I know I’ve already written about Suzuki earlier today, but it’s the end of the year and there’s just some days where you need a little bit more Suzuki. I think today is one of those days. The Suzuki I’d like to double-dose you with is a strange little mostly-forgotten concept car from 1995: the UT-1.
There’s not a whole lot of information out there about this concept, but from what I can gather, the Utility Transport-1 (UT-1, not to be confused with UTI, which is a very different thing that makes you drink cranberry juice) was a novel take on the idea of a general-use passenger car in that it seems to have been inspired by big rig truck design, albeit scaled down. A lot.
The little one-liter car is proportioned like the tractor part of a big rig: short wheelbase, upright, and with a short cab in front of a stumpy multi-use platform at the rear. The styling of the front end was big rig-inspired, too, with a tall, vertical grille and stacked light units.
Like a big rig, you could tow an articulated trailer from that rear deck, which Suzuki showed at the Tokyo Auto Show, but there was so much more to this weirdly logical little modular workhorse.
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There was a cargo box you could place on the rear deck for storage, if you just wanted a two-passenger weekend getaway car with plenty of luggage room, and there was also a full rear hatchback module that included rear seating to make a full four-passenger hatchback.
The rear of the cab had a “detachable rear canopy” so you could actually talk to the people in the back seat when in hatchback mode.
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The interior was also a marvel of sleek, no-bullshit design. Look at this clean, easy-to-manufacture dashboard/instrument panel design and ask yourself why this isn’t done more often:
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See how it’s all one piece, with no fussy bezels or inset panels or anything like that? One big plastic slab, with holes perforated for vents or instruments or knobs or whatever. It’s so efficient and clever and clean I just want to respect-plotz.
The little one-liter engine was designed to run on compressed natural gas (CNG) or gasoline, which just adds to the intense practicality of it all.
I can imagine these things as being the basic passenger vehicle used for a future Martian colony, where uniformity and ease of repair and maintenance were the biggest concerns. I can also imagine a whole separate industry sprouting up making rear modules for these things: pickup truck beds, food truck kitchens, campers with extra axles at the rear, station wagons, long passenger vans, likely also with an extra set of wheels, limo backs, mobile hot tubs, dog enclosures, and on and on.
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It’s weird how if you push logic and practicality and flexibility to an extreme, sometimes it can wrap back around again to fun and strange. It’s also great.
(thanks to the people who sent me links to this!)
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