Growing up I never understood the appeal nor the ubiquity of these seemingly-antiquated trucks. 

They seemed to crawl through the older suburbs, ferrying kids to soccer practice and moms to the nail salon.

Wish I’d have twisted my parents arms to buy one then – these are the king of the classic SUVs now, and you can’t even get a beat-up one for $15k.

There’s something extremely imposing about the 58 – it almost seems like a sculpture was dropped onto a chrome platform.  It’s seamless but also trucklike.

Of course, this is the year before the iconic, delicate 59 Eldorado, and sometimes gets lost in the shuffle by comparison.  It’s like an artist with an outstanding song a year before an international radio hit.

I think what ultimately does this design in is the suicide doors, and it’s a hard circle to square. Lincoln would figure out the winning formula a couple years later.

If they made the 58 Eldorado coupe look like this – it would’ve probably eclipsed most other Cadillacs before or since.

I don’t know what to say other than the simple fact that the Challenger has consistently looked better than the other two.

Not to say the Mustang and the Camaro have an excuse either – all three cars started off with fantastic concept designs in, what, the mid-00s? and carried that over to production models well in the first generations.

But as those cars chased trends, the Challenger remained relatively unmolested, looking classic and restrained now while Chevy has tried in vain to update the Camaro grill for the third time in as many years.

What the hell is going on at Nissan?

What other company has principals as important as their Chairman and now CEO forced to resign in disgrace?

Imagine if that happened to a big bank.

I got really excited about this in original form and then a little less excited about it in successive concept and pre-production forms and now it’s here and it’s still kind of exciting but I feel like VW has this habit of dangling out concepts for damn-near a decade and then by the time they get to production (IF…IF…they get to production, looking at you, Microbus) the usefulness and originality of the idea has passed.

It’s like if the Beetle came out in the early Seventies.

That having been said, the interior lifts the best features of the i3 interior and democratizes the idea of a funny, futuristic little electric hatch to the masses.

If they decide not to sell it stateside they should just pull out of the American market entirely.

I’m one of those sticklers for originality, that is me.

But almost a century on, how many of these are actually still touching asphalt outside of a museum?

Besides, how achingly cool would it be to pull up to the grocery store in one of these?