop ninjas out there offer some advice? I feel guilty already, but optimistic that Stephen will make it work. You’ll have a hard time finding a more persistent, enthusiastic person.

I can certainly see him grabbing a beer, sitting in a lawn chair, and watching the sun setting over his finished car/truck after a long day at work. Who knows- maybe Stephen can even get it to run again. If you want to wager that he can’t, I’d say that’s a very, very bad bet.

Why The Dirt-Cheap Broken Jaguar X-Type For Sale In Every Town Might Actually Be Worth Buying And Fixing – The Autopian

I Bought A 29-Year Old Buick With 68,000 Miles On It To Prove The Haters Wrong – The Autopian

How I Saved A Once-$90,000 Mercedes SL I Bought For $1,900 – The Autopian

How I Got Six Years Of Service Out Of A $220 Car – The Autopian